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For Recording EngineeringArticle from Sound On Sound, June 1992 |
Educated sound engineer David Mellor assesses the value of training for a career in recording.
The first thing I have to do here is come clean: I have a bias in the field of education for music recording. Firstly, I am fortunate enough to be one of the relatively few people with a paper qualification in the subject — a B. Mus (Tonmeister) from the University of Surrey — and I am actively involved in the education of would-be sound engineers, spending two highly enjoyable days each week at the City of Westminster College working with students on their sound courses. These two factors mean that I am almost bound to advise you to sign on for a course of one type or another, and that ideally you should make the City of Westminster College your first choice.
But hang on a minute, why should I be so obvious? Let me state one vitally important fact about working in recording or sound engineering: Even if you achieve paper qualifications as long as a roll of Andrex, you will never be able to call yourself a sound engineer until you have practical experience in the real world of work. That means doing a job and getting paid for it — or not getting paid for it if you screw up. I achieved my paper qualification just over ten years ago, but it didn't mean a thing until I put in into practice with four years at the Royal Opera House where I learned the meaning of hard work and high standards.
There has traditionally been a battle in this industry between those who say education is important and those, usually without any college-based training, who will say that education is a complete waste of time. I would say that the whole point of education (or training, which is a slightly different thing) is to provide a person with a springboard from which to leap into an uncertain future, to impart a range of knowledge and skills which can be adapted to changing circumstances as necessary. And one thing is absolutely certain: if we don't train people in this country to be competent and creative sound engineers, other countries will, and they will reap the rewards.
Oh, about my other bias, towards the City of Westminster College. Just to make sure that I'm fair to all the other colleges I am going to mention, let me advise you not to apply there. The work is terribly difficult, the lecturers are mean and nasty (one of them particularly so) and we expect 300 applicants for next year's course to be enough anyway. So there.
Before I explain what a course of education or training can do for you, you have to ask yourself what you want to achieve. What are your ambitions in engineering or music?
I would expect that most readers of this article would be interested in learning about recording engineering. In fact, recording engineering is so popular that demand for training far outstrips the demand for training in other industry segments, such as public address, theatre, broadcasting, and film/video sound. Everyone wants to be a recording engineer. It's only a pity that recording engineering is the most difficult type of course for any establishment to run. To clarify some of the different types of motivation and possible routes to success that exist I have imagined a number of scenarios. Some are not as encouraging as others!
A young hopeful wants to get into the music industry. He or she thinks that a course would open the door to fame and fortune.
It won't — it will only open the door out onto the back street.
Another young hopeful wants to get into a recording studio thinking that it will be full of glamourous exciting people living fast expensive lifestyles.
Dream on!
A musician has a unfulfilled passion to be a performer. He or she thinks that working as a recording engineer would be the next best thing to do.
Can this person compete with people for whom recording is the only thing?
A keen follower of a certain musical style expects a course to provide training in that style as though no others exist.
That style will be past its sell-by date by the end of the course.
A young person is forever tinkering with equipment, taking it apart to see how it works and successfully putting it back together.
Don't be a recording engineer — be a maintenance engineer and get paid more.
A musically and technically aware person wants to work with people and equipment on demanding but rewarding projects and has the determination to start at the bottom and work up slowly to a fulfilling career as a recording engineer.
Is this you? You may have what it takes.
Recording engineering is popular, but there are other types of sound engineering too. In fact, when you take all the different types of sound engineering applications together, recording engineering is a very tiny segment. There are many more microphones used to pick up speech than for any musical purpose. Where a recording engineer requires an ability to operate the equipment in the multitrack studio and work successfully with musicians and producers, other fields of sound engineering tend to be more technical. For instance, if you want to be a PA engineer working on large projects (as opposed to the band down at the local pub) then you will need to be able to specify a system suitable for the venue, direct and assist in setting up, operate the system, and track down any faults that occur.
As you might expect, recording engineers and PA engineers are two very different breeds of people; the former more musical, the latter more technical. If you want to go for the ultimate in technical sound engineering, then you should be looking at broadcast work, preferably live outside broadcasts. Here you will be involved in sound systems that will carry information or entertainment literally to millions. You won't get the chance to say "Sorry, can we take that again?"
Although I am concentrating on recording engineering for this article it's also worth mentioning that there is a growing market for education in musical technology — dealing with synthesizers, samplers, computers and software etc. — and there is also the business side of music. Where would musicians and engineers be without people to run the financial and managerial side of things?
Once you have decided that you really have what it takes to make it in a very competitive field, you have to examine your options. Once upon a time there were very few establishments providing training or education, whereas now there is a reasonable choice. One thing you will find out very early on is that getting information is very difficult. Your local library will have a shelf full of college prospectuses and course directories, but will you find any information on sound engineering or music technology? Only if you are very lucky or very persistent, but give it a go anyway; many colleges are starting up courses, or would like to start them up, and you might find just the one you are looking for by accident. The course providers (a term which I use to cover colleges and private training companies) I have included here are well known and have the ability to get their message across. Some other organisations could do with marketing their wares much more effectively.
