Where to get started

I have just been thinking of some career choices that I would be interested in going to school for and all that. I don't exactly know what the correct job description or term is for what I'm interested in but Ill try and explain. I would like to maybe work at some sort of studio and like maintain/setup and all that. Set up mixing boards, guitars, amp, effects, drums and all that. I guess you would might call it a "music tech or gear tech" for a studio. Is there a school for that? Or even such a job like that in a music studio?

I know this sounds very immature and noobish to be saying that I wanna work in a studio for a career. I'm into being like a producer or anything like that.

So yeah.... If you could like tell me if there is such a job in the music world in a studio like this, let me know.

thanks

Steve Albini: "There is no demand for producers or engineers. When I mean none, I mean zero".

Producers, engineers and mix engineers have been hit hard due to downloading, because less labels (both major and indie) have been taking chances on bands, and they used to finance (or finance a good portion) of bands going into studios.

As a producer/ engineer, it's been rough. Because the bigger bands--even on an independent level--already have their go to guys, and those people aren't exactly rolling in the dough as it is. Some people are busy--like my mastering engineer, the legendary John Golden---is adding another mastering room and he's booked up for at least 2 months. But that's the exception, not the rule....he had built up his name for a few decades prior to the massacre of the industry, and now that the industry is scrambling, they're taking less chances on unknown producers/ engineers/ mastering engineers---and it doesn't even matter whether those guys are great or bad or whatever, because the opportunities just aren't there anymore to build your name. It's sink or swim right away.

I hate to say it--honestly--but run, run, run in the other direction, because you won't make money at it. I'd rather be honest and have other people realize right now what i've spent years trying to achieve. And it's not just me either, some of the lesser known engineers/ producers on production forums that I go to are thinking about new careers. Next year i'm probably giving this up (as well as the music thing) and becoming a therapist, which is something that i've wanted to do, and it will actually allow me to afford to buy a house and maybe afford a family, if I wanted to have one. Unless something drastic happens in the next few years, the industry for new bands is finished. This model is done. I've known friends that spent thousands of dollars on recording courses only to get out and find no work. As a friend told me, "well, I spent 7 grand, and on the bright side, I got these recording books and learned how to roll up cabling correctly", haha. Even the bigger studios already have their assistants AND a queue of enthusiastic people waiting to intern that would be lucky to get in there for free, let alone a paid position.

The only way I could see it working is if you took out a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars and did a world class studio that had the best consoles, mics, isolation booths (isolation problems are what plague alot of studios), etc. But then you have to ask yourself if a few hundred thousand (multi hundred thousand?) gamble would be worth it. Then the problem would still be building a reputation to a place like Ocean Way or Sound City or Bad Animals or Electric Lady--studios with decades of experience before this collapse. Even a studio like Albini's own Electrical Studios is still booming, but that's because he has a great reputation. There's just really no way to do it small, these days, so it has to be a huge gamble and the way that the industry is going, I wouldn't ever, ever take that gamble anymore. A few years back I was thinking about it, but forget about it now.

The ironic thing is that when I got my first digital 8 track console in 1999 for $2000, I would have said that the opportunity for engineers to do it themselves and carve their own way would have never been better. And it was--for a small window of time before the technology kept on going down in price and to the point where any hack engineer could get ProTools or professional recording studio equipment on pro audio theft torrents. Now it's just too damn available to anyone and everyone and everyone's got a buddy that can do it for cheap or for free--i've had multiple bands come up to me and ask to make them a good recording, because they've heard what i've done. And I say, "it depends on what you want, but generally I can record and mix for a few hundred dollars, but my prices are flexible, depending on what you want". I mean, I think that's fair--i've gotta be able to get paid something for my time, because i'm nowhere near a rookie, and i've spent thousands of dollars on my equipment, and can also transport it to wherever the band wants to record--rehearsal space, basement, etc. I even have vintage amps that they can use for the sessions, and a few hundred bucks is still too much for them.

It's hard to compete with a buddy that can do it for cheap or free. And then I hear the atrocious sounds that those guys get, and then i'm thinking that at least if I did it for cheap or free, they would have got something great sounding and I could have minimized the damage. Even in the 80's on punk rock recordings where bands had bad production, they had to spend a fair amount on them, usually in the hundreds or thousands. There was a certain level of money that was expected even just to get a crappy sounding analog recording. Hell, Nirvana's "Bleach" cost $600 in 1989, and THAT was a deal and sounded pretty good despite the small budgets.

There's a music industry school in Orlando called Full Sail. I've been there a long time ago (as a demonstration band to record, not as a student). From what I saw, they give you some top notch gear to play on -- SSLs and the like. Cool. But, from reading around on the web, their placement program is pretty horrible and the college in general doesn't have a good rep -- especially considering that it's super expensive. In *these* times, I wouldn't touch them.

