The Future Engineer - Observations

[cdixon6]

I can never pass up an education topic without replying.

My suggestion to anyone is to get the Bachelors. Trade schools will leave you pigeon holed and with a mound of debt. At least if you get the Bachelors you'll have "options" (on top of your mound of debt of course).

[T-rex]

My advice to just about anybody would be "go to school for real engineering (EE or CS) or business, you can learn the other stuff much better in the real world". And yes, I'd be very heavy-handed about it. "If you want to make money recording, open a recording school and you'll have plenty of suckers lined up".
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This! If I had it to do over again (and I am seriously considering it) I would get an EE degree or CS degree with a focus on EE electives. I actually started that course in college many eons ago but my math background was lacking at the time. But back to the kid, yeah one of those degrees with a focus on recording and sound and an internship while in school would be the best of both worlds, and a crap load of dedication and work to excel at both.

[TV Lenny]

Glad to see this thread is still alive.

There is some good insight here...wish I could figure a way which to show this person the thread but I think they would snub their nose at it!

[koratanu]

Hey guys,

I am a 22 year old college dropout musician/engineer-wanna-be. Don't get me wrong, I had a full ride to college and everything (I was a Computer Science major), but I have thought all this time that college wouldn't lead me down a road I wanted to go: that is, the 9-5 cubicle workforce. I've hit a point in my life where I have decided that music is what I want to do as a career.

The problem is that everyone, regardless of my reasons, urges me to go back to college. Even here, I'm finding the same advice: go to school. Yet reading tape-op interviews, it seems almost everyone has gotten where they are purely by being at the right place at the right time. It's never: "Yup, graduated from Full Sail, opened up a studio that year, and in walks Elvis Costello." Not that I am against school (anymore), but I'm interested in seeing the alternatives.

My questions are: as studio owners, how willing are you to mentor the aspiring next generation? Is it off-putting at all when someone wants to come work at your studio wageless and solely the experience? Even though I'm going to talk to both, do you guys feel the live sound circuit would have more opportunities than the studio one? Is there anyone out there that doesn't think one should go to school in order to be a part of the music industry? Any other good advice (besides the wonderful stuff we get from Tape-Op)?

I just want to be Larry Crane's coffee boy! I only live on the other side of Portland... haha.

Sorry to make this all Dr. Phil-y, but I would really like some advice from people who are doing what I want to do on a day to day basis. Also, I apologize for my verbosity.

Thank you so much,

Brennan

[joelpatterson]

Why not kidnap Larry, hold him hostage, and say you won't release him until Elvis Costello walks in the door? And he must bring a few Ray Charles records with him?

But then, alot of planning involved in that scenario... I'd be leery of "advice," here's why: nobody knows you, your talents, your drive, your ambition, how much you are prepared to sacrifice. The "going to school" option is (maybe not co-incidentally) offered by people who, guess what, went to school. People who'd been in the Army would probably advise you to join the Army.

It's totally up to you to map out your pathway... when I was launching out on my own glorious misadventure, I got alot of well-meaning advice, all of it totally idiotic. Some people advised me to get a day job-- clerk in hardware store?-- and do the recording at night. Instinctively I thought: do you want to go to a doctor who is all fired up about medicine, except he works in a hardware store and does his practice at night? Do you want to go to a lawyer who believes passionately in the law but he works in a hardware store and does his lawyering at night?

Hmmmm, not really. You want someone who is committed to his craft, does it full-time, and is dependent on his customers for his livelihood. The real problem was that these people were giving advice for THEMSELVES-- if THEY thought about doing what I was going to do, that's how THEY'D do it-- tentatively, ineptly, not seriously at all.

When I scan the world of today, it seems like it's all freelancey, so I would say: gather up some gear. Show up at the open mics, hustle up the most talented kids and get them to hire you to record them. Contact local chorus/orchestras/schools with music programs, talk turkey. Slave over those first projects so that it would make even Elvis Costello's jaw drop. You need to create a reputation for doing stunning, amazing work... and for being a friendly, entertaining guy.

And anyway... Larry might well be armed, at this point...

[koratanu]

Very good advice! Thank you very much. The bit about people recommending what they would do is definitely something I hadn't realized yet.

I still wonder though, what percentage of engineers actually would take a non-paid intern? I thought anyone would take someone who wanted to work for free, but a few studio's sites actually say "Do not contact us about internships."

I guess there is no harm in asking everyone until someone says yes! haha

[jhharvest]

I don't like unpaid internships. I think a worker is always entitled to their wages. Even if you do nothing but make coffee for the crew, you still should be paid to do it. If they don't pay you, they don't respect you. But then I've never had to do an unpaid internship to get a job...

