Advice to My School Going Self

What feels like about two billion years ago a fledgling life-form by the name of Pat Jackman (i.e. me) was sent to see a career guidance guy. “What do you want to be, Pat?” says he. “A record producer” says I, with deep pride.

“Well, Pat”, says the career man, “we all have our little dreams, and we can find other ways to satisfy them. For example, you may want to be involved in music, but you can still get a lot of satisfaction from listening to a cassette on the way to work....”

Boy, talking about busting a boy's bubble! In fairness, it didn't sound like a truly viable alternative to hanging out with famous musos and gorgeous women and the like but, heck, he was an adult, and they are supposed to know what's what.

Perhaps I should have told him where I was coming from. Maybe I should had told him that music was my single greatest passion. Apart from computers. And, er, girls. Perhaps I should have told him that I wanted to be a producer from the age of three, when I first saw two old men on telly talking about manipulating sound.

The year was 1968. The two old men in question were Paul McCartney and George Martin, bass player and producer respectively of a band called The Beatles, the song was Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite and the album, Sgt. Peppers, the seminal psychedelically drenched Sixties moment that singularly changed the face and sound of popular music for ever.

They talked about how they wanted a “swirly hurdy-gurdy type sound” for the song, of how they got tape recordings of calliope, chopped them up, threw the bits into the air and stuck them randomly back together in order to create the sound that they wanted. And. I. Was. Fascinated!

It had never occurred to me that you could manipulate sound. Sure, I knew sound was recorded onto records, I was even dimly aware that an echo was added onto many vocals. But to manipulate a real world thing, like sound, something that seemed transient and unprocurable, was an amazing concept to me.

Any time I saw anything about sound technology on the telly from then on I would soak it up. I remember seeing the Mellotron, a precursor to the modern day sampler keyboard that used continuous loops of tape to store and play sounds, and the Moog, all knobs and patch leads, looking like something from a bad sci-fi film. And then, there was the Fairlight CMI.

The Fairlight was one of the earliest commercially available digital samplers. It had a massive 64kB internal memory, enough to store four very brief snippets of sound, and could play eight notes at once!! Truly amazing, from the crap perspective of the late Seventies anyway.

The possibilities were endless. I imagined a world where musicians would be replaced by machines, where you didn't need big fat studios. You could take over the world with just a desk and keyboard. I mean, this thing could play anything, as was ably demonstrated on a TV programme I saw one day.

As some young buck was showing off a Fairlight, the female presenter pointed to the screen at the word “phartt”. “And what is that sound” she asked innocently. Apparently the TV stations' switchboard was flooded with complaints regarding flatulent sounds being played on live telly for hours afterwards. Well, it was the Seventies.

My whole world changed in 1980. I was fourteen. I had always listened to music, but now my record listening and buying had become avaricious. A friend had just (re)introduced me to The Beatles, I introduced them to my brother, who in turn introduced me to The Rolling Stones. This started an almost frenzied period of research into the music of the previous twenty odd years. He got a guitar, I a keyboard. We met other like minded individuals. My brother joined a band, and then we formed our own.

Music technology was also continuing to develop apace. Samplers had gone beyond playing simple repetitive tunes, or spot fx, to become musical instruments in their own right. They were never going to completely replace musicians, that was becoming clearer, but their limitations, like the limitations of every piece of music technology ever invented, were instead being used as features, like the famous “stutter” chorus of Paul Hardcastles “Nineteen”.

With all these influences coming to a point, it had become clear to me what my career path should be. And then came the career guidance meeting.

He had to be right, I presumed at the time. Becoming a producer was a pipe dream, I'd never make it. I should just settle down, do my study, go to college, get the job, wife, house, sprogs and die an unfulfilled yet prodigious member of society, like all good boys should.

Which is exactly what I did.

Seven odd years later I was working as a stainless steel salesman. My soul was absolutely sucked away, but I was doing the “right thing”.

But I could never leave the music. Both myself and my brother were living in Dublin. We went busking every couple of evenings. We started meeting other musicians, we got asked to play gigs. The gigs got bigger, we had to take on extra musicians to fill out the sound. The couple of evenings a week became a whirlwind of daily rehearsals, gigs and busking.

And then, “the thing” happened – I was laid off from my job. On my last day I sitting in Abrakebabra with a couple of work colleagues, absolutely devastated, but with six weeks severance pay in my back pocket.

“What are you going to do now” asks one. “Dunno” says I.

And then I remembered a party I was at where I met a sound engineer who taught at a local sound training centre. I told him how I had always wanted his job. He tried to dissuade me, telling me that I would never enjoy music again because I'd be analysing it constantly. I remembered swearing that if I ever had the money and the free time...

Within forty minutes I was standing in said sound training centre, handing over my only income for the coming weeks to pay for a course in sound engineering. With similar lack of regard for little things like food and rent, I then went on to spend any other money I got my hands on over the coming months on a small sampling keyboard, four track tape recorder and a drum machine. I starved, no body saw me for weeks at a time, but I was dreadfully happy.

I took the training by the horns, got first on the course and ended up working for Sun Studios in Dublin. I worked with several luminaries of the music industry, had an absolute blast, some amazing experiences and guided the recording of our bands first album, “Dropped”, an album that actually went and made it into the charts and all.

