#gaining knowledge

In each stanza it begins with يا addressing Allah (swt) with his qualities, and more specifically as ‘O Allah, the one who is merciful, the one who is all loving’

It’s that direct relationship between the believer and Allah (swt), set out in such exquisite structure,

Photo by Elina Fairytale on Pexels.com It seems that I have developed an interest to gain an in-depth understanding of herbs and their functions, though I believe that this interest has always been there but was lying fallow somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Now and again, the desire to start the journey into the jungle of herbs and its usage briefly bubbles to the surface and I picture…

I was talking yesterday about learning from my own experiences which, as it turns out, I don’t always specifically do. This one time, though, I happened to write a few pages of What I Learned scoring a project now ten years old. I put those pages in a folder... and then I put that folder someplace I totally forgot about until it wound up on a shelf in my home.

No idea how.

It was a lovely message from my past, though. A wonderful reminder of what I know... but don’t always remember. It was a list of problems I navigated during the project, how I solved them, and what I learned.

But.

Reading those pages in their entirety, I discovered a larger challenge with which I was obviously grappling. A challenge I didn’t specifically name.

In broad strokes, there were a number of times where I composed more music than was necessary. That wasn’t the result of being musically verbose, by the way. I simply misjudged the need. And since I was debriefing my experience ten years ago with an apparently narrow focus, I overlooked how I’d made that specific mistake a number of times in a single show. I had looked at lengthy interviews and multi-section sequences and judged all of it.

In need of music.

Which I then had to either remove, or remove most of.

At the time, I was well aware of each mistake.

I just wasn’t aware of the systemic nature of my decisions.

You see during the course of those shows I wore different hats: editor, designer, and composer. And, whilst wearing my composer hat, I over-prescribed music to solve all manner of red flags. One of those “When all you have is a Hammer, everything looks like a Nail” kind of things.

I should actually’ve been making that call as an editor. I should’ve looked at the show as a creative diagnostician, identifying problems (or opportunities), considering solutions (music being only one of the possibilities), and considering the needs of the show more holistically.

Instead, I dealt with sequences one at a time in order. Making music decisions disconnected from all the other decisions I would make about the show.

Don’t get me wrong. The show turned out magnificently. But I struggled through it even so. And the nature of that struggle is something I didn’t realize at the time but realize now.

Process.

Meaning that, yes, putting on different hats in a post-production environment is inevitable. But how that hat changing occurs is critical. Because for me, it’s creatively problematic to just start doing. I have to consider the view from 10,000 feet. Fifty thousand feet.

Before I set my hands to a keyboard. Any keyboard.

Even before I set foot into an edit suite or studio.

I have to be able to visualize holistically. Consider. Imagine. Iterate in a manner that’s only possible inside a human mind.

Yeah.

I was talking yesterday about learning from my own experiences which, as it turns out, I don’t always specifically do.

But you know what?

Yesterday was a continuation of our perpetual Spring Cleaning effort.

Apparently.

Of course the older I get the easier it becomes to let things go. Definitely this is all a personal excavation going back decades. I won’t lie, most of what I’ve been holding onto doesn’t have as much lasting value as I think it does. Every so often, though, something does pop out of my past that’s helpful to me in the present.

I was going through one of my cabinets that has a lot of old writing journals, post-production books, my archive of DV tapes, and a bunch of folders. I pull out the folders to see what’s in there and most of it’s admin and information on music libraries and loops I purchased over the years. But then there’s a few stapled pages titled “MUSIC DEBRIEF”.

Hmmmm.

I pull out the pages and recognize them from a show I scored over a decade ago. And what the “Debrief” is… is a list of lessons I learned scoring the show. The pages are divided into sections, each of which identifies several elements: a specific part of the show, the challenge of scoring that part of the show, the solution on which I ultimately settled, and the lesson I learned from the experience.

For example, the first section on the pages I discovered identifies the open of the show which itself is constructed from three sections: moody, modern, and a lead-in to an interview.

Now the thing I knew at the time was that I wanted the music to tail out right before the interview. Backing up from there, I composed a melody and arrangement for the first section, transitioned to something modern for the second, then returned to the first section theme, tailing out into the interview.

Perfect!

Except… not. Very much not.

It was all too busy.

So I pulled the modern music section, filling it instead with sound design that goes with big, bustling city.

What ended up working, then, was establishing a theme and arrangement for section 1, using sound design for section 2, then returning to a solo arrangement reprise of the section 1 theme leading into the interview.

Presto!

Less, then, is what I needed to do.

The lesson I picked up from this experience was two-fold. The first was that I love sound design. It puts me right there in some location.

The second lesson had to do with assumptions. I never asked should section 2 have music. Which is something to which I normally would’ve said no because I favor sound design for bustling cities and markets and plazas.

And the reason this is helpful to me in the present… is because once again I’m being asked to consider the use of music and sound design for a new series. It’s a reminder to me from my own past that I continue to ask that all-important question.

Why.

Of course reading the whole thing through more than a decade later, another lesson is obvious right there on those pages, one that maybe I didn’t realize at the time I wrote my debrief.

More on that tomorrow…

By | Prabodh Sirur | In search of Postitive Intranets at In search of Positive Intranets

Nachu was on his odyssey trying to find the secret sauce of success and happiness. 

Thanks to his newfound mentor, Mr. Ten, Nachu had already met two people (both with unusual names) – Speed and Ms Style. The next hero to meet was KA (Mr Know-All).

Ten gave an interesting description of KA. 

“KA has…