Behind the Glass

I was reading through one of my text books (Behind the Glass by Howard Massey) and I stumbled across a quote:

“For many people record production seems to be a black art, imbued with an almost mystical secrecy. After all it’s easy to understand the roles of pretty much everyone else involved in making a CD: the songwriter creates the music; the artist (who is sometimes the same person) interprets and performs it; and the engineer is responsible for getting the sound successfully on tape or hard disk by looking after the faders, knobs, meters and other technical aspects. But then there is that other person – the one hovering in the background, often engaged in deep conversation with the musicians and the engineer. What exactly is he or she doing? That is what this book sets out to answer.”

What am I getting myself into?!? If the author needs over 300 pages to give a job description…

All joking aside I am really looking forward to getting in to that business some day. Of course I have school to polish off first, and many years of grappling up a corporate ladder… but it’s nice to have finally set my heart on doing one particular thing. It’s also nice that I have been blessed with a mentor and amazing opportunities already. The prospect of spending my life doing something that I love blows me away, but it sounds like I have quite a learning curve ahead of me if I want to be 'imbued with an almost mystical secrecy'. What does that even mean?