Recording Engineer - a Dumb Career Choice?
Want to be a recording engineer?
Confused about which recording engineer schools would give you the best start?
Need to get a handle on your options for a recording engineer education?
Considering recording engineering as a profession or serious hobby?
This articles series will help save you time to find the best options for you.
Don't make the mistake I just made… I thought to myself:
"I'll do a quick internet search, and easily find good advice on options for getting into the audio recording profession."
Wrong!
I tried this just a couple of days ago. Yes it was easy to find course info. Too easy - I was swamped with details.
I tried searching on phrases like "recording engineer courses", then changed to training, education, schools. Then tried "sound engineer", and finally "audio engineer", again with all the variations. I used the main search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
What I found was long listings of individual recording engineering courses and various other training offers. A similar group of music recording schools showed up at the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN:
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RecordingConnection.com
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Cras.org
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audioinstitute.com
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soundmasterrecording.com
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audiomasterclass.com
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sae.edu
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oiart.org
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aes.org/education/
…along with About.com (useful explanations of the recording process and what audio engineers do…) and Wikipedia, of course.
Talking about Wikipedia, they have a pretty clear explanation of the different aspects of sound-related engineering professions.
In summary, audio engineeringincludes recording sound, and reproducing sound (using some combination of mechanics and electronics)
It also draws on many disciplines such as
- acoustics
- psychoacoustics
- music
Audio engineers need to be familiar with design, installation and operation of equipment for:
- sound recording
- sound reinforcement
- sound broadcasting
In a recording studio, the audio engineer is the person responsible for
- recording
- editing
- manipulating
- mixing
- mastering
…sound, by technical means in order to realize an artist's or record producer's creative vision.
Working mostly in music production, an audio engineer may deal with sound for a wide range of applications:
- post-production for video and film
- live sound reinforcement
- advertising
- multimedia
- broadcasting
Acoustical Engineering, on the other hand…relies heavily on
- physics and mathematics of sound waves
- sound wave propagation
- deals with
- noise control
- acoustical design
Back to my course findings…
These covered music producing schools and courses from product-specific operation, to advanced post-graduate research.
The problem was:
How could I tell if they are any good?
And more importantly, how do I know if they are any good - for me?
I spotted nothing that put things in perspective and helped me short list the options best suited to my needs. Or even helped me sort out what my "needs" were in the first place. (Turns out the info was there. It was just lost among all the noise…)
Eventually, I decided to find out what the main industry associations were (obvious, with hind-sight!):
- Audio Engineering Society (AES)
- Recording Industry of America Association (RIAA)
- National Academy or Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS)
- Society of Professional Audio Recording Services (SPARS)
- etc.
…and that's where I discovered good solid advice, and a suggested process on how to match my needs and aims to the kind of music technology or music engineering schools available.
I did find useful pointers elsewhere, but main acknowledgments go to the Audio Engineering Society's Education section. Here you'll find a pretty full directory of all sorts of training and education organisations, and some useful articles to help clarify your thoughts. You can search the directory by region (world-wide) or by type of course, so it's useable whether you're looking locally or considering type of course first.
From the research I did, there seemed 3 natural sections. Click the first link below:
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