But one thing was hampering me. Fact was, at twenty four, I was already too old to get on in the sound engineering business. Your ears are bust at that stage. By twenty eight, and having shifted my attention to the band, my dream was all but over. And with the bands demise, and impending sproghood being thrust upon me, I returned to Wexford to “behave” myself. I'm sure my parents heaved a collective sigh.

So, what did I learn from this. What if, in some magical little world, I was my own career guidance teacher, sitting in front of fifteen year old me? What would I say? Yes, folks, that's right, we've now come cleverly to the patronising advice bit.

1)     The nice idea: If you want to do something, anything in this world, you have to ensure that it is far more than “the nice idea”. It's a nice idea to be lots of things, we all have dreams. What makes the difference between the people who succeed in realising their nice idea and those who don't is that the people who succeed have passion. An overriding passion. It consumes them, it takes up their waking thoughts, it is the goal they work towards daily, from their first faltering steps to ultimate success. If you have passion, move to step 2.

2)     Marketing: I was recently on a panel of experts, giving advice to young bands. What shocked me was the attitude that one could just bumble about until someone “discovered” you. Things don't “just happen”. No matter what you want to be, you sell yourself as that, and do it constantly. No business can succeed without marketing, and individuals are no different. You go to a party, and someone asks what you do, you say “I am a writer/musician/whatever” and talk about it. Say it often enough and people start to believe you. Say it more than enough and you might even start to believe it yourself.

3)     Hard work: I am sorry, grim reality time I'm afraid. The more obtuse/less normal your chosen career path is, the harder you are gonna have to work. I'll give you an example. A band I knew in Dublin were to play two songs for a bunch of record exec's. Eight hours a day for six days before the meeting they played the two songs over and over and over again, without a break. I should know, my frigging office was outside their rehearsal room! Did they get signed, who knows, probably not. But that's the hard work that's needed, and then some more. But you know what they say, do something you love and you never work a day in your life.

4)     Education: I know, I know. You're tired of hearing it. If you are going to hobnob down a path less travelled, get some education in. Ideally get it in the industry you are interested in, or pick something related to it. A friend of mine is a successful stage magician. His parents insisted on him getting some qualifications before starting out, just in case it all didn't work out. He rather brilliantly chose to study marketing. Much later, shock revelations about his show in the national papers gave him massive exposure and ensured that the show was a huge success. I later found out he had actually informed the papers about these revelations himself...

5)     Prepare for the knock-backs: They will happen, but don't judge the people who knock you back. Listen to the advice you get, don't just dismiss it out of hand, and make informed decisions on that advice.

6)     Diversify: If you are in a niche job, it can pay to diversify a little. Gain experience in doing other/slightly different jobs in your industry. Lots of friends of mine, for example, paid their way by performing in tribute bands. Hey, they got to play and got well paid!

7)     Find the niche: Don't do the same as everyone else. Don't rehash, search for the difference, find areas that other people have overlooked.

8)     Don't Talk About It: Just do it!

9)     Don't Wait: It's tempting to think you are young and have loads of time, you don't. For example, your chances of being signed as a musician dip dramatically after the age twenty three. You have no time to lose. The fact that I didn't realise that was my own biggest mistake.

10) You will succeed: Keep telling yourself that. Learn that there are no failures, just learning experiences. You will succeed.

So, where does that leave me?

Well, after decades of being surrounded by and submerged in music, and after a pretty bitter break-up with my band, I returned to Wexford and didn't not listen to a single piece of music again for over two years.

Old passions die hard though, and over the next couple of years I become fascinated by the development of computer music. In 1999 I bought a PC, a piece of poo I lovingly called “The Pig”, and started writing and recording music. The Pig would glitch if there were any more than eight tracks, would take forty odd minutes to mix down anything bar the simplest tunes and had the memory capacity of a small gnat but it was my second chance, and I took it.

With a sign saying the “The World is Not Enough” over my desk, and a password for the computer that consisted of the words “I am a success”, I also started doing little media transfer jobs to earn a few bob.

I got some business cards together and passed many hundreds of them out to everyone I met. I eventually got the job of comping all the music together for the opening of the 1999 Wexford Festival Opera. Those people then recommended me to a theatre director, and in 2000 I provided the soundtrack to my first play.

I pushed, I worked hard, the jobs came thicker and faster. I started recording again, mainly choirs and location recordings. At one stage music that I had either recorded, mixed or mastered was being played constantly on radio throughout Ireland and the Britain.

I wrote the opening music for the National Special Olympics, worked for the Riverdance people, had my soundtracks played throughout Ireland, was involved in one of the largest touring European magic shows and worked in independent film.

I also put my business experience to good use and, using the contacts I have gained over the years, have found work as a freelance arts administrator in both local and national organisations. It's a handy little earner when work is invariably scarce!

Over the last ten years, I've worked on over 120 shows, mainly in theatre but also in contemporary dance. The work can be phenomenally hard. Twenty hour days are not uncommon, the money is appalling, I'm effectively a pauper, but I LOVE IT!

Today finds me working on the soundtrack of one of the largest outdoor contemporary dance productions in Europe this year. I have to provide 40 odd minutes of soundtrack. Some of it will be scored music proper, some of it will be ambient soundscapes, and much of it will be performed using sounds sampled from the performance area itself. Sounds that I bend and mangle in wild and wonderful ways. Sounds I manipulate.

I manipulate sound. I am still three. I am watching the telly. Two men are talking. I am utterly fascinated...