do you know what you're doing?

[LazarusLong]

ehh kinda. not really.

most of my time is spent feeling like the SNL frankenstein character. it's either

"drum sound GOOOD...."
"drum sound BAAAD..."

[kayagum]

A former (fun) signature:

"Remember, a team of professionals built the Titanic. A lone amateur built the Ark." -- Dave Barry

[thethingwiththestuff]

just enough to make a living, apparently!

[fossiltooth]

A few days ago, I was recording this guitar overdub with an AMAZING guitarist for a production that I've been working on since December.

He has this effects box with a line level output. I plugged it into the low impedance input of the amp, and it sounded good. I tried the high impedance one meant for the guitar, and it sounded much weirder, but much better. Every note smacked you in the face instead of just protruding out of the amp, without an obnoxious, or even noticeable distortion.

The producer was so happy with the sound I got a tip at the end of the session!

I wish I could have said "yeah, that's my super awesome trick, I knew that would happen." I really had no idea.

Everyday I do something that makes me wonder if I have a clue what I'm doing.. but that contributes to an eccentric knowledge bank of weird tidbits that are very useful. anyone here feel the same way?

Intent is irrelevant. Results are important. If you "know" enough to go with what sounds good when you hear it, sounds like you "know what you're doing" to me. If you "know" enough to act in a way that makes your clients happy and keeps them coming back, you can safely say the same.

Knowledge that can be easily verbalized as a complex and ever-evolving set of mental shortcuts is just one form. As helpful as it can be, a person can have all that technical verbal knowledge, but have no real idea of what sounds good, even to their own ears! A person can develop a series of mental shortcuts based on something other than experience, and have no motherf*ing clue what they're doing when it comes to music. On the other hand, the converse of that is rarely true.

Anyway, you're asking the right questions. It's not about "knowing" as much as it's about "figuring it out". Constantly. Kind of like... you know... "life".

Also: someone who's smarter than me, please tell me if I used the term "converse" correctly.

And, furthermore... someone probably already made this point much more cogently than I did. Sorry! 5 page threads can be a daunting read.

[vvv]

I is not smarter than you.

Conversely, I am sure you done used it OK.