The hardest experiences for me as a composer or an audio engineer are those experiences where a client goes beyond telling me what they want to telling me how to do my job and they tell me what to manipulate, what to press, and so the solution for that is to not give any info that they don't need to know about and just redirect the client to focusing on their vision and focusing on what they need.
Hardest experiences as a composer, boy, you know, if you really, really sink yourself into it, it's very easy to burn out. I mean, artistically, creatively, just from like the pressures of the business, you know, I think it's one of these things where like the further along you get in your career, honestly, the tougher it is, and the more hits you take, and it's very easy to to sort of like, you know, burn out, right? And so I go through a burnout maybe once every five years or so, and I need to find some way to artistically sort of get back on the horse, so to speak. And it's always a different challenge, but I find that what usually gets me going is being creative. Like, I always love being creative. It gives me energy in life, and the moment I start diving back in and writing a new piece of music, that's when I feel whole again. So, you know, being a professional musician and a composer comes with its challenges, and you just have to find a way to work your way through all of them.
I had experience with a director, I think I did three films with him, who is so involved in composing of the music that he literally dictates how and what I write to the extent that the creativity is sort of gone, it's now I'm just sort of painting by numbers. He would literally sit in my studio with his wife, reading magazines or whatever, and listening to what I was composing. And if something wasn't right, he would suddenly burst out and say, no, that's not right. That doesn't work, write something else. As he's sitting there, it's like he's in the doctor's office waiting for an appointment. But I respected him and I tried to do the best I could to get him what he wanted. At the end of the day, he loved the score and everything was happy and I got paid, but it was painful. And I dreaded him calling me on the phone saying, I have another film, let's get together.
So, hardest experiences. Maybe one of my hardest experiences is the song that I most recently wrote, which is a song for a young woman named Sarah Fry, who got hit by a drunk driver a year ago, and she ended up being a paraplegic and a double amputee, because I didn't know what to say, but I just felt like the Lord would help me, and it took me a really long time. I read a lot about Sarah. I talked to Sarah. I talked to her family, and I finally had some inspiration, and I think if you're going to be writing faith-based songs, you ought to have faith that you'll have help from the Lord. I've had that many times.
I think one of the hardest challenges and experiences that any composer can face is criticism. Now, sometimes we get so attached because these compositions, they become like our children in many ways. We create them from their little infantile existence and we see them develop and grow and change and so they're near and dear to our heart. The problem is not everyone loves our composition as much as we do and I compose many different styles. I have new age music and I have Christian rock pop music and then I have jazz and blues and instrumental hymn arrangements and even Halloween music and meditation relaxation music I compose and not everyone likes all of those styles so sometimes it can be challenging. One person loves you for one style of music but they don't like your other styles of music. That can hurt a little.