Troubleshooting
Once upon a time we had a guitar player. They brought their new guitar to practice which of course they were all kinds of excited about. Part of the way through practice her guitar stops making noise. She hit the strings, nothing. This particular guitar was fancy and had all kinds of dials for the pickups…so she starts fucking with it… I look over at my keyboard player, catch his eye, and direct it down to her volume pedal now in the off position. I mouth “let’s see how long…” Five minutes go by… Nothing. Eventually she figured it out. I was talking to my keyboard player later and he said something very succinct about it “you can’t troubleshoot a system unless you know how the system works.” A friend of mine has recently been starting up her own thing. In the past I have had others come to me hold all the parts up and say “make it work.” I guess forgetting that I have a thousand pans on a thousand fires all the time. And I look at the mess and say ,”No. not my circus not my monkeys.” Anyway my friend, on the other hand involved me in exactly the right way. She would text me and say “Hey, X thing Is a problem, how do I solve it.” And I would say more or less “here is how you find the answer to that problem.” I wasn’t withholding information, everyone’s setup is different, but often the methods used to troubleshoot are the same…. teach a man to fish and all that. As another example of the kind of problems that comes with not understanding your shit, one time we were on stage and the same guitarist had some sort of problem, and she walks over to me in the middle of the show and asks me to help her fix it. Obviously that kind of behavior in a pro setting is just unacceptable. That was a long time ago and wouldn’t happen now. I won’t have anyone in the bands or work with someone who doesn’t know their kit inside and out. Because THATS YOUR GODDAMN JOB. The shows, the crowd, anyone giving a shit about what you do? It’s all contingent on you actually being able to do the thing. TL;DR no one will take you seriously if you don’t take what you do seriously enough to put the time into learning every aspect of it. Go and do likewise.
Steven Archer is
in a dark-electronic-rock band called Ego Likeness.
www.egolikeness.com
I also paint, a lot
From time to time I write books…
Please buy our stuff so we can eat.
Music http://egolikeness.bigcartel.com/
Art http://www.etsy.com/shop/egolikeness
He makes things.
Ego Likeness being one of them.
www.egolikeness.com