So I'm driving a car I'm not used to yet and it has some features that were not present on my last vehicle. Like "automatic lights." Silly me, I go to turn off the lights when I park the car and the car informs me that is a bad idea.
A warning comes up that pretty much says, "Hey, dork. You're turning off the automatic lighting which means that next time it gets dark, you'll have to turn the lights on manually. Which you will probably forget to do and then some really helpful guy will flash his lights at you at an intersection and you'll have to acknowledge that you forgot and turn them on, did I mention, manually?, while everyone looks at you and says, ‘Moron.'"
Actually all it says is "Automatic lighting disabled," but you know what it really means.
And the really dumb thing is that I follow the car's prompt and immediately turn the lights on again just so the auto feature will be active. I mean I am totally capable of turning on the lights when it gets dark. And yet how can I fail to take advantage of this wonderfully helpful feature that makes sure my lights are on whenever they maybe might be needed a little bit?
The audio world has become so digital and so "preset-able" and "recall-able," so much info is right there on the computer screen that it is easy to forget that the organs of greatest importance to us are supposed to be our ears and our brains. Eyes are for lampies. Not exclusively, but, you know…
A few years ago I heard about a show that went less smoothly than it should have. Kind of a B+-List act doing a national tour, but this was a one-off not on the official tour. In other words, it was a fly date, and all production was rented locally. The sound crew for the act saw it as a great chance to check out some speakers and mics they had heard good things about but did not get to use on the tour. And they were both on industry-standard digital consoles.
Being used to a situation in which everything was very similar day to day, both engineers showed up an hour prior to soundcheck, stuck their handy dandy card/USB key/whatever they store their settings on into the console, and proceeded to freak out. "Why does nothing sound right," they screamed. "This does not sound like we are used to."
After they were semi-gently reminded that they were not using the speakers or mics they had out on tour but rather the new ones they wanted to try out, the lightbulb went on, and they figured out they would have to rethink some level and EQ choices to match up with the system du jour.
I recently got a kind of rude reminder that it is easy to get complacent when so much is automated. I had some band-type info that I needed to send to a good-sized group of people for which I use a list I compiled some time ago. I don't use it often and am less than vigilant about updating it. So, out it goes, and I get the expected "this e-mail address is no longer any good" messages, which I studiously ignore and delete.
So, I'm done, right? Well, as is often the case with mailings like this, the bulk of the bad address notifications come in right away, but a few trickle in for the next few hours. When the trickle slows down enough, I may actually look at some of them. Among the bad addresses are a few "I am out of the office" auto-responses and I chuckle to myself as I get the inevitable few that say the recipient is out of the office for a date range that is several days or maybe even a week past. "Ludites don't even turn off their auto-responders," I think with a self-satisfied smirk.
Then I get one that knocks me upside the head. "I am out of the office and will have limited access to e-mail" it said. Then I looked at the intended recipient and realize that I sent an e-mail to someone who has been dead for more than a year. And got an auto-response.
Limited access to e-mail, indeed.
It is easy to fall back on automated tools-like already compiled mailing lists and auto responders-but those great tools can turn around and bite us if we are not careful. We are hired-one would hope-as much for our creative chops as for our technical prowess, and how creative is hitting a preset button without any thought behind the choice?
So I have spent the past few days looking-fairly often-at how I do what I do and to what degree I am depending too much on systems that may have worked once but are no loger valid or really helpful. It is something we might all take a look at. Are we one of the sound tribe who sets the system up and then forgets about it, spending showtime relaxing and hitting on chicks? Or are we one of those who are actively involved in the show and how it sounds? Are we engaged or on autopilot?
If the client ask for something mid-show, are we involved enough to respond quickly and appropriately, or are we sending the equivalent of an auto response?
"I'm out of the office right now and have limited access to e-mail…"
