But in this case, the problem is bringing the session to a halt. Under normal circumstances you can figure out a way to keep working, hopefully without the client becoming aware that something isn’t working properly. Our client’s first reaction is that we don’t know how to use our equipment therefore we are the problem, not the equipment. You’re working away on a session and everything is working fine until, midway through the gig you experience some equipment problems. When someone criticizes us, then we want to fight back! Here’s a case scenario that I find typical in our line of work and I’ll show a poor response that leads to problems and an alternative one that keeps things moving positively. If someone criticizes our gear, then we can use better gear. We have continually developed that ability to find alternate ways of making something work, but when it becomes a problem that involves our personal character I find that most of the time it results in problematic relations with your client/peer with negative impact. When something technical fails we can troubleshoot and solve the problem, usually without breaking a sweat. The worst result is when our client/peer loses confidence of what we can do based on how we handle the personal relations, which has nothing to do with how well equipped we are to handle the technical aspect of the job. However as soon as things go wrong and criticism gets thrown your way the most common reaction is to get defensive and blame someone or something else. When work is getting done and results are getting made that everyone likes then we don’t pay attention to what we are doing right regarding interpersonal relations. As a producer I have learned that there are ways to conduct yourself that will work for you and those that will work against you. Namely the personal skills in how to interact with our peers, clients or superiors is under developed and isn’t getting the same attention that our skill sets are getting. What gets left behind is the stuff that is less obvious and almost under the radar of what we deem necessary for the improvement of our professional careers. Our intellectual and artistic skills are being improved on all the time so we get better at what we do on a regular basis. We always work on our technical skills so those always get developed we keep refining our artistic skills so that our product progressively sounds better we upgrade our understanding of the gear we use so we can use what we have to create better results or use new gear to streamline our workflow. So it usually gets underdeveloped and can end up costing us a gig or worse, our job. Unfortunately it is one of those traits that gets the least amount of our attention when we are concerned with the other stuff we are responsible for. One of the attributes a professional in the music industry needs to have is good character.
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