I like being a problem solver. If I see a confused person on the street, I like to ask if they need directions. If a table in a restaurant is wobbly, I have to put some paper under a leg to make it level.
I’m a problem solver in my job, too. I’m a Music Designer. Sometimes my customer doesn’t see the need for music as a “problem” so much as they just see it as a need for sound, but it is a problem. If a customer walks into a library quiet store, it is a problem. Or if a restaurant is blasting the latest Top 40 hits while it serves fine dining, that’s a problem. Sometimes it is a problem that needs to be fixed with background music to mask conversations, add some buoyancy to the room, and simply add elegance. At other times it needs more refinement where it actually carries a sales message, makes a statement about a business, defines the atmosphere, and creates a mood to encourage the customer to stay.
When I find a lost person on the street, I have to know where they want to go in order to give them the right directions. I can’t design the music for a business without lots of questions, too. I have to know where the client wants to go, what direction the business is going, and probably where it has been, too. The questions are important and it is important that the client consider the answers. While it is easy to put music in a business, having a music design that creates a solution is always harder to achieve, but well worth it.
– Submitted by Janice Williams, Music Design