Track Rat
Just Your Average Sized Member
I had an electronics background when I took up recording but I'm self taught in audio (even the electronics part). My day job at the time involved pro audio so that helped a lot.
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pezking
New member
The majority of large studios (at least in the UK) won't take on people with no experience - only those with a degree in sound recording. This includes studios such as Abbey Road and Air, just to be a runner!
You can bitch and moan that there's stuff that you can't learn on a degree/course and to an extent I agree. But when I can't get a job unless I have a degree, I know what I'm gonna do...
You can bitch and moan that there's stuff that you can't learn on a degree/course and to an extent I agree. But when I can't get a job unless I have a degree, I know what I'm gonna do...
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
The whole issue of whether school truely teaches the student enough of what they should know in the real world, or whether it compares to self-learning positively or negatively are not debates unique to audio engineering; these same arguments back and forth happen in all sorts of white- and blue-collar professions.
There are only two relevant questions in each case; what kind of jobs (yes, plural) are the potential student gunning for, who, if anybody, will be doing the hiring for those jobs.
If one is looking to work at a studio or production company/facility of some type, you gotta put yourself in the shoes of the person doing the hiring. Given a choince of a headbanger walking and saying, dude, mentor me, and the same banger walking in and saying yes sir, I just invested a year or two years of my time nad thousands of dollars of my money because I'm committed to chasing such-and-such career path, and I did so for so long without accidentally settiing their Neve on fire, which one is that decision maker going to me far more likely to bring on board?
Most graduates are not going to be the sharpest stick in the drawer; but hell, that's true in every school from Lincoln Tech to Harvard. It's not so much a reflection on the school as it is the quality of the average student. But at least a demonstration of investment, dedication and seriousness on the part of the applicant will put them leaps and bounds above the mook that comes in off the street.
If one is looking to go their own indie way all else be damned, then they need to HONESTLY assess which way will work best FOR THEM to give them the tools to succeed in entrepeneurship. Some people just don't learn well in a school environment. Others just can't lean a thing well without the formal structure and mentorship provided by a schooling environment. Still others may be fine in school, but just do best when left to their own devices.
And still others will have a hybrid need to learn the audio part of it on their own, but may need some help learning the business management end of it. Or vice versa. And so on.
There is no binary answer yes-no as to whether going to some kind of audio engineering schooling to "x" degree is a good idea or a bad idea, or as to whether some supplimental support schooling for more basic things like EE or business may be in order only. The answer is different for each individual in each situation.
G.
There are only two relevant questions in each case; what kind of jobs (yes, plural) are the potential student gunning for, who, if anybody, will be doing the hiring for those jobs.
If one is looking to work at a studio or production company/facility of some type, you gotta put yourself in the shoes of the person doing the hiring. Given a choince of a headbanger walking and saying, dude, mentor me, and the same banger walking in and saying yes sir, I just invested a year or two years of my time nad thousands of dollars of my money because I'm committed to chasing such-and-such career path, and I did so for so long without accidentally settiing their Neve on fire, which one is that decision maker going to me far more likely to bring on board?
Most graduates are not going to be the sharpest stick in the drawer; but hell, that's true in every school from Lincoln Tech to Harvard. It's not so much a reflection on the school as it is the quality of the average student. But at least a demonstration of investment, dedication and seriousness on the part of the applicant will put them leaps and bounds above the mook that comes in off the street.
If one is looking to go their own indie way all else be damned, then they need to HONESTLY assess which way will work best FOR THEM to give them the tools to succeed in entrepeneurship. Some people just don't learn well in a school environment. Others just can't lean a thing well without the formal structure and mentorship provided by a schooling environment. Still others may be fine in school, but just do best when left to their own devices.
And still others will have a hybrid need to learn the audio part of it on their own, but may need some help learning the business management end of it. Or vice versa. And so on.
There is no binary answer yes-no as to whether going to some kind of audio engineering schooling to "x" degree is a good idea or a bad idea, or as to whether some supplimental support schooling for more basic things like EE or business may be in order only. The answer is different for each individual in each situation.
