Musicians are Esoteric

I have the good privilege (and sometimes the great horror) of having a foot in two worlds. Currently, I’m serving as both the Music Director as well as the Technical Arts Director at a rural church in Southern Ontario.

But it never struck me how different these two worlds are until today.

Our young (10 years old) Technical Arts Apprentice was looking at our bass player’s bass and my bass side-by-side. He asked what the difference was and I told him that mine had more punch but that our bass player’s bass had more sizzle.

“What do you mean, more sizzle?”, asked our young Padawan. I replied that our bass player’s bass had “bacon and eggs” sizzle whereas mine is more the kind of sizzle you get at a Japanese restaurant when they water-fry tofu and vegetables. The young man looked confused but the bass player said, “I know exactly what you mean.”

For a moment I thought it was just because our young friend was… well… young. But the more that I think about it the more I realize that musicians are esoteric. We’re the “wine tasters” of the church. Heaven help me if I start saying that my acoustic guitar has a nose of mint and an oak finish.

Technical Arts are all about the clarity of facts and musicians are all about the obscure and poetic. Sometimes musicians, being artists, don’t really have any better or simpler way to communicate than with imagery. It is important that Technical Arts be patient and try every now and again to think in the abstract.

Keep this in mind the next time your Choir Director asks you to reduce the amount of “starting a car on a cold winter’s morning to find that a family of stray cats had curled up on the block heater to stay warm” in the choir mics and just turn down the sopranos.

Happy Tech
- Shaun