Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?

            I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with my exact feelings on posting “behind the scenes” studio videos.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pretty avid fan of them myself for the sake of education, since I’m a producer/mixologist among other things, but at the same time I’ve always struggled with the feeling that too much imagery of the studio can take something away from the mystique of music.  I remember when I was younger, I would listen to music and it would take me places.  I didn’t fully understand what I was hearing in terms of effects, and at times even instruments were a mystery to me.  But it was in the mystery that I found a sort of imaginative freedom.  I went on a lot of adventures that way.

            From that experience, I’ve always held on to the idea that I don’t want my music to make people picture a studio; an inspiring but sterile environment of mics, cables, computers, speakers….those things aren’t the point.  It’s like the way a painter wants you to focus on his art, not his easel or tablet.  I want my music to bring to mind a scene, a place, a picture.  Whether it be a winning battle or a poignant story, that’s what I want.  I’ll even go further and say that I don’t want people to picture musicians playing too much either.  That’s certainly cool to a point, but according with my general feelings about music videos, you can only show the band playing for so long before you’ve bored me with incessant shots of the guitarist’s fingers.  Or how about keyboards?  We’ve got the technology now to sample and synthesize such otherworldly sounds that I don’t want to see a Korg Micro in my head, I want to see a forest of mystical trees bowed to singing by the wind or something like that.  Which again, don’t get me wrong, in the right place I like a good finger shot as much as the next guy, but I want my music to be way beyond showing off that I can play an instrument or sing.  I think that’s sort of a problem, in some cases we’ve made music more about showing off than carrying out a message, and then as songwriters we wonder why people don’t have an appreciation or care for lyrical content anymore.  To put it in terms of visual art, you can get so caught up in the technique and type of media being used that you don’t see the picture anymore. 

            Anyway, back to the studio.  I’ve been recording and mixing a lot lately for some groups and musicians, as well as rehearsing and working on creating a lot of other things.  During all that, I’ve been taking a lot of video for my youtube channel.  I have kind of fought with myself over it though, for the reasons stated above.  But then, I took a step back and realized a couple of things.  First of all, I’m not JUST an artist anymore, I am a producer, so I’m just showing what I do.  Secondly, we live in a world that has been vastly amplified by a thing we call the internet.  People have much more access these days to the “making of” just about anything, and I’m seeing that as long my behind the scenes videos are about more than just me goofing off, they can really add to someone’s appreciation of the final presentation.  I still want people to focus more on what I’m putting forward, the world I’ve created, the story being told, but if you want to learn something, travel, laugh, and just generally get another part of the experience, I suppose I’ll show you some of what goes on behind the curtain. 

>:)

www.SamuelDayOfficial.com