G.
bigwillz24
New member
I taught myself first then I went to recording school, most of my story is here. I'm glad I did, the real advantage of school is networking. While I'm still not quite able to quit my day job. I do get steady work as an audio engineer. 80 to 90% of that work comes from people I met through school.
pipelineaudio
Well-known member
Is that the place that's being auctioned off to become a parking lot or apartment building?
The complete insanity of todays 99.9999% gone traditional music industry notwithstanding...
TerraMortim
New member
From everything I've heard, music based studios often prefer someone who is right off the street. They don't want someone to think that they are worth anything more than some shit-stained BVDs, and god forbid expect any money for their work. Most studios already have their engineers in place, which are aging and refuse to move on, so the likelihood of even finding a studio which wants to hire you as anything more than a volunteer runner is fairly dismal. It's possible, but is starting to get not much easier than someone becoming rich and famous in a band. Most studio owners are, themselves, failed engineers/producers/musicians with big egos who want to hire people that will make them feel more like they actually are something other than a glorified accountant, now. They often also think, these graduates will be cocky, expect to be paid higher, and we'll have to "unlearn" whatever curriculum they were taught and learn that sunova bitch our way of doing things, which translates to my way of doing things, which feeds my ego and makes me feel less of a failure in my own audio career.
I think the matter is whether the person learns in that way, as you said or not. Some people do have an easier time learning in a classroom environment, and those people should most definitely look for that sort of thing. I had nothing but frustrations, myself, with the audio school that I attended for a time. It was so cut and dry, sometimes misguided, and quite over confident that the way they had set out to teach it, was the ONLY way to do things. I made a few contacts, but most of the people going to those places are jerkoff's just looking to get competitive, with all of their peers, and failing as a result of their lone efforts, instead of keeping a community, and everyone doing a bit better as a result. Using the studios was a bit of a perk, and the gear. I must say, though, while, inevitably I did pick up some extra knowledge, the real meat and potatoes of it all was learned on my own, and often got in the way of their assignments. I found myself having to choose between getting grades or actually DOING AUDIO, which seemed a bit silly.
I'm not the biggest fan of schools, anyway, so maybe I'm not the best judge haha. I think they're a great way to take money from people, and not really tell them anything that they couldn't find out themselves by going to the library, and in recent years looking up on the internet.
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
INTERNSHIPS AND SCHOOLS
The days of walking in off the street and getting an intern job are rapidly disappearing because of a combination of two trends: the slow demise of the big studio in general reducing the total number of quality internship-type positions, and the sucking up of most of those available internship positions by the recording schools themselves
The schools actively recruit the positions from the studios and have running contractual agreements with them for their own students, often times as graduate study program work, almost always as the same non-paying internship positions that used to be given the punk hanging out in the alley. It's not a matter of school graduates demanding pay and position; it's a matter of school students increasingly filling the non-paying intern positions as part of their cirriculum by contract with the studio.
JOB PLACEMENT AND SCHOOLS
And, BTW, the average Full Sail or SAE or whatever school graduate does not wind up even working in a recording studio; they may easily wind up working in the film or television industry, in corporate production work, theatre, or in the development/manufacturing side. Some of them warn you right from the get-go that the number of students far exceeds the number of potential positions in the narrow "glamour rock star recording studio engineer" segment of the audio producion industry, and that if you're not open and flexible as to what your eventual position might be, you might as well just quit now and hit the basketball court and expect to be the next Kobe Bryant, because the chances of that happening have a similar flavor.
SELF LEARNING THE BASICS
And pipeline is right, IMHO. Any one who wants to get into this racket who doesn't have basic ET skills like understanding basic electricity/electronics concepts and can't wield a soldering iron properly has no business being here.
When I first started out at D-Vision, they took me for a tour of the company on my first day there. While touring the brand new assembly room the company had ust built, where we actually assembed and configured the turnkey A/V DAW systems we designed and sold, I was talking with the supervisor of the assembly process. This guy was hired pretty much "off the street" and presented himself as a real hotshot gunslinger of a computer and audio tech. He talked a good game to me.
