There’s something to be said about flexing your creative muscles and learning about areas that are in no way your specialty. Over the past two years particularly, I’ve been messing around with basic recording and video editing. Basic. I’m not remotely an expert and I don’t have professional grade equipment or software or money to burn. (Especially now.) I’m running the 2010 version of Adobe Premier on a six year old computer with RAM issues that can give me the screen of death at any moment. I record on Audacity (which is free) without a mixer and using a mic that I probably shouldn’t use with the piano that I’ve started teaching myself to tune back in March. In fact… I’m in the process of clearing 450 Gig off my hard drive – mostly videos and music – so I can – well – make more videos and music.
There are people who do this waaaay better and waaaaay faster than I do and produce amazing work. They’ve put in the years and sweat into making it happen and I give them their props. And honestly, if I had the bread, I would probably pay them to do it and save myself the trouble. And yet…
When it comes to creating and developing your art, you can’t truly pass it off. Not completely. And spending a bit of time doing it helps inform you about what and who you need when you can pass it out.
So… What does this have to do with being a music director? Everything. Absolutely everything.
One of the most important things you can do is to find out what you can bring to your “main” craft.
