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

Alright, Patrick thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I am always creating. I don’t remember one single moment I wasn’t either thinking about my next work or doing something about my next work. I almost can’t concentrate on anything else. I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t creating something.

When I was about 4 my grandfather gave us a piano he salvaged from the junkyard. I was told that I would keep going back and sitting at the piano to plunk out tunes I heard on Bugs Bunny cartoons. They gave me lessons and I took to them after about the third teacher whom I’d stuck with until I was about 18. I was good at picking up ideas and I thought playing—no matter the tune—was fun. I would very often go off on tangents to write my own riffs and then sit and play that for hours. I did that until I was about 17 and got an electric piano so my parents didn’t have to listen to my pounding.

My art developed in parallel with my music. My Dad would bring home random office supplies, pens and inks, paints and papers, pencils and sketchpads and erasers. I even had a supply cabin by the time I was 11. I read a book about drawing comics when I was 8 or 9 and I asked my Dad to get me the supplies I needed; India ink, special brushes and pencils, rulers and gesso. I tried to teach myself but I really thought I wasn’t good at figure drawing. It didn’t matter because I started to draw cars using that comic book technique. The drawings became paintings and I would practically do a whole finished piece over night. My parents let me stay up as late as I wanted to finish. Sometimes I was up till 3AM working away until I was done. It always felt like such a relief. When I finished a particularly good one I would have to show them at 3AM, waking them up with lights and all.

When I was maybe 13 or so I started to wonder about talent. Did I have talent? If I did, what did that mean? I didn’t understand that there was a lot of work associated with developing talent. For instance, I had a hard time imagining a piece before I drew it. I would always have to reference something. That made me think I didn’t have a good enough imagination to be an artist. I thought artists like Picasso and Miró were just born that good. I remember discovering Norman Rockwell and thinking that, for me, this kind of art was impossible. How could I imaging the figures and the expressions so vividly. I learned sooo much later that he, of course was extremely studied and particular about the models and sets he used to !Photograph! his whole scene before he would go on to paint it. This lack of knowledge or understanding of the artists process brought me to photography.

Why photography? Well, I thought, “if I can’t just imagine my subjects, I could at least photograph them and then they could be my own.” So I started taking pictures of cars and drawing them. Then I started enjoying the photography but I really thought I was doing something wrong because my photos would be odd colors and cropped in odd ways when printed. I later became friends with a photographer that showed taught me about color slide film and developing my own black and white film. Now I was hooked for real. I would now be in the darkroom at high-school for hours printing photos poster-sized and experimenting with papers and contrasts, dodging and burning.

I was always asked what I was going to do with my life and inside I knew I wanted to be a creator but I didn’t know how to get past the feeling of dread and fear and the crippling wall of discouragement from my family. I was told arts degrees were useless—you either had it or you didn’t. I didn’t understand that there was a world beyond “artist”.

I think my parents saw the arts as a way of making someone a better person or a more interesting person but beyond that art for their children had no other value so it was highly discouraged as a career. I started to believe it. So much so that I went for an audition at McGill University for the Jazz program. I really thought I had a chance. My parents weren’t with me. They didn’t want to come and they didn’t want me to go away to school, so I went with my cousin. I was overwhelmed. The practice rooms were outfitted with Steinways and Yamahas and when I got into the audition room there was a bass player and a drummer ready to accompany me if I wanted—of course I said yes but I was just paralyzed with fear. I think my whole world flashed before my eyes and I think my future was just a black wall of nothingness. I couldn’t see myself anywhere. I didn’t belong and I bombed so badly during that audition that I certainly didn’t belong at McGill. I broke down completely and just wept to my cousin. I decided that I would just go into a profession like medicine. I thought I was smart enough.

So I went into biology. I was indifferent. I kept playing music and painting and doing photography. I never let schoolwork really get in the way of that so I didn’t do so well. I stopped and started and finally finished what was to me a useless and uninspiring degree. I didn’t even go to graduation. I didn’t care.

I was lucky that I could do other things so I did and was successful for a while but one day I got fired from a job because of a personality clash. I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to let anyone else tell me what I could do with my life. I was 40. I wish I would have had the courage to just go for what I wanted. Because I was into so many art forms I really wasn’t sure but I didn’t realize that I could re-adjust and recalibrate as life went on. You have to do that with anything. Somehow pursuing my art felt different. It felt like too much to imagine so I missed out on years of training and learning from mistakes and growing with my own community. My colleagues were all business people and people without artistic ambition so I stagnated.

The strange thing is that I did believe in myself but I always felt that I needed outside validation. I didn’t know that most of the time we have be our own judges. We shouldn’t let anyone put boundaries on what’s possible, We also should realize that sometimes we won’t have encouragement or approval and that’s unfortunate but that’s when we have to decide to cut ties and forge ahead along our own path.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had started sooner. All I know is that the people that I’ve met who have followed their own inner light were more successful—regardless of their path—than those who set out to please someone else. I feel like I would have been wildly successful but that’s wrong thinking. We all have setbacks. Mine just made me start late. I have new setbacks now; bills, business ideas that flop, deals that sour and I’m still getting older. The point is that I’m trying to move forward, however incrementally, toward the full realization of my ‘talents’.

Patrick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a music producer, mix engineer, and founder of Uncommon Sound, NYC, since 1999, as well as the creative director and co-founder of Loop Seven, LLC, since 2007.

