RECORDING MENTOR

 









































COMPLETE APPRENTICE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES & PROGRESS

ESTEBAN G.

June 2000

My name is Esteban G. born in the capital of Ecuador and currently residing in the U.S. I'd like to share some knowledge about myself that I feel is important in understanding what I'm doing with my life in the present time as regards to my aptitude for music and pursuing a place in the world of sound engineering.

I was involved in an incident when I was very young, so young I can't really remember it myself, except for what I've been told about it and tried to imagine. It turns out that somehow I managed to make some contraption that accidentally shut off all the power in our neighborhood. After that, since I can remember I was told that I would become an engineer when I grew up. I went into total agreement with this.

But I was really let down years later when there I was all grown up and I had all sorts of things in my mind and none of them had to do with engineering in the traditional sense of the word. In Ecuador the last three years of high school students specialize in Physics/Math, Chemistry/Biology or Social Studies. I took Chemistry/Biology because I couldn't see the practicality of learning so much about numbers, though I was an excellent math student.

To be truthful before leaving high school I did consider sound engineering as a university study I could pursue, but I drifted away from the idea because I dropped out of high school and it all seemed out of reach after that. I eventually thought I might become a painter like my grandfather had been or like my aunt or cousin though it didn't seem so viable. In the meantime I coupled a bohemian lifestyle with studies on eastern philosophy. This was also the time when I was quickly becoming more aware of my natural insight on art and of my genuine artistic sensibility. But it was my interest in philosophy that brought me back to the states after completing high school on a home study program and a six-year absence.

It's not till lately that I've had enough attention freed up from philosophy to start really thinking about doing art again. I've never stopped thinking as an artist but they're two separate things.

Then one day it just dawned on me. How silly I had been to overlook my passion for music for so long (I had even started playing guitar before I left Ecuador). I could easily become involved with the world of art this way, make money, make connections and still be creative while ENGINEERING! It was a viable doorway to music, filmmaking and fine arts with enough room for creativity and individual expression to be an end it itself.

And now I remember quite clearly how my mother instilled a love of music in me at a tender age with her romantic nature and my father too with his collection of classical music and Broadway musicals. "Grease" was probably my first record. Even at age seven I was already recording my own tapes from the radio. From then on I can remember spending hours in front of the radio all the way through junior high school. It had become my special connection with culture and it helped me tap into my own feelings and ideas on life.

By age fourteen I had been introduced to rock music. That unsettled in me a deep curiosity for what it was that made me like a song. What gave a song THAT quality? Music was more of a mystery to me then. In the "maturity" that I enjoy today, music is less of a mystery and more a source of wonder.

So the next logical step was a professional one towards a deeper understanding of music and a greater exploration of myself through the creative process of sound recording.