elliot scheiner

for the last two days i've had the privilege of sitting at the feet of one of the great engineers/mixers/producers in recording history. though you may not know his name, you know what he has done and his impact on your life is more profound than you know. in many ways he was a part of defining several generations of sound, in the genres of rock and jazz. 

ever listen to the Eagles, Sting, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin, Phil Collins, Toto, Dan Fogelberg, BB King, Bruce Hornsby, Van Morrison, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffet, Smokey Robinson, REM, Etta James or Aerosmith? he's the invisible man that shaped the sound of those bands for the radio. oh, and that's just the artist's he's worked with for regular stereo-sound mixing. he's also considered one of the fathers of 5.1 stereo mixing, which is a surround sound genre of mixing that requires 5 surround speakers i.e. a car stereo, a movie theater etc. 

so what did i learn? honestly, i learned that what effects us most is often invisible to us. 

what i mean by that is that all of us have listened to a classic record and found ourselves singing along with the band...but what we rarely consider is how the sound was shaped and packaged in such a perfect balance to draw a timeless response from us. most of us never knew elliot scheiner shaped our ears, we just thought we liked don henley and the Eagles.

as our group sat listening to the recordings elliot had mixed or engineered or produced, it became SO evident that his particular style of mixing could be discerned from one artist to another. in other words, even though he'd mixed hundreds of bands, you could hear within each recording how the bands were connected by his particular influence. he had literally crafted these bands' sound in such a way that we were conditioned for generations to enjoy him, as much as the bands. 

and all this got me thinking: how much of what we enjoy is shaped by unseen influences? we're so quick to compliment the artist on stage, the actor in a movie/tv, the player on the field, the author, the painter, or the cook. BUT, what key 'behind-the-scenes' individual invested in that art to make it come to be enjoyed by us? 

i'm in a season of learning now, where i'm discovering that most of what i enjoy comes to be because of everything that happens behind the scenes, off the radar, and seemingly invisibly by key individuals. we all know that what we enjoy is usually the result of collaboration and not just the great efforts of one person. but, there's no getting around the great sacrifices of those amazing 'behind the scenes' individuals who shape our lives.