But as we walked and talked, when I asked why he was just letting the grounding leads hang off the back of the desks at each assembly station, just laying there on the carpet, instead of actually connecting then to the main central electrical conduit feeding the stations, I got a blank stare from him aksing why woul dhe want to do that, and I wound up havig to spend a half hour explaining the basic concepts of grounding to this guy. This was after I had to explain to him what the phrase "righty-tighty, lefty-loosy" meant. He wound up in the unemployment line a few weeks later when the lack of true robustness in his education exposed itself to those in management and not just to us in engineering who could only shake our heads.
KNOWING WHAT'S NEEDED
I've seen that kind of thing happen a lot; and it's a real potential pitfall with self-learning. I'm self-learned myself in audio, and much of what I did learn in college about EE and IT I had already learned myself, or could easily have done so. So I'm not knoclking self-learning; that's most of my history myself.
That said, though, what one needs to watch out for is to make sure they know WHAT to self-learn. There's a lot of stuff taught in school that one will never need to actually know again in real life. OTOH, there's also a lot taught that the impatient student thinks is boring bullshit, but will keep them from coming off as the idiot in the real world.
One may not think they need to know about electrical oscillators and sawtooth waves an whatnot, but when they walk in to a studio pretending to be the hotshot gunslinger engineer/producer who will save the day, and they walk up to the keyboard in the live room, point at the depiction of the sawtooth wave next to the oscillator knob, and blurt out the question, "What's da lighning bolt do?", all credibility goes out the window. (That is a true story that happened to me first hand, BTW. I was the one he asked that question to.
)SUMMARY
Long post, I know. But if reading a little bothers someone here, they have no business getting into audio (or any other kind of) engineering.
G.
mshilarious
Banned
I resemble that remark
Of course, the irony is that if you want to be an accountant, you need a four-year degree, and if you want to be a glorified accountant, you have to pass the CPA exam, which as a prerequisite pretty much requires another year of school.
The benefit is there is a shortage of accountants, so unlike audio engineering, if you graduate with halfway decent grades, you are pretty much guaranteed a well-paying job . . . the downside is the soul-sucking work is boring as hell . . .
punkin
Univalve & Avatar Speaks
My daughter just finished the same program. She's off to Paris to work on her apprentice program. Audio whatchamacallit for film production. It's a good school but you'll need to break out and beat the bushes for work when you're done just like everyone else.
Good luck!
G
guitarboi89
New member
Im a first year on the Tonmeister course at the University of Surrey,UK. Modules that i have done this term include electronics (and not simple electronics i assure you), acoustics, audio signal processing (maths with practical uses) and audio engineering (modulation, analog recording, digital recording) as well as music modules. Its been a pretty challenging term but i feel im not wasting my time.
Theres also 3 studios with top class equipment and fuck loads of nice microphones. For the first year you assist on second and fourth year sessions, which mirrors a normal studio (you dont touch stuff till you can use it!)
Theres also 3 studios with top class equipment and fuck loads of nice microphones. For the first year you assist on second and fourth year sessions, which mirrors a normal studio (you dont touch stuff till you can use it!)
C
cusebassman
Freakin' sweet
More power to those with the courage and drive to go to school for audio engineering, considering how many want to do it, and how few positions are open. I have been adventurous enough to buy some halfway decent equipment just to work on my own stuff, but I honestly enjoy recording and working with other musicians as much as (if not more than) I do working on my own stuff.
That, of course, is contingent on the willingness of the musician to work with me and not be a complete asshole. Family is the worst
That, of course, is contingent on the willingness of the musician to work with me and not be a complete asshole. Family is the worst
I
Ironklad Audio
New member
i took 2 semesters of recording arts to start out with. after that, i was considering heading off to CRAS/LARW or one of those types of schools, until we had a guest speaker come in who had gone off to the LARW after he finished up at my school. he ended up saying a few things that shyed me away from the expensive recording schools.
