what is this major called?

[bennychico11]

Yes, I'm aware of fullsailsucks.com
I'm also very aware of the program there...since I graduated from the school. I now work full time at a post production facility here in KC hired on as the head audio engineer. So you can see why I might disagree with the idea that the school is complete shit and won't prepare you for getting a job. The Pro Tools certification classes alone helped me get my job.

The school is meant as a training program. They're job is to get you the basics and let you learn the art in the real world. Every engineer out there has something to gripe about when it comes to audio schools. Some say that four years is a waste of time because a degree is worthless...and others say 12 months isn't enough time because you don't learn enough of the art. Yes, most students do get hired on as interns because that's where anyone starting a studio for the first time should expect to get hired on. But I'll bet having a basic knowledge of how stuff is run (signal flow, how to solder, MIDI, etc.) will allow them to advance quicker than someone who hadn't had the education.

There are a lot of friggin' morons that go to school and they're usually the ones bitching about it. I had to have class with them. One of the downsides I will agree to is that there is no application process with the school. Everyone gets in if they have the money. I wish high school grades would have been taken into account...or at least the SAT/ACT because a lot of the students didn't even understand that a school that contains audio recording classes is not the same thing as becoming the next Dr. Dre/producer. "Yes, you might actually have to learn a little about mic techniques, music theory and using a tape machine."
But a lot of those kids drop out within the first few months.

The guys I met while I was there, as far as I know, all have jobs doing audio in some way. Same with some of the film/graphic design people I knew (just met a graphic design person last week who works for one of the top advertising agencies here).

The placement staff isn't there to hand feed you jobs. They ask you what city you want to move to and see if they can find you jobs there, calling up the companies for you and seeing what their job status there is. But it's up to you to actually set up appointments and such. I never once expected them to help me get hired and do the entire process for me.

I don't give a crap what school you went to because anyone can get off their ass and find themselves a job. The kids who went there that complain the entire time on fullsailsucks.com needed to spend that time finding jobs for themselves. But whatever makes them feel better. Makes more room in the industry for those of us who will actually work hard instead of bitching about it.
Yeah, the school is expensive...and there were probably some things I wish they had changed, but that's true about any school. I just don't think learning is ever a bad thing, whether you hate the idea of Universities offering engineer classes or not. Doesn't matter where you learn it, just as long as you learn it.

 

[mrhotapples]

I know a guy that went to Full Sail that came out of their knowing his shit down to the letter. He was 100% dedicated to it and he learned other places too, but there's no way you can go into Full Sail and follow it like it matters and not come out prepared to go SOMEWHERE.

I will say though...That if you go to their site and listen to the recordings some students have done there, they are GARBAGE compared to a lot of stuff I've heard on here. That lowers my opinion of the school a bit.

 

[eraos]

i've been gone for a while due to being in a serious car accident which landed me in the hospital for months but i'm back now thank God. anyways i was just wondering what classes in college do i have to take to be if i want my major to be "mixing engineer" if that's what it's called. what's the major called and can i do it in college or do i have to go to a special audio school for that? thanks

Some universities with music programs may call it Sound Recording Technology, too.

 

[TexRoadkill]

I think a large part of it is false expectations. People expect to come out of those schools being great engineers. It doesn't work that way here any more than it does in any other technical field from electrician to brain suregon.

One doesn't come out of medical school expecting to be a great doctor, nor do the patients. They have to go through internship, residency, and so on before they even start to feel like (or be treated like) real full-fledged doctors.

That is ludicrous. At least in all those other professions you listed the graduate can reasonably expect to get a job and pay off the student loans. There is no such expectation for the recording industry. The supply of willing people greatly outpaces the demand.

I can't speak for Full Sail but I haven't been too impressed with any of the interns I've worked with from the Academy of Recording Arts here in town. We had to teach them pretty much everything we needed them to do.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

That is ludicrous. At least in all those other professions you listed the graduate can reasonably expect to get a job and pay off the student loans. There is no such expectation for the recording industry. The supply of willing people greatly outpaces the demand.

I believe with that last two sentences you struck down your own objection raised in the first two.

There will never be a shortage of demand for doctors or lawyers, but the market for audio engineers is extremely limited. That's not the fault of the schools, the students or the industry. That's not anybody's fault. That's the nature of the beast.

And from what I understand, it's not like the better media production schools misrepresent what the job market will be like when they get out. I've heard stories (yes, I understand this is only second-hand info) that tsome of the teachers will go so far as, on the first day of calss, ask their students to raise their hands if they are unwilling to accept any job other than piloting a Neve during the next album session of their favorite hair band; and then subsequently telling those that raise their hands that they probably should find another field of study because the chances are far better that they'll wind up doing something far more "pedestrian" in the insustry like commercial voiceover, auditorium sound reenforcement on the Peoria circuit, etc., because there just aren't that many dream jobs to go around, and those go only to the best.

