When you’re a creative whose craft is dependent on technology, like recording music or creating video, mastering that tech is important. 

But mastering tech isn’t the key to succeeding. The real key to success is about knowing your craft. 

Mastering your tech tools is unarguably important. Knowing the how, why and where you should apply those tools is far more critical.

 Those of us who have lived long enough to go from using our horse and wagons to using a combustion truck engine, or from burning candles to see at night, to the miracle of the electric light bulb, can tell you changing tech to improve our life and job is never ending.

So how have I and thousands like me survived and succeeded during the last 150 years from horse and wagon to Musk’s SpaceX.  We learned the importance of knowing “what” you need to know, before we worried about how to do it.

I refer to the “what” as human skills. The skills you need to develop in order to express your idea or vision regardless of your technical aptitude.

Let’s break this down into two human skills, Hearing and Vision or more practically, recording music and capturing visual images.

HEARING / RECORDING MUSIC

Most great recording engineers, the person sitting in front of a “mixing console”, are responsible for combining all the individual instruments and vocals into a prefect singular blend of sound that becomes a song or sound track for a movie.

During my years in the music industry, I have heard some amazing mixes. Interestingly, the tech that had been used during those years ranged from an 8 channel Kustom Model VIII SRM to the legendary Solid State Logic SL 9000 J console.

 What kind of wizardry was applied to capture such amazing mixes spanning such a wide range of tech?

No wizardry was needed, only the mastering of a specific human skill, “CRITICAL LISTENING”, combined with knowing “WHAT” they wanted to “express or convey to their audience” with music.

 Oh… you’re not an audio or music person… no worries this concept applies to ALL creatives who use tech to produce their product / art.

 Here is another example.

 VISUAL / VIDEO CAPTURE

When I shifted into broadcast production they used the Sony SP Beta BVP-50 cameras.

As the industry moved towards HD so did the camera tech, like the Sony HDW-790.  Enter internet video postings which birth another generation of cameras, the DSLR. And brings us today’s amazing iPhone 13Pro camera.

All these advances left some camera operators on the sidelines while others soared and advanced their careers.

WHY?

Again, the ones that succeeded understood the value of “human skills”.  In this case knowing how to compose a shot. What elements should be dominate and which should be subtle. They understand the power of lighting and camera angles.

 In either example, Visual or Hearing, mastering the appropriate human skills, the skills and techniques needed to create in that medium, will never obsolete. 

 Which means in turn you will never obsolete.