Blog: Unwanted Skills

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This weekend I had to learn a new skill, and let me tell you my friends I did not like it ONE BIT.

The problem was not the skill itself, which was learning how to use a mixing desk to record audio onto a laptop. It was slightly complicated, because the equipment what I had bought came with NO MANUAL AT ALL and so I had to watch a whole bunch of videos, read various webpages, try it out in various configurations and generally think back to all the times I've sat behind either Robbie and Rich at Snug OR Kev Reverb in Stayfree and try and remember what on earth they were doing. Actually, it was slightly more than slightly complicated as I also had to get it to work with a new microphone, and also with Adobe Audition (for REASONS) and also with Microsoft Teams (for OTHER reasons), but it was at least do-able.

The PROBLEM was not any of the above, it was the fact that I really really did not want to HAVE to learn any new flipping skills. Over the years I have had to learn LITERALLY MILLIONS of new skills that I didn't want, and to be perfectly frank I have had just about enough. Several years ago when I was a teenager - maybe even a decade or more ago in fact - all I wanted to do was WRITE WORDS what people would think were clever, and so I had to learn to TYPE. Fine. Then to put these words out in public I had to learn how to use one of them STENOGRAPH machines you used to have with the carbon paper and the turny handle, and then staple them all together into magazines. Then I thought it'd be good to do some sort of PERFORMANCE, as that would involve a chance to SHOW OFF, and so I had to learn how to book a venue, and rehearsal space, and organise people to turn up, and do some sort of directing, and then TELL other people about it. MORE SKILLZ.

After a couple of years I realised that actually being in a BAND was probably easier and would involve MORE showing off and also BEER so did that, which meant having to learn to play an INSTRUMENT. As it turns out, you didn't need to have to learn how to play an instrument WELL, so I didn't, but I did have to learn about how AMPS worked, and PA systems, and LIGHTING sometimes, and also designing posters and flyers, and how to get into gig listings. As time went by we did some RECORDING so I had to learn how all THAT flipping works, and how to do MIXING and then how to MANUFACTURE tapes and CDs and who to send THOSE to to get them on the radio or in shops or on websites.

"Great news everybody", said the Universe around this time, "now there's a thing called the INTERWEB what you can use to do all of this yourself!" This sounded fun, but then you had to learn about SERVERS and HTML and CSS and then WEB PAGES and SOCIALS and OH MY GOOD LORD it just keeps going on and flipping on. Do you need someone who knows the difference between CMYK and RGB? Ask me! Need a slightly wrong explanation about the difference between Mechanicals and Publishing? I can do that! I can also give extremely basic advice on how to EDIT BLOODY VIDEO and then get it onto YouTube and all those as THAT was something that we all suddenly needed to flipping know about.

It makes me feel like I am a VILLAGE HALL filled with a crowd of surly teenagers who have all been sent on a variety of training courses that they didn't really want to go on and didn't properly pay attention to. Some of them have talked to each other and pretty much worked out the basics - Video Editing Teen and Music Editing Youth realised it was all sort of the same thing, for instance, while Gig Booking Boy can fill in for PR & Communications Lad if need be - but it really is quite a LOT of youths in rather a small metaphorical village hall and by this point they are starting to smell a bit, as gatherings of youths often can.

Over the years otherwise perfectly sensible and lovely people have occasionally asked if I would like to use all of these gathered skills/metaphorical teenagers to manage someone ELSE, and my answer has always been to politely say no thank you very much, for two very excellent reasons. The first of these is that although, as stated, I know the basics of all manner of unwanted skills, I am not actually very good at ANY of them, and the second is that I don't LIKE knowing about them and would really rather not have these skills in the first place!

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying I now understand what an XLR is, what 2TK INPUT (RCA) means, and which settings to alter to get the correct CODEC into an audio file. Look out for all of this knowledge being inexpertly applied to a podcast near you soon!

posted 25/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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