There are a number of factors which will narrow down your choice in the very early stages. The first is probably the depth of your pockets. It's a little known fact that education should be regarded as an investment, and if you invest your money then you may reap the reward later. All courses cost money, but those at colleges of further or higher education and universities are subsidised to an extent by a reduction in fees to British or European Community students. You may also be able to get a grant of some kind for certain courses, but in the end your education may limited by what you can personally afford.
The second major factor in narrowing down your choice is that for some reason the fundamental laws of supply and demand do not operate in education. For any other product there will pretty well always be a number of competitive suppliers supplying what people want at prices they are prepared to pay. But if you want an education and are prepared to pay for it you may still have to pass an entrance procedure of some kind, such as an interview or test. You may also have to have existing qualifications such as GCSEs or A levels before you will even be considered for a particular course.
Once you have arrived, through factors unrelated to your lust for knowledge, at a short list of course providers then you can actually do some of the choosing yourself. Do you want a short intensive course on a particular subject, or do you want a longer, more thorough one? These things you can find out easily by looking at prospectuses, but bear in mind that you are not going to learn how to be a recording engineer in a week, or even six weeks for that matter, although every little bit of knowledge can be valuable. When you have whittled the choice down to two or three, then you can look at the establishments and see what quality of education they are offering.
"Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach." This is an old saying that has a certain ring of truth to it. For instance, if you were running a recording studio and found it difficult to meet a £500 per week break-even point, then you might well be tempted to run 5-day courses for 10 people paying £50 each. It's easy money isn't it? Similarly, you might be a head of department in a college of further education. You are losing student numbers from your traditional courses and need something more exciting to bring the crowds back in. Maybe you could divert a couple of lecturers from related topics and start up a course in recording engineering? The added benefit would be that you could set up a studio in which you and the other lecturers could play after hours.
Call me a cynic if you like, but I am very sure that attitudes like this secretly exist in the private and public sectors of education. But looking more on the positive side, I feel that people who started with doubtful attitudes have by now either gone to the wall or they have developed a real love for helping people get on in their ambitions. Even so, I would strongly recommend that you try and look for people's motivations, and see whether those who run the course in which you are considering investing part of your life are mainly interested in the profit motive, or running a hobby department, or providing a genuine education in sound engineering.
I said earlier that of all types of sound engineering, recording engineering is the most difficult to provide a course for. This is because the equipment is so expensive, and you need so much of it, and the facilities have to be spread thinly among all the students on the course. It's all very well for a course provider to claim that they have a state-of-the-art 24-track studio, but if they have to share that among 50 students, how much hands-on time are you going to get? The only way to learn how to record is to do it yourself, so the hands-on time is vitally important. In fact I would go so far as to say that you could divide the course fee by the number of hours spent in the studio, and then by the number of people on the course, and in this way derive a value-for-money rating.
It is common for private companies to offer facilities of a very high standard, but the fees you have to pay are also high. The fees at colleges would be high too, were they not subsidised, but they tend to be hamstrung by lack of funds for investment. Whereas a private company can invest according to current conditions and the return they are making on their capital, a college department probably has to go cap in hand for any cash to equip, or re-equip, to a management that would prefer to encourage courses that don't cost anything like as much to run.
Facilities are important, but of no lesser importance are the staff who are hopefully going to impart their vast knowledge of the subject to you in as interesting a manner as possible. I would recommend any course provider to offer a combination of expertise. There must be input from qualified technical people and from practical types too. If I was told that my lecturers would include people who used to work in manufacturing, ex-sound engineers, and visiting lecturers who are currently employed in the industry, I would be impressed.
If your chosen course offers work experience as well as college-based training then you are in luck. This has to be the best way to learn your future trade. Not only that, but if you impress the people at your work placement then they may be willing to give you a reference when the time comes for job hunting for real. However, work placements are not all fun and games. When I worked as a theatre sound engineer we used to take on trainees for one day a week, and on the whole they were useless. I remember one chap who would bring in his copy of the Daily Mirror and spend all day reading it [all day to read a copy of the Mirror?! — stunned Ed].
Maybe we weren't doing as much as we might have to encourage the students, but we all had jobs to do, and anyway those who were really keen didn't need any encouragement — they found themselves a little niche in the task in hand and got on with it. These exceptional people were rewarded by paid freelance work at evenings, weekends and holidays, and some have gone on to significant achievements.
Unfortunately, work experience in recording studios is difficult to manage, so it is not often offered. The problem is that novices are very conspicuous to the acts and producers using the studio, and studio managers are scared to death of a trainee saying the wrong thing, or putting too many sugars in the coffee, and it is only the most enlightened studio owners and managers who realise the importance of developing keen young talent. If you want to work in a studio, definitely go for a course that can get you into one, preferably a good one. You may have to do menial tasks until you have proved yourself, but how can you prove yourself unless you're on the inside?
