Is Recording School a "must have gone to" for inte

[Autodidact]

For all you guys that have recording studios or are engineers that use interns:

Do your interns (or potential interns) have to have gone to recording school?

No more "old school" ways of interning as a complete newbie (or just a basic idea of audio) to learn the trade?

Let me give an example:

when i was a little younger, i wanted to be a mechanic (race engine builder and what not), and there was the "go to school" route, or the "apprentice at a shop" and learn hands on approach.

lots of shops i talked to said they would prefer someone with ZERO experience than someone that learned "someone elses way" of doing things...cause that would mean "repgrogramming" them to work and think the wanted to

i tried both, and was learning WAY more the "hands on" way...

so what is your guys' opinions on this?

thanx

[knobtwirler]

From the engineer perspective and as one who started as an intern, just because someone went to a school doesn't mean they are a good intern. Selecting an intern is more about the personality of the applicant fitting with the overall goals of the studio and how it operates. If I had known better, I would have gotten my G.E.D. at 15 or 16 years of age and tried to land a floor mopping gig at a prestigious studio. Instead I went to a school and learned the hard way that I took the longest most complicated route to getting a job. An intern worth his/her weight in gold shows a great interest in the field and has the right social skills. Everything else falls into place.

[Professor]

I imagine you're going to get a lot of folks responding to this and saying that finding the internship is more important.
You could probably guess from the screen name here that I might suggest different.
And I will, but with some explanation...
There is no question that experience is the most important aspect in this field, but gaining experience is about learning and experimenting and remembering.
These days there are so many kids coming out of recording schools who are more than willing to work for free as interns, why would any studio want to hire a 16 or 18 or 22 year old who doesn't even know the differences between mics, or how to setup an XY pair, or how to setup a new session in ProTools? Sure plenty of those kids coming out of schools have big chips on their shoulders, but it's easy enough to pick the good personalities, and you would still end up with someone who knows enough of the basics to function without needing all kinds of special attention from the lead engineer.
Remember that in an internship you are going to learn how to be a good assistant, because that's what the engineer needs from you. He or she is not likely going to want to teach you (or even be capable of teaching you) all the fundamentals of music, audio, and recording. A school on the other hand is going to try to teach you what they think you will need to know to be an engineer.

Of course, this field is as much art as it is science, and so while some rules are absolute because they are grounded in physics, the application is purely based on judgement and experience. I don't remember which engineer we keep quoting in the line, "mixing cannot be taught, it can only be learned" but that's a great way to view this. How you choose to learn is entirely up to you. But I would think that learning the basics, fundamentals, and concepts in a school environment and then seeing them put into action in a studio is going to be a better route.

-Jeremy

[ryanlikestorock]

Formal education is just one piece of the puzzle. It's a factor, but a small one for me. When I'm deciding who to work with on any level, I look for the "magic". That's the only way I know how to describe it. That magic that lets me feel that this person is a good person to work with. Some mix of charisma, ambition, education (self or formal), interest in learning/teaching, etc.

[digital eagle audio]

from an intern's perspective:
when i started at the studio 18 months ago, the most recording experience i had was a fostex four-track. but i know music. and i spent my first months scrubbing the bathroom, zeroing the board, and memorizing the mics. i watched, read, and asked, and eventually earned the trust of the studio. eventually i got to do transfers and backups. now i'm doing sessions, and actually making money for the studio (as well as having done some things i'm rather proud of). a lotta audio school grads have come and gone in that amount of time. so, in my opinion, busting ass and being smart is all you really need. of course there are shitloads of things i don't know yet that i'd like to, but isn't that everyone? and besides, i learn more every time something goes wrong and i have to fix it.

[Professor]

I think the problem you tend to see is that the guys showing up from the recording schools don't have the drive and desire you have going for you. Sometimes they can be a little high on themselves. But if one came along that worked as hard at school for a couple years as you've worked at that studio, and the attitude held through, he'd be more long-term.
So either way you slice it, hard work is going to be key. There's not really an "easy way" to just goof along and have it magically fall in your lap... unless you're related to some rockstar.

-Jeremy

[digital eagle audio]

yep.
at this point, i'm thinking basic electronics classes would be the best use of my time.

[knobtwirler]

These days there are so many kids coming out of recording schools who are more than willing to work for free as interns, why would any studio want to hire a 16 or 18 or 22 year old who doesn't even know the differences between mics, or how to setup an XY pair, or how to setup a new session in ProTools? Sure plenty of those kids coming out of schools have big chips on their shoulders, but it's easy enough to pick the good personalities, and you would still end up with someone who knows enough of the basics to function without needing all kinds of special attention from the lead engineer.
Remember that in an internship you are going to learn how to be a good assistant, because that's what the engineer needs from you. He or she is not likely going to want to teach you (or even be capable of teaching you) all the fundamentals of music, audio, and recording. A school on the other hand is going to try to teach you what they think you will need to know to be an engineer.-Jeremy

The problem is that most of these kids hired from school can't effectively set up an X-Y pair, know the differences between mics other than the names and shapes, or set up a usable new Session in Pro Tools. Give me someone with half a brain and they will learn all of that on the job between toilet and bathroom moppings, carpet cleanings, vaccumings, painting, gear hauling, and phone answering.
Furthermore, being a good assistant at 25 cents more than minimum wage is only something a crazy person would want to do and be stuck in for years, so that puts the whole personality thing in jeopardy also, and we may be talking about nebulous concepts here after all.