1st, he told us some flat-out nightmare stories of people being treated like total shit as interns. not just the usual coffee runs and toilet cleaning, but shit like going out to the parking lot and picking all the weeds out of the cracks in the pavement...all the while being told they'd have a job after school if they put up with it. well guess what? school ended, and no job offer followed.
in addition, this guy had been working for a few years at a decent pro studio in LA. at the time(this was about 2 years ago), he had been credited as an assistant engineer on 2 platinum albums, and had received a grammy as well as an assistant on 1 of them. even after his relative success, he was still being paid $10/hr, with a $1200/mo. retainer in case he got less than 30 hrs. work in a single week. try living in LA while paying off student loans while making only $1200/month. good luck with that one.
3rd, what really made me decide not to go to 1 of those schools was the fact that he told us that they learned the EXACT SAME SHIT that we had already been taught. seriously...he said that he didn't really learn anything at the LARW, because he had been taught all of the same stuff previously. he did get hands-on experience with SSL and neve consoles, and good industry contacts, but to me that wasn't worth $18k.
so...i ended up taking a bunch of financial aid money the next semester, and bought my own gear. next week i'll be wrapping up the newly-added 3rd semester recording arts course at my school, which still costs $27/unit. shit, i didn't even pay that - the state of CA did.
in short, my advice would be to head to some sort of college that has a well-equipped studio and a knowledgeable staff. you'll be taught all the same stuff, get hands-on experience with a lot of the same gear, and spend a lot less money. on top of that, you can pursue a degree that will actually help out in the long-run - nobody gives a shit if you have a degree in recording or not.
1st, he told us some flat-out nightmare stories of people being treated like total shit as interns. not just the usual coffee runs and toilet cleaning, but shit like going out to the parking lot and picking all the weeds out of the cracks in the pavement...all the while being told they'd have a job after school if they put up with it. well guess what? school ended, and no job offer followed.
in addition, this guy had been working for a few years at a decent pro studio in LA. at the time(this was about 2 years ago), he had been credited as an assistant engineer on 2 platinum albums, and had received a grammy as well as an assistant on 1 of them. even after his relative success, he was still being paid $10/hr, with a $1200/mo. retainer in case he got less than 30 hrs. work in a single week. try living in LA while paying off student loans while making only $1200/month. good luck with that one.
3rd, what really made me decide not to go to 1 of those schools was the fact that he told us that they learned the EXACT SAME SHIT that we had already been taught. seriously...he said that he didn't really learn anything at the LARW, because he had been taught all of the same stuff previously. he did get hands-on experience with SSL and neve consoles, and good industry contacts, but to me that wasn't worth $18k.
so...i ended up taking a bunch of financial aid money the next semester, and bought my own gear. next week i'll be wrapping up the newly-added 3rd semester recording arts course at my school, which still costs $27/unit. shit, i didn't even pay that - the state of CA did.
in short, my advice would be to head to some sort of college that has a well-equipped studio and a knowledgeable staff. you'll be taught all the same stuff, get hands-on experience with a lot of the same gear, and spend a lot less money. on top of that, you can pursue a degree that will actually help out in the long-run - nobody gives a shit if you have a degree in recording or not.
giraffe
i love negative rep
yea, i think that that's my point, only made better.
i just think that school for audio engineering is not really a safe way to spend a bunch of cash.
go for electrical engineering or something related as others have said.
i just think that school for audio engineering is not really a safe way to spend a bunch of cash.
go for electrical engineering or something related as others have said.
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pezking
New member
In this industry, as with many others, time is money. Why would a studio wanna take you on when you don't know what you're doing? It's a waste of their time and therefore a waste of their money. Wouldn't you employ someone who already knows what they're doing? Someone you know could go and setup a decca tree, or align a 24-track tape machine if you asked them to without someone having to hold their hand.
And hell, university isn't just about learning a particular subject or vocation. It's about learning life skills, meeting new people, having fun, experimenting, finding yourself. For a lot of people it's a natural progression from school, something to do until they're sure they know what they wanna do in life.
