MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1513481
"A song has to be a conduit of emotion." Oak Felder Producer, Songwriter, Entrepreneur For some reason, when someone with a gray beard and a perfectly sculpted, graying Mohawk walks on stage, he knows he has your attention. When the first thing he does is stop and takes a selfie with the 7,000-strong, packed-house audience, who knows what he’s thinking. But that was Oak Felder’s introduction. And he had some serious (and inspiring) things to say. His theme was how the creative spirit can help overcome adversity, both the kind external circumstances throw at us unexpectedly and the type that rises within ourselves. What Mr. Felder faced was the collision between a once in a lifetime recording deal and the learning that his mother back in Turkey was gravely ill with cancer. He was led to the resolution though a song that came on the radio, Let it Be. It wasn’t so much Paul McCartney’s lyrics, as it was the feeling that came over him. He felt something in it that led him to realize that it would be as impossible to compartmentalize the two the two situations as it would be to follow one or the other. It changed what he felt and, as a result, what he thought. Some good friends and technology, which he demonstrated onstage, would let him be in two places at once, in the physical presence of his mother and as a virtual presence (via Logic Pro) in the recording session. The realization that grew out of this experience was that “a song has to be a conduit of emotion…it’s not a song until you play it for somebody.” There was some magic ingredient in Let it Be that inspired the direction he needed. It was not, he revealed, until much later that the song was written about McCartney’s mother who also became afflicted with the same deadly illness. That conduit, he says, is the real power of music. These are folks who most of you have you’ve never heard of. But what is for sure is that they carry messages, you’re not likely to forget. In the same way that Oak Felder arrived at a pivotal moment through that song, we thing that some of you may find the same thing in these hundred or so minutes of truly inspirational talks.