[Professor]

Oh come on, we're not talking about the kid who flunks out of community college, or the poor little rich kid from Tuxedo Park who spent 5 years smoking weed at NYU and drives up to the studio in his Hummer wondering how soon the session ends and the party starts.
If the studio is hiring those guys instead of graduates from Miami, Berklee, MTSU, CU, or even Full Sail, and if even then if they are hiring people without interviewing and actually asking them (or testing) about basics, then they deserve those kinds of interns.

But honestly here, as a guy who would refuse to do a studio session because the studio didn't provide an assistant, tell me how much time you would spend teaching the studio assistants about mic technique, placement or even ProTools session setup if they sent in some kid who is fresh out of high school? Maybe you would really dig into that and teach the guy - and I think that would be really cool. But I'm sure that many pro engineers would put up with the kid for maybe the whole session and then bitch out the studio for not providing a qualified assistant.

-Jeremy

[digital eagle audio]

well i highly doubt that anyone with half a brain in their head would confuse a green intern with a qualified second.
of course it takes time to learn enough to second someone, and it was a huge milestone in my development when i was finally trusted enough to run the tape for a producer while the engineer was taking care of something else. but, once again, i've seen kids from fullsail completely piss off a producer and embarrass the studio.
if a studio provides an unqualified intern as an assistant, then that studio is doing something very wrong.

[Professor]

But to me that doesn't mean that any kid from Full Sail or any other school will be like that.
It does, however, tell me that the studio needs to do a better job interviewing and prepping their employees for the work.

-J

[digital eagle audio]

and for the record, i'm not anti schooling. on the contrary - i wish very much that i could afford to go to school (SAE, specifically). but i can't. i just refuse to believe that my hard work, talent, and independent study can't get me where i want to be - paying rent by doing what i love.

[knobtwirler]

well i highly doubt that anyone with half a brain in their head would confuse a green intern with a qualified second.
of course it takes time to learn enough to second someone, and it was a huge milestone in my development when i was finally trusted enough to run the tape for a producer while the engineer was taking care of something else. but, once again, i've seen kids from fullsail completely piss off a producer and embarrass the studio.
if a studio provides an unqualified intern as an assistant, then that studio is doing something very wrong.

Thank you for saying that. I wonder why people have things to say about my unrelated thread about no assistant but don't care to post. The studio that wouldn't give me a qualified second made it clear that I will only get interns assisting me that I have to teach how to assist DURING a session. Now whether they are green or not is up to interpretation. I don't know where Professor is doing his engineering work, but the people that get hired and aren't community college flunkies, et. al., are gone in a couple months because scrubbing toilets was not worth their time anymore. Thank you for driving home the point that the studio deserves those kinds of interns and that I can't effectively do my job every day while teaching interns how to assist IF I AM LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET ONE.
I killed myself for years assisting at this studio, teaching everyone every cool thing I came up with because I HATED the engineers that wouldn't show me anything in the past to protect their jobs, and I continue to try to spread as much knowledge and know-how to every assistant and intern I work with, but it also angers me that others simply don't and won't and get preferential treatment anyway. This is one of the reasons i look forward to Tape Op Magazine and hope there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.

[digital eagle audio]

honestly i think it's a perfectly fair trade to exchange knowledge and skill for buckets of elbow grease.

[Professor]

Hey, don't get me wrong knobtwirler, I promise I wasn't intending to insult you up there. Indeed, I'm really glad to see more pro engineers working the commercial studios up on the site. I didn't respond to your other post, because I couldn't relate anything there - I don't work in a commercial studio. I run a studio at a University, not as a teaching facility but as a service facility to the school. I'm basically sole proprieter of the joint and if I want an assistant, then I call up one of my 8 student employees and tell them to come in. On the other hand, I also don't have the luxury of hiring assistants who have already been thoroughly trained somewhere else because I can only hire students from our school, and we don't have a recording program. When I hire the employees, I tell them that although I pay well the hours are very sporadic, so they should working for parking or dining services if they need to make money, but if they are really interested in learning about recording I will teach them as much as they can stand to learn. I haven't been at it long, but so far that seems to have been a good approach since the folks who have really wanted to learn have shown up regularly, learned, appreciated the experience, and we are still friends after they've graduated. I think it's really cool that you make so much effort to teach people even in a commercial situation - I really respect that.
Mine is a really unusual situation - it's easier for me to do the same, and I really enjoy doing it.
If I were running a studio, especially my own studio where money spent meant my personal profits were being lost, then I would interview potential assistants very carefully. I would only hire folks that could demonstrate a real strong foundation in basic technique and pracitce, because I would want my sessions to run efficiently enough that I could maximize the profits. I love teaching people about recording, but if I were on a normal clock and it were cutting into my pay, then I wouldn't want to be showing somme newbie how to setup an ORTF pair in front of the piano. And I couldn't imagine a studio owner telling a free-lance or session engineer that he isn't getting a trained assistant but rather an untrained intern that he is supposed to train?!?! That's about the most fucked up thing I've heard in a while. Is that really how the studio owner is running his business? Does he want to drive away the paying clients?

Ah well, I guess that's really been my point with the posts to this thread:
No, of course you don't need an education to get an internship.
But any studio that actually runs like a good business is going to want someone who already knows their shit before they arrive, because it is a waste of their time and money to have to teach them - especially basic stuff like mic technique, wrapping cables, stereo setups, how to setup a ProTools session, how to normal a board, how to stay quiet when the client is in, etc.
And yes, there are lots of sleazeballs who will take in "interns" as slave labor because they know there are idiots who will scrub toilets for no pay for years on end if they think someday they may be able to be a rock & roll engineer/producer. But those are sleazeballs, they have no intention of ever paying the interns, and what they do is highly illegal (the IRS says interns must be paid with either money, college credit, or professional certification - and our industry doesn't have certification). And is that the person you want teaching you how to be an engineer?

-Jeremy