Career in sound engineering

[GregWhelan]

Evening all,

I'm bored here on a Sunday evening, thinking about potential New Year pledges. I have decided that I would like 2006 to be the year I find out more about music. After all, I love it so much, listen to it most of the day. Would love to get on a course or something where I could learn about sound engineering - not actually making music per se, but being a producer, or one of those guys in a recording studio.

Has anyone got any experience of this? There is no way I could do anything that would involve a shed load of outlay on equipment, I only want a basic grounding in music engineeering/production.

Are there such courses out there guys?Any recommendations?

[picklemonkey]

Re: Career in sound engineering

lately I've thought the same thing about producing. seems like we had info in MP, but I haven't tried finding it... maybe someone will be able to point you(all of us) into some sort of direction to start with the whole process

[ZendoBro]

Re: Career in sound engineering

You really can't go wrong by taking Music Theory classes, but from what you're describing I would look into Signal Theory.

[konfussion]

Re: Career in sound engineering

http://www.cras.org/

Supposedly a really good school if that's the route you were looking for

[DragonFire]

Re: Career in sound engineering

i wanna do that as well .. but i just cant find the time .. and reason or buzz would need time to get on it alone

[ZendoBro]

Re: Career in sound engineering

There are actually a number of schools. Just look around. Here are some I've browse over over the years:

http://www.fullsail.com

http://www.sae.edu

http://www.mcnallysmith.edu

http://www.iprschool.com

They're all awfully expensive schools though. My advice is to learn from someone you already know who's experienced in the field of expertise.

[tiddles]

Re: Career in sound engineering

i have a friend who is studying audio engineering or something like that at a state school.
he interned at a studio.

[lopark]

Re: Career in sound engineering

www.expression.edu

I currently attend and am very happy with the program so far.

[day_for_night]

Re: Career in sound engineering

there is a really good school in cali (uc berkley i think) that is supposed to have one of the best music programs around.

[ian]

Re: Career in sound engineering

I did a degree in Music Technology and Audio Systems at the University of Huddersfield. Whilst I have no regrets for doing the degree for the general life experience and the people I met, the actual course was really useless in getting me a job - I now work in webdesign which is a skill I taught myself.

The problem is, the music production industry doesn't care for courses. It's most of all about who you know, and secondly about what you can do. My advice would be to not bother doing a course, but save your money to buy a bit of equipment/software, learn your trade and get out to clubs, record labels, industry shindigs etc and get your tunes heard by people in the industry. Even if you do a course you'll still need to start this way, so you might as well cut out the crap and go straight for what you want.

The only courses that are worth their salt are the really expensive, presigious ones that will take up about 3 years of your life and £30K of your money, think what a studio you could get for that!

[GregWhelan]

Re: Career in sound engineering

Cheers for all that info guys - I live near london,UK so some of those schools are a littlke far away.

I was thinking more of an evening course or something, kind of like 'Music 101' or something LOL!

And I also dont particularly want to create a dance track from scratch - I was more thinking along the lines of those guys like 'cheeky' paul who master/finalise all the compilations i.e. alan bremner, charlie may, brian eno

But sounds like barriers to entry are huge? ian - any decent literature i could buy to get me started?

[tiddles]

Re: Career in sound engineering

you can learn basic music theory on teh internet...4 free

http://teoria.com

[ian]

Re: Career in sound engineering

ian - any decent literature i could buy to get me started?

A subscription to Sound on Sound mag would be a good start, that's kind of like the music producers bible - caters for all styles of music. To be honest you're better off with something like SOS and the net, because technology moves on so quickly you need something that's up to date or else it's pretty much useless.

Get yourself something like Reason, or Reaktor - something that lets you be really creative with sounds and learn some of the principles of sound and synthesis. Reaktor is virtually limitless in what you can do, it is an excellent educational tool to help you learn about what makes up a sound, but also an incredibly useful studio tool.

Another tip would be to stay away from pirated software if you're serious about it, this isn't just for moral reasons, but mainly because you can potentially lay your hands on any piece of software for free, and if you haven't paid anything for something you've got less incentive to learn it properly. If you start off with one piece of software that you shell out ?300 for, you can guaruntee you'll want to learn it inside out before moving on to something else.

Good luck with it all, happy to answer any questions you have.

[GregWhelan]

Re: Career in sound engineering

Cheers Ian, 'sound' advice ha ha ha

Will take that on board