When I was a student I was a pain in the neck for the department, and I regret it now. I had the attitude that I knew what I wanted to learn, and I would learn the bare minimum apart from that. I therefore wasted the resources on offer, for which I apologise without reservation. Still, maybe I can make amends by offering my advice, with 20/20 hindsight, on how to get the best out of a course.
The first and most important point I can make is that when you are at college with other students you are, like it or not, a member of a team. The better the team performs, the more you will achieve personally. Put it the other way — if one member of the team slows down, the others will have to slow down too. I find, as a lecturer, that if I feel the group is involved and interested in what I am doing or saying then the whole learning experience is faster and more effective. But if one person decides to take it easy, then another one will, then another, and so on until a sizeable group of people are working well below capacity and wasting time and money.
The second point is that you will probably have a very clear idea of what you want to achieve from the course, and you'll find that your lecturers are asking you to do things or become involved with things that don't fit in with your plans. My advice is to give everything your best shot, even if you never think you'll have a need for that knowledge in the future. Remember that the world changes faster than you think, and that different disciplines are being brought together in unexpected ways. Another aspect of this is that you may have your own strong ideas or feelings on a particular subject. Ideally, your lecturers should use your views as another input to the group, but sometimes they may be so locked into their own way of doing things that they don't understand and are disinclined to listen to what you would like to say. In this situation, put your viewpoint to one side for the moment and try to take in what your lecturer is saying. He may be wrong, but at least you will have gained the advantage of another person's experience.
No college can guarantee a job at the end of their course. Too much depends on personal qualities and level of motivation. But if you are looking for a future career, or if you want to develop new skills to help in your own projects, then it must be a good idea to accelerate your pace of learning by taking advantage of a college or private course. It may be expensive in terms of money and time, but it's an investment for the future. Your enthusiasm and hard work could propel you into a rewarding career in music, recording or sound engineering. Why sit at home dreaming?
Further information
Campus AV, (Contact Details).
Gateway School of Recording, (Contact Details).
The Institute of Music and Technology, (Contact Details).
Media Production Facilities, (Contact Details).
Jewel & Esk Valley College, (Contact Details).
University of Surrey, (Contact Details).
City of Westminster College, (Contact Details).
School Of Sound Recording, (Contact Details).
"Celebrating the recent 10th anniversary of the Full Time Sound Engineering course, the College opened a new sound lab with equipment geared towards the modern recording studio. Cheetah Music and Audio Technica helped enormously by supplying some of their top of the range hardware. It must be pointed out that if you are simply looking for a course to turn you into a 'Hi-flying-sample-seeking-whizz-kid', then this one is definitely not for you!
"There is a selection of part time and full time courses available, all of which culminate in the City and Guilds 182 Certificate in Sound Engineering (which is only offered at the CoWC), a qualification with established credibility worldwide; indeed many overseas students have enrolled over the years. All of the sound courses at the City of Westminster College offer fantastic opportunities to the right people, but always remember that commitment and dedication are the essential ingredients for success in anything you do, the bottom line being the more you put in the more you will definitely get out."
COURSES
- Sound Engineering (1 year)
- Sound Engineering (3 years day release)
- Sound Engineering (YT — 3 years day release)
All courses lead to the City & Guilds 182 examinations Parts 1 and 2.
Sharon Quinn comments: "SAE was founded by engineer/producer Tom Misner in 1977 and has since grown to a network of 16 colleges in Europe, Asia and Australia. The basic philosophy of the SAE training is to give students a solid theoretical background and individual 'hands-on' practical studio time. From a small 8-track studio SAE grew to its current situation of having 48 recording studios with many large mixing consoles, including 11 Neve VRs, some with Flying Faders, and many additional practical workstations.
"All our teachers are specially trained for teaching and have practical studio experience. In addition to our regular lecturers and supervisors we call upon a number of freelance lecturers who instruct special topics within our curriculum: Mick Anthony at the Town and Country Club; operation of the Lexicon Opus from Adrian Caroll at Silk Sound; the Synclavier at New England Digital; the AMS AudioFile at the Digital Editing Suite; Post Production at GLN Productions; Mastering techniques at the Townhouse and Chop-Em-Out, to name a few.
"All our equipment is for the exclusive use of our students. There is no restriction placed upon the amount of practical time a student may have during the course. All studios and workstations are made available to the students from 10am to 10pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 6pm Friday and Saturday."
Problems - our answers to the common cassetting problems |
Return To Zero (Part 1) |
At Home in the Studio - Living Dangerously with 'Doors' |
Before You Start Making That Demo Tape - Demo Tape Discipline |
Getting The Most From A 4-Track - Better Recording |
Community Music |
Radical Recording |
Willow - The Recording of a Film Soundtrack Music |
Survivor: The Single |
Live for the Record |
Choosing A Cassette Tape - Tape Talk |
State Of Independence - Dave Stewart On Going It Alone In The Music Biz |
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