#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories chronicling those moments and capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers, and engineers.
Next up, we are joined by esteemed, five-time Grammy Award-winning mixer, engineer, and producer F. Reid Shippen (Kenny Chesney, Ingrid Michaelson, Gloria Gaynor) at Nashville’s Infrasonic Studios as he shares his take on the always looming and ever-present imposter syndrome.
Is it a sure-fire way to count yourself out of the race or an unconventional method of motivation? You decide.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
If you’re not getting fired, you’re not trying hard enough. The best art comes out of really great people collaborating and taking chances.
If you play it safe, you don’t find the best stuff, but if you don’t play it safe every once in a while, people are like, oh, no, no, no. That was like way off. And it’s, that’s a risk you have to take, but I think the benefits outweigh the risk.
To be honest, with every creative, it actually feels like your career is gonna end. And when you like look at your schedule and there’s nothing on it, you’re like, okay, that’s it. My career’s over. It’s all done. They figured out, I don’t know what I’m doing.
We all feel that, right? Imposter syndrome is just a part of the business, but as it turns out, I’ve been feeling that for 20 plus years and I’m still here.
So maybe it’s not a correct perception. If you are a baseball player and you fail 60% of the time you are in the Hall of Fame.
What was it, Mandela, right? Like I never fail. I either win or I learn. That is totally true. One of the secrets to life is fall down seven times, get up eight. Right? You just try and do the best work you can.
You try and be a good person and be good to other people, and generally it works out.