Sure a while ago engineers and studio owners looked down upon graduates. Either because of something they lacked or perhaps it was an unjustified prejudice. From what I gather many people were afraid that a graduate they employed may well know more than them and might show them up. Whatever the case, that's not the way it is now. They want you to have done that degree before hand; you're less of a liability for them that way.
And hell, university isn't just about learning a particular subject or vocation. It's about learning life skills, meeting new people, having fun, experimenting, finding yourself. For a lot of people it's a natural progression from school, something to do until they're sure they know what they wanna do in life.
Sure a while ago engineers and studio owners looked down upon graduates. Either because of something they lacked or perhaps it was an unjustified prejudice. From what I gather many people were afraid that a graduate they employed may well know more than them and might show them up. Whatever the case, that's not the way it is now. They want you to have done that degree before hand; you're less of a liability for them that way.
monkie
New member
Very interesting.
Wish I knew had knew about online forums like this before going to recording school.
Wish I knew had knew about online forums like this before going to recording school.
D
DAS19
New member
Five Towns College in Long Island represent!
Anyone who says you dont need to go to school to be an audio engineer may be right may be wrong but all I know is a lot of people in the world respect a college grad over a non college grad its just the way it is.
Anyone who says you dont need to go to school to be an audio engineer may be right may be wrong but all I know is a lot of people in the world respect a college grad over a non college grad its just the way it is.
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DAS19
New member
My school doesnt let you major in just audio for reasons mentioned. They make you major in business or music and then have a concentration in audio. So really im getting a business degree with audio knowledge.
bennychico11
...
the problem with online forums is there is a lot of wrong information that gets posted about. Not to say I'm totally against forums (as you can see from my post count and join date), you just need to second guess everything that someone says until you try it or research it yourself. But I guess the same could be said about certain teachers in class as well.
M
Mindset
Well-known member
I went to MediaTech down here, pretty good school. They had the reg consoles there, SSL, Neve (Stevie Ray Vaughns), Mobile recording truck, radio truck etc.. I knew stuff, but now I know stuff.
I
Ironklad Audio
New member
man...i'm sort of pissed at my school right now - not because they've done anything wrong, but because i'm moving next week and won't be around for all of the improvements/upgrades they're making
they've expanded the 2-semester course to 4 semesters, and are offering some sort of certificate upon completion, which i won't be able to get since i won't be around for rec. arts IV
in addition, they added both a demeter and fearn preamp this last week, which i'll never get the useopportunity to . they're also selling off their 2 channels of focusrite 110 in place of 2 more BA 1073's, and are going to add klein & hummel monitors to go along with the genelec 1031a's.
and on top of THAT...they're going to install 32 digi 003 stations this next summer, so that they can start offering PT certification up to the 210 level. there's also a new theater/performing arts center being built next to the studio that'll be done in 2009...i guess the plans, as of now, are to install a digi venue system, which will be run to the HD rig in the studio. with this they're going to add live sound courses, and will have 1 student engineer working on the FOH mix, another on the monitor mix, and another in the studio recording/mixing the performances.
i always miss out on the good shit
they've expanded the 2-semester course to 4 semesters, and are offering some sort of certificate upon completion, which i won't be able to get since i won't be around for rec. arts IV
in addition, they added both a demeter and fearn preamp this last week, which i'll never get the useopportunity to . they're also selling off their 2 channels of focusrite 110 in place of 2 more BA 1073's, and are going to add klein & hummel monitors to go along with the genelec 1031a's.
and on top of THAT...they're going to install 32 digi 003 stations this next summer, so that they can start offering PT certification up to the 210 level. there's also a new theater/performing arts center being built next to the studio that'll be done in 2009...i guess the plans, as of now, are to install a digi venue system, which will be run to the HD rig in the studio. with this they're going to add live sound courses, and will have 1 student engineer working on the FOH mix, another on the monitor mix, and another in the studio recording/mixing the performances.
i always miss out on the good shit