[joelpatterson]

It could be that the "Do not contact us about internships" is really more secret code for saying "We have had to deal with SO many outlandishly pretentious, utterly clueless goofballs that it just ain't worth it, folks." I have had interns that were all over the map-- the first few were amazing, took over when I had to do some traveling and when I got back, the recordings they made in my absence, I had to sheepishly admit, were as good as what I would have done.

Then came an era of clowns-- they could help out at the concert, but oh by the way could I come and give them a ride from their house, they didn't have a car? Is there an emoticon that sadly shakes its head back and forth?

Anyone who's set up a recording environment can tell you it's a very delicate eco-system, psychologically-- it ain't a factory floor where an extra pair of hands would be absorbed seamlessly. It's more like interning for a psychologist, now that I think about it... an additional stranger, sitting there at the knee of the therapist, well the guy on the couch might not cotton to it, you hear what I'm saying?

You can't just be "Intern A," you need to be "Koratanu, this guy we found, he's got a GREAT ear and a real knack for troubleshooting software glitches." One cliche I heard once went like this: if you get an opportunity to enter into this world, make yourself absolutely invaluable, then ask for a working wage.

This all kind of leads around to my view that generally there really just aren't studios or remote operations out there who want. need, or are prepared to tolerate interns. I could be wrong... I could be right.

[joelpatterson]

Whoa! A sly post-Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten reference!

[TapeOpLarry]

From my studio's website:

Are you currently accepting interns?
No. There are no plans to be taking on interns in the future. Please don't email or call about being our intern or asking what other studios accept them. We don't know!

If we even took phone calls or answered emails for all the people who enquire we'd be spending too much time on this. That's all I will say. Had some great ones in the past - no room to deal with them now.

[koratanu]

It seems to me, then, that the studios to go after would be those who are just getting going themselves. It also looks like it is kind of like the music industry, and that you have to be at the right place at the right time, with also a boat load of work and perseverance. Thanks for the advice, everyone, especially you, Joel! Really good insight, more so than I expected to find here.

[Winstontaneous]

I was recently talking with an acquaintance who is going to a university to study recording and something else. I had, in the past, suggested they consider getting involved as an intern at a studio and study their other major at school. I would have helped them attain the internship too. But that advice fell on deaf ears...

But usually when this person and I have chatted, he is also fairly busy on his iPhone texting away and on FB. I wonder how this may affect his working with musicians in the studio...I see this a lot as I'm sure many of us do.

That last part really gets me!

A couple years ago my Western swing band did a few demo recordings at Ex'pressions College in Emeryville, CA. We're not re-inventing the wheel but it's a bunch of really good players having fun bringing old country songs to life with a jazzy flair. We recorded as a project for an engineering class with about 7 students.

2 or 3 of them were really into it, digging the opportunity to record BIG vintage-style drums with calfskin heads, upright bass, groovy tube amps, live harmony vocals, honky-tonk piano, sax & trumpet, and one of the best steel guitarists in the Bay area--playing full takes live in a room.

The rest of them looked bored, dicking around on their iPhones and chattering.
I didn't take it personally. The joke's on them...this school school charges $90K for the degree. They have a lot of expensive, impressive equipment, but I didn't get the sense they were giving students the fundamental interpersonal skills they'll need to succeed.

[xpulsar]

Glad to see this thread is still alive.

There is some good insight here...wish I could figure a way which to show this person the thread but I think they would snub their nose at it!

If you think this kid would snub his nose at learning something, then he has "NO CHANCE IN HELL" of being a successful audio engineer. I would not waste another breath on him. There are plenty of positive ,motivated kids in the world who would be much better suited for the job and are ready to learn.

-Collin

[Gold]

but I didn't get the sense they were giving students the fundamental interpersonal skills they'll need to succeed.

I don't think that can be taught. Unfortunately it's more important than the stuff that can be taught, like signal flow.

Curiosity and a willingness to figure out how to do whatever needs to be done is more important than school. If you quit school because you're too cool then staying in school probably wouldn't have helped much. Just a different path of least resistance. It sounds like you quit for the right reasons. There are many very successful people in many disciplines that skipped school. Even very technical ones. You'd be amazed at how many electrical design engineers have no formal training.

[TapeOpLarry]

I'M WITH COLLIN ABOVE. Being successful in the recording biz means having a ridiculously open mind and the best manners and attitude. Stuff one cannot hide during a 12 hr workday.

And please do not kidnap me to attain an internship. We have so many freelancers in and out of here that interns stopped working out for us. And I personally feel the less people in the room the better, most of the time. I'm not happy taking out the trash but if it means no one's showing up late, sitting on the couch all day and texting while nursing a hangover I'm fine with that...

Tell the kid to invest $200k and 15 years and they can be a recording engineer and still barely make a living.