Let me try something closer to home than the medical profession, perhaps; something considered a "trade", like electrician or plumber or contractor. They have their own apprenticeship programs, one does not come out of trade school being a journeyman, let alone a master; they gotta work their way up, and in doing so learn all the stuff they just don't teach in school. Yeah, some of that is because of union rules, but those rules do have some basis in trade reality and are not just union politics.

I can't speak for Full Sail but I haven't been too impressed with any of the interns I've worked with from the Academy of Recording Arts here in town. We had to teach them pretty much everything we needed them to do.

I ask the question again, how is that different from any other trade?

For example I have had to give a lot of interviews for a lot of IT positions. I have interviewed (and worked with) a lot of students with education pedigrees that ranged from local community colleges to trade schools, to graduates of famous universities. I learned two things very quickly: that most applicants were a shame to their school, regardless of the quality of school, and that - with some creepy exceptions - the school that any given applicant came from was not a very accurate indicator of the quality of the applicant.

IME, in any given profession, from sanitation worker to rocket scientist, a good 6 out of 10 people in that profession do a poor to passable job at best; 3 of the remaining 4 do a good job and only 1 out of ten are really excellent at what they do. Audio engineering is no different. And it has little to do with from where they got their schooling.

Hell, the last US national election had two Yale graduates running aginst each other. Neither one was exactly anything to get very excited about. One of the best educations on the planet was no guarantee that either of them was all that well qualified for the job.

School is not what makes a professional, a professional is one who makes the most out of the school they go to. There just aren't a whole lot of serious pros-in-waiting who want to get into our field (fine engineers like Benny C. being the exceptions)...or any others, FTM.

DISCLAIMER: I have no personal vested interest in defending this position as I personally did not go to any media production or recording arts schools or classes. I'm not saying it's school or the highway, by any means. I just think the biggest problem is not so much the quality of the school as it is the quality of the student.

G.

 

[bennychico11]

I just think the biggest problem is not so much the quality of the school as it is the quality of the student.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. We're so quickly to blame the teachers and not the student. The same ones who blame the schools and the teachers are the ones who say "My son/daughter is the best thing in the world. We gave them trophies for excellence when they were on the losing team in 1st grade...and now I know they are the brightest and most smartest kid in that entire school! It's the teachers fault that he didn't pass or can't get a job."
"No, your son/daughter decided to turn into a stoner and party the entire year and missed class and flunked every test."

I didn't jump into recording right out of high school like a lot of these kids did. I went to state university to study other things first before I decided I wanted to work my ass off and study recording. Like I said above, yes, a lot of the people in the school are dumb asses. But there were equal amount of dumb asses studying music theory or English at my other colleges. Unfortunately these idiots give the school a bad reputation...more than it probably deserves.

The tuition sucks, but so does the rest of the Universities in America. This was one of the reasons the Democrats in the House wanted to push for student loan reform when they took over! The interest rates and monthly loan payments are terrible....whether you are an audio engineer, doctor, electrician or elementary education teacher! Yeah, school loans are expensive...but so is a 96 channel Neve console. But I don't have one of those lying around to teach myself on

I'll be the first to admit I learned more in the real world in the first two months than I did at school in the first 4. But at least I understood how to use a patch bay, solder broken cables that were laying around, use their Pro Tools system, run the mixer, understand basic signal flow, use the tape machines, know the basic controls of an EQ, compressor and time based processors, knew what time code was and how to properly use it...I was able to take all that and combine it with what I learned that was specific to that facility. Boss was happy, clients were happy...and I got a pay check

anyway, mixaholic look around. FS isn't the only school out there that offers recording...there are many other programs. FS just is most well known and thus gets most of the shit. They have incredible facilities and some really cool teachers who know their stuff, though.

 

[TuoKaerf]

Teachers can teach you everything there is to know about audio out there, and it still won't make you an engineer. You HAVE to put the hours upon hours of practice and skill honing to fully understand and apply the principles of audio.

Every kid I graduated (I didn't go to FS) with who bitched and complained about not being able to find a job or get any gigs were the kids who were never in the studios after hours. They expected the school to hand them a job on a silver platter. The school did a lot to get people job leads, but it is up to the individual to make the next step. These dudes would apply to local post houses, and fail miserably when they could not apply what they knew in a real world application, since they never did it while they were in school.