I am a Canadian-born artist and longtime NYC resident, I’m lucky to have a multi-faceted career as a musician, producer, photographer, filmmaker, and composer for film and TV.

Like many artists, my passion took root in early childhood. My initiation into music began at the age of four, my informal drawing and painting training started at nine, and my first experience with film photography came at thirteen when I borrowed my father’s Nikon to capture images of exotic cars. Music, art, and film have since intertwined into a lifelong pursuit in which I have invested my entire career.

Growing up in the Canadian border town of Windsor, I had the unique opportunity to develop my art with the Detroit cityscape and soundscape as a backdrop. I absorbed the rich musical influences of Motown, fusion jazz, soul, and blues. By the time I hit 20, I had already established the foundations that would allow me to build my business as an artist.

I believe that creation is a meditation, a means of communication, and a special kind of cosmic collaboration—everything that makes us human. As a creative director and producer, I love to push boundaries and I always hope to exceed expectations. With a multi-disciplinary range of expertise in video production, music production and composition, graphics, photography, and sound design, I feel that I bring a unique perspective to every project. I think this sets me apart. I’m always thinking of the very biggest picture because I have intimate knowledge of all of the elements that make up that picture.

I started my business full time because I was fired from a job I hated. I vowed from then on to keep as much control as I could have my own life. Living in NYC meant I had to figure out how to hustle those talents into some cash—quickly! It was around 2003 and Craigslist was a great place to advertise for free. I figured out, like many, how to hone my messaging and I used several different emails to time my ‘ad placements’. I started getting work. A lot of work was cleaning poor visuals or bad recordings while trying to fashion those assets into interesting video shorts. My edits always had better audio than the competition so they came across as less amateur than perhaps they were.

I started to get a lot of work producing demos for composers and other artists. I did thousands of hours or VoiceOver recordings for several different projects around the world. and I still have some of those same clients to this day. I kept thinking I would be able to build the business on audio alone but I really wanted to get into film.

In 2007 I met my current business partner and we decided to focus on Video Production and established ourselves as Loop Seven. We really just tried to find ways to always improve productions while committing to being a lower-cost provider. In retrospect it may have been a mistake because customers tend to see the company’s worth in direct correlation to its pricing structure—however misguided this may be. I think we all do it. We imagine premium naturally must mean high price and low price must equal compromise.

The work I am most proud of almost always includes a team and lots of pressure. The right team can really make a project soar. I love to work with smaller ad agencies with great ideas and realistic budgets. The best agencies seem to have small collaborative teams with smart yet practical creative ideas. I have been fortunate to work with some really fantastic creative directors who really pushed me in fun and creative ways. I love it when I’m forced to think through creative challenges and timing because it’s where I grow the most as an artist and a business. I also love projects that rely on my vision and my supervision. I can build a team that not only manifests that vision but expands it in surprising ways. It has always been so tempting for me to try and do it all—or believe I have to do it all—but working with other specialists is so much more rewarding in the end.

I think what I would most want people to know about me is that I I love to do a lot of things. I satisfy my artistic needs in so many different ways that when it comes down to creating for a project I don’t do things just for the sake of creating, I do things because they need to be done. I believe the marketing should drive the creative. The creative should serve the message. I use the tools that serve the message and try not to overstate the creative because the message has to come first.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Before I was fired from my job I had my full-time work and I ran a recording studio as a part-time business. That business, Uncommon Sound, NYC was registered in 1998. When I was fired from my job, I had to figure out my life very quickly, because I was fired I was able to collect unemployment insurance. I would have to fill out the forms online. I had to tell them what I was doing every week. I told them how many hours I had worked on my side business and how much I made. They would deduct that total from my weekly stipend, which was paltry to begin with.

A few months into my unemployment I got an official letter from the city that I should not have been given the unemployment money because I had a business. At that time it had accumulated to over $10K. I was asked to pay it back immediately with interest. I was devastated. I thought I was in big trouble. There was no way to pay back what I didn’t have. I started to accept my lot and I decided to stand strong and if I had to pay back the money then I wouldn’t let it stop me from doing what I loved.

I opted to go to arbitration to plea my case. It was just me. I couldn’t afford a lawyer. I just argued that I was honest in my weekly assessments and the city knew from the very start that I ran a business as well. If they had read the assessment maybe they shouldn’t have given me the money in the first place, so they had no right to demand it back.

I walked out thinking there was no way I made any sense but a couple weeks later the judgement came in and the judge sided with me—somewhat. She said basically that I didn’t need to pay back what was already given to me but that I was not entitled to more. I could have had another 6 months of help but I didn’t get it.

I just buckled down and worked harder to pay rent.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For years I would be so embarrassed when someone would ask me what I did for a living. It didn’t matter because whatever I said it never felt like me. I wasn’t a part of my world. I was just floating along being some guy that worked at XYZ company and liked to play music and make art. That all changed when I was on my own and doing what I loved. I finally felt like I was ‘me’. I was now closer to who I was meant to be. I am what I do. I am an artist! [Phew]

Contact Info:

• Website: https://uncommonsoundnyc.com, https://loopseven.com, https://sassofoto.com
• Instagram: @sassofoto.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patsasso
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/uncommonsoundnyc

Image Credits

All are my images and self-portraits