Meet Shangshu Shi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shangshu Shi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shangshu, so great to be with you and I think a lot of folks are going to benefit from hearing your story and lessons and wisdom. Imposter Syndrome is something that we know how words to describe, but it’s something that has held people back forever and so we’re really interested to hear about your story and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

As a musician, sound designer, even just as a dungeon master who occasionally runs dnd games for friends, I constantly feel that I do not deserve the praise that I got from people. I often compare myself to others who are good at their fields and I always feel like I have the responsibility to become as good as they are. However, it was at a certain period I sort of realized that most of the people spent their entire of life to only become good at one particular thing. Therefore, there is no meaning in trying to be good at all of the things – That is simply not the way how the world would work. I sort of realized the fact that instead of trying to vertically comparing myself to people above and below me, it is ratter better to horizontally comparing myself. Did I become better than who I am yesterday? Did I tried my best despite all the thoughts that I gave to myself of not being the best? Is there any specific thing that I can try to improve on myself that has nothing to do about the “big picture”? It seems that constantly asking myself these questions allows me to concentrate more on myself’s constant improvement rather than having to think abstractly about “Am I good or not”.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am currently a sound designer who produces music and sound effects for various media. This job always piques my interests as it constantly challenges me to understand different people’s artform and prompts me to create music or sound designs that matches the artists’ desire. Occasionally I love running dungeons and dragons compaign with or for my friends. To certain extent this experience makes me understand different people’s world better so that I have a better sense of understanding in the world that we live in, thus helping me creating different sonic products that express the human experience.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Skills/qualities wise, I would say I value empathy, creativity and professionalism as the most important three qualities that impacted my journey as a musician/sound designer. Empathy is probably the most important and probably most overlooked quality in a musician’s journey. However, as our job is to convey human experience to its greatest extent, it is important to understand human before understanding music. Without the nature of human experience, we are just machines that write soulless pieces that have no meaning at all. From there, creativity becomes the most imporant foundation to that sense of empathy. Most people spend their time repeating the same kinds of stuff and gradually lost the freshness to what they are expressing, which in the end becomes the most boring thing on the earth. Other than empathy and creativity, professionalism become the quality that I found to be the most important. Things such as “show up on time”, or “deliver what they expect” are things that seems trivial but rather becomes more important than anything.

As for advices for people who are starting their journey as musician or sound designer. I would say: Treat the sound as they are, and never use that as the means for anything else. There are a lot of people who would like to use music as ways to show off their skills or other purposes. However, it is those who concentrate themselves in creating music, will get what they want in the end,

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

As a musician, we tend to not be able to decide how much work we have at the time. Sometimes we don’t have anything on our hands at all, but sometimes we will be crushed by the work that suddenly came upon us. In that kinds of situation, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and pressured, and not able to do anything because you feel like you are going to be crushed by life.

In these kinds of situation, I found planning to be the uttermost important way to handle the pressure. Understanding that every big task or every pile of tasks can be subdivided into small categories and small tasks that can be rather dealt easily. When you plan out the way to handle big task or pile of tasks, solving even just the part of the problem will give you some kinds of satisfaction and making you feel like you are progressing further along the way.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Conducting Photo Credit: Diego Clavixus

Recording Session Photo Credit: Zichan (Lydia) Chen

Performance Photo Credit: Chenghan Liu

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