From day one, my school told us that we have to make the best of our experience on our own. They give us the textbook and practical tools, gave us numerous studios to use as we wish after class hours, and a lot of encouragement to be in there all hours of the night. The ones who succeeded were the ones who did everything possible to do as much as they could. The ones who failed did the bare minimum to graduate.

I'm still not making totally enough to only do freelance engineering for a living. However, I make more and more each year off of it, and if everything keeps going right, I'll be able to go fully freelance in under 3 years. My schooling gave me other skills as well, and I do a lot of work on the side that isn't total music work. I do 3 "jobs" right now, all are engineering related. Freelance tracking and mixing engineer, work part time with a small publishing company making MIDI samples of sheetmusic, and installing live sound systems. I'm having a lot of fun, and work is usually never boring. I would have never gotten into them if I didn't go to school and meet the people I did and have access to the gear.

 

[Change of POETS]

How is this different from any other field of study?

I think a large part of it is false expectations. People expect to come out of those schools being great engineers. It doesn't work that way here any more than it does in any other technical field from electrician to brain suregon.

One doesn't come out of medical school expecting to be a great doctor, nor do the patients. They have to go through internship, residency, and so on before they even start to feel like (or be treated like) real full-fledged doctors. And even then, a signifigant number either don't make it all the way, or if they do, they still aren't very good doctors (my mother's doctor is a real quack, and he's been out of residency and in private practice for some 15 years.)

Of course school cannot prep one adequately for the real world, and of course one has to go through apprenticeship/internship even after years of schooling. That's not just in media engineering, that's in most professional technical fields. That's how it works. Someone expecting to come out of Full Sail and being given a comission to run the next Sgt. Pepper session without diving in way over their head and drowning just has unrealistic expectations of both school and themselves.

G.

I guess the biggest discrepancy from other fields would be ratio of failure to success. Is every Doctor who graduates their program going to be successful? No. The majority of them are, though. They may not all be top ten surgeons at Johns Hopkins (equate them to grammy winning engineers if you will) but even the surgeons who complete the program are still adequate surgeons populating surgical wards across the globe. Some will flame out eventually, but they all know what they need to know after completing that program, otherwise they don't complete it, right?

Yet many Recording programs certify people who have no idea what they're doing. Benny is obviously one of the good ones, unfortunately it seems that Benny is the exception, not the rule.

I didn't attend any school, I spent time interning, studying during sessions, cleaning up and sweeping up in the studio after hours, and putting in extra work in wee hours of the morning, because I wanted to learn. It sounds like that's what Benny did as well.

That's the common theme I seem to find in good audio engineers. They were and are willing to put in the extra effort to perfect their craft. Always willing to learn, expand their knowledge base, and implement new methods when applicable. Can Full Sail give you that? No, it's a personality trait, or a work ethic engrained by circumstance or upbringing. If you've "got it" then schooling at Full Sail can work for you. I'll admit, you get out what you put in. Yet a majority (or seemingly so, maybe it's the vocal minority ) of graduates from Full Sail and other "Accelerated learning programs" continue to graduate and certify a large number of idiots who couldn't wire a patch bay to save their lives. That's unfortunate, because if they were in another field of study, (med school to continue the analogy) they wouldn't graduate, and would be forced to repeat the courses if they wanted to continue on.

According to the people I know who work there, and have schooled there, this isn't the case. If you pay your tuition and show up, you're pretty much guaranteed to graduate with certification. Maybe Benny can confirm or deny this for the sake of the thread. If that's not the case, I retract my original statement, and will admit it was made in ignorance of the facts. I'm only operating on what I've been told.

 

[bennychico11]

According to the people I know who work there, and have schooled there, this isn't the case. If you pay your tuition and show up, you're pretty much guaranteed to graduate with certification. Maybe Benny can confirm or deny this for the sake of the thread. If that's not the case, I retract my original statement, and will admit it was made in ignorance of the facts. I'm only operating on what I've been told.

Mostly true, yes. As I stated before it's one of my qualms with the school as well...letting in anyone who has the money for the school. I really wish they would more stringent rules when it came to that. But as long as you graduated high school, you're okay to enter the doors at Full Sail. However, like any school though, you still need to be able to keep up. Ironically, one of the biggest problems students had was showing up to class. One of the major grades is showing up to class every day...you miss two or three classes and you have to retake it. For some reason students still couldn't follow this guideline! But like we've said above, these are the same students who probably would be late or just not show up to a job at a studio. Most of these students are fresh into the college world and like any freshman in school, aren't sure what they want...so they don't take it seriously. Problem is, the program is so quick that before you know it you have graduated and you might look back and say "wow, I should have taken it more seriously and gone the extra mile to stay late, ask more questions, practice some other techniques, etc."

