"What a difference Phil’s Ear makes!"
My Three Cents on Audio / My personal “Philosophy” about what it is I do:
“The Artful Craft of Audio mixing, Sound Design, and Music Production takes not only technical knowledge and a creative and at times overactive imagination, but most importantly in my opinion, an expertly trained ear, as well as extreme, and often times inordinate amounts of patience, dedication to the craft, and an absolute anal-retentive level of attention to detail. Not to mention nurturing the ability to always remain teachable, and to take constructive criticisms and critiques in stride while still knowing that no matter what you, I, or anyone may think I, you, or we may know, perfection is just quite simply unobtainable, but we can get pretty darn close if we try hard enough! 😎 Without that latter attitude, all the tech knowledge and creativity in the world does not a great Engineer make. And without the former, the trained ear, combined with the creative mind can become obsessed with the pursuit of perfectionism and beauty, and can become frustrated by all the technology and start to see its most useful tools as external restrictions and limitations upon its own trained and creative genius. (I assure you we’ve all been there whether we choose to admit or not) Only when a person possesses all of these previously aforementioned qualities working symbiotically and in harmony with one another can that person call themselves a well rounded, cutting edge, quality Sound Designer, Music Producer, and Audio Mixer. Much like Plato’s theory of the tripartite soul, Freud’s three fundamental aspects of the human psyche, and the Holy Trinity, triangularity seems to be at the core of every great principle, theory, guiding life philosophy, and/or religion/spiritual program. This being the case, the Holy Trinity, or the “True religion” if you will of post production sound design, audio mixing, and music production as I see it, is as I previously described, and in my view sitting at the zenith, or pinnacle of that trinity or triangle, is the individual engineers ear, and the way their creative mind hears and sees things through the lens of their own individuality. I’ve always heard, saw, and noticed sounds as well as sorts of other minute details and audible/visible audio/visual happenings in film 🎥 television 📺 music 🎶 radio 📻 and on the web 💻 and also all sorts of other things in general in very different ways than everybody else around me for just about as long I can remember. I’m the guy in the room who asks you if you noticed some odd sound effect or ambient noise playing audibly or if you saw something occurring on the screen that you most likely never heard or saw, and it’s only been through continued learning, training, retraining, execution, repetition, revision and constant adaptation and evolution that I have been able to become the Sound Designer, Mixer, and Music Producer that I like to believe that I am today, but as always, I’ll let you and the world 🌎 at large decide of what caliber and quality my work is, because to me, its all amazing stuff, and I am truly privileged to not only possess the knowledge, but also just to do the work, as I am truly grateful always to my family and to the amazingly talented professors and engineers who taught and trained me in the ways, for making it possible for me to even be able to do this kind of work in the first place, regardless.”
- Phillip J Buffone
Photo by active-studio/iStock / Getty Images
Photo by stevanovicigor/iStock / Getty Images
the work
Curious to see what caliber of work I can provide? Check out some of my recent and not so recent projects here.