To pass the classes it's not just as simple as showing up and paying your dues, though. You DO need to study quite a bit and be able to show what you learned in the studio. I didn't pass every class with straight A's and had to study pretty extensively on several tests (one of the hardest being Recording Workstations...basically testing our knowledge of what each function is on the SSL/Neve consoles. That was tested both on paper and in practice). Then of course if you wanted to do the Digi certification, that was a little more strict with how much you knew, and how well you did in regular classes.


Anyway, we're all right. Schools aren't going to guarantee employers that all their students are going to be amazing employees. It's 90% up to the student as to how well they do in the outside world. Fortunately (and unfortunately), unlike the medical industry, our students aren't having to save lives....one of the main reasons for the salary and course work/length differences.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I guess the biggest discrepancy from other fields would be ratio of failure to success.

As I suggested to Philo, I think a big part of that is 1) That this is a much more limited field; there are a lot more medical professional positions to keep filled in this country than there are media engineering positions...especially ones riding Neves or Digi Icons, and 2) That there's a million young headbangers and street "producers" who have no idea what they're getting into and that this is a job that does indeed entail engineering skills and mindset to master.

But even the surgeons who complete the program are still adequate surgeons populating surgical wards across the globe. Some will flame out eventually, but they all know what they need to know after completing that program, otherwise they don't complete it, right?

Ever hear of malpractice insurance?

I know a guy who's a surgeon that works a lot out of Northwestern Hospital (yes, the same Northwestern as the famous university. Also the same hospital my mother used to work at years ago - though it was called Wesley Memorial back then - when she took care of Theloneous Monk for a while.) Anyway, this doc friend has also, in the past worked as Cheif Resident at another hospital in the area. According to him you wouldn't believe the clowns that come out of med school. He knew one intern thay wound up lettting go gecause he made it thorugh three or four years of med school without letting it be known that he got sick and faint from the sight of blood before he finally got caught at the hospital.

This is part of the reason (granted not all of it) that interns have such absolutely insane schedules, working 48-72 hours at a stretech with maybe a half hour nap and maybe a sandwich and an apple if their lucky during that time. They literally live on coffee for a year or so, and get more real life practical learning jammed down their throats in that time than they'd ever get in 8 years of med school, and certainly much more and much better than what they did get in school. Med school is only the training they go into just to be able to qualify for getting into the boot camp called internship. And then after boot camp they still have the active duty of residency to complete. Only after all that can they really do what they want to do as doctors and enter private practice in the specialty of their choic, and finally pay off their rapidly aging college loans.

Granted, media engineering is nowhere near as tough or as important as medecine. But there are lesser examples. While this varies from state to state I think, an electrician fresh out of trade school as an apprentice in many states isn't even allowed to *touch* a live electrical panel until he has had a year's experience in the field working under a journeyman. And so on.

That's the common theme I seem to find in good audio engineers. They were and are willing to put in the extra effort to perfect their craft. Always willing to learn, expand their knowledge base, and implement new methods when applicable. Can Full Sail give you that? No, it's a personality trait, or a work ethic engrained by circumstance or upbringing. If you've "got it" then schooling at Full Sail can work for you. I'll admit, you get out what you put in.

I think we are all in full agreement there. The trade schools cannot give you that work ethic, that's true. But they can give you the environment in which people with that trait can thrive by giving them access to the gear and the fellow students and instructors with similar interests and knowledge. It's like this forum, except instead of typing at the Internet, we're all together sitting around a bunch of big Capricorn boards and Icon control surfaces and manley EQs and GML compressors and whatnot. How can that be so bad?

I just think that the schools, being about music production, attract a lot of mullets with dreams of being rock star engineer/producers or the next Dre and spend as much if not more time concentrating on the "star" part of that definition than they do the "engineerr" part.

G.

 

[ImagoStudios]

if you want to

Listen, if you're going to spend money on a engineering program I would consider doing the recording connection program. It's an online program that's pretty good, but the best part about it is they match you up with a local studio as an internship and most of those will let you spend as much time there as you want. I would suggest taking advantage of that, ask alot of questions and you'll learn more about the art than any school can teach you. In this buisiness you learn by doing it over and over. The BEST and most knowlegable engineers I know aren't even college grads. Of course if you want a degree just so you have one as a backup plan then forget everything I just said....actually don't if you can do the recording connection program too cause the internship and one on one training is worth it.....Sorry about jumping around I'm really REALLY ADHD.