These are troubled times for studios, as the post below indicates. The more generic approach to this is to look into what they call "audio and video equipment technician" work. Some community colleges do offer certificates for this, but I do not know how valuable they are. From what I see, AV work is very much apprenticeship based, you start low and work your way up. While music studios may be in trouble, there still is plenty of AV jobs around, ranging from live sound to installation work. Probably grunt work at first, but at least it's work.

I think it really helps to have interest in the tech as a hobby beforehand. Even at Full Sail, when we were recording, we saw one guy basically take charge and led around the other 6 or 7 students. He obviously came in with a sense of what he was doing before hand and probably gained more out of the Full Sail experience, for what it was worth. You really learn more by doing, so in many ways the best "education" for sound production is to spend your money on a small scale studio setup for yourself, read some books, poke around some of the Internet forums, and experiment.

Yeah, that's the thing--their placement program has gotta be next to non-existent, simply because the industry has dried up. It's probably just how like it felt when carpenters and shoemakers/ repairers were being put out of jobs when cheap, offshore products became cheaper for people to buy. There was suddenly no need for carpenters to make furniture when people could buy cheap veneered stuff, nor was there a reason for people to get their shoe soles fixed when it cost more to fix than to buy a new pair. So they chucked the old pair. No need for the shoe repairers. Just the way that the industry evolved, it's not fair, but c'est le vie, as they say.

Yeah, it's definetely diversify or die. Any way that one can get work, do it. The studio jobs are the prime ones that people hold out for, but they're pretty rare nowadays.

For sure. As a matter of fact, engineering and production has become worth more to the smaller band/ musician than the average producer/ engineer trying to make a go of it with a music engineering career, just because they can cut costs and overhead and not have to incur thousands of dollars in expenses at big studios (though a good mastering engineer can be worth their weight in gold....for $500-$1000 usually or in that range, you can get top flight mastering engineers, which is well worth it). We take alot of time to record our stuff--lots of overdubs, harmonies, additional instrumentation--none of which would be possible if we didn't do it mostly outside of big studios. That's still a huge advantage over the way that things would have been done 10, 15, 20 years ago. Even Wavelab Essentials 6--which is awesome for mastering--was $150 after tax, up here.

For experimenting with sound and getting better at recording your own stuff, it's infinitely valuable. The only thing that you need to spend is a modest budget of maybe a couple thousand dollars to get yourself some really great computer software or a DAW standalone unit, some mics, mixing/ monitoring speakers, and some other mic pres or outboard gear. But for a career, forget about it. For that, you'd need to apply at all the major studios, just so that you'd have a place to work, and the market is already much too saturated for that.

Don't you guys think, too, that part of the problem is that people accept crap sound in this day and age? I mean, I agree with everything in this thread, but it seems to me that the biggest reason that a band will go with their buddy (running a cracked version of Cubase on a PC with an Intel Celeron processor) instead of spending a few hundred bucks is that they don't care what it sounds like at all because this is the age of the 128 crappy mp3 file.

I dunno. When I was a teen and then in my early twenties (early 80's,) every musician friend I had was into high fidelity. It was always about who had the best turntable, the best speakers, and so on. And if you had a crap stereo, you knew it, and your friends new it. And we hated cassettes for their hiss, and records for their skips and crackles and pops, and we loved the CD when it came out because it had no hiss and no skips.

We agonized over our home recordings and as discussed in numerous other threads, moved from cassette deck to four track cassette to 8 track Pro Tools Free to Cubase or Logic or whatever, and we read every article in every home recording magazine about mic placement, and we ate it all up and loved it and dreamed of making recordings that sounded as good as "The Nightfly." Now, the technology is SO outstanding that anyone willing to put in the time and energy and effort that we did would have no problem making a good/great recording, but so few people are willing to do it. I don't get it. I just think it must have to do with the fact that the younger generation is being brought up on really bad fidelity. I'd love to hear alternate theories.

Oh yeah, and toss on top of that the fact that nearly all commercial recordings are now mastered to sound AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE WHICH HAS LED TO MOST OF IT SOUNDING LIKE DOG P**P. There's that, too.

Not everyone can afford to spend a couple hundred bucks. Let's face it, being a "musician" can be expensive.

That's the whole weird thing, man....maybe i'm just still living in the past of when, like I say, I got my first digital unit, the Roland VS840EX (with 250 MB disks....you know how little fits on there? ) for $2000 in 1999. That was alot of dough for then. Paying prices like that forced the more serious people to get more serious about their work or making better home recordings. I know that I had to be serious. I mean, hell, even my Pioneer standalone cd recorder was $1000 then, because I didn't have a computer, AND cd burners/ duplicators at that point were still very, very expensive (now they're cheaper than hell). In a couple of months then, I spent 3 grand on just those two items.

Now I lament the fact that alot of people have no clue on what a struggle it was to get to that level. Hell, I remember when a guy we knew in the mid 90's had a 4 track cassette, and we all thought he was god, even though the recordings were still amateuristic, as one could expect from a 4 track. I mean, if a couple of hundred dollars is "too much", then this whole thing has devolved much further than I think it was gonna devolve. I have stacks of 250 MB zip disks that I recorded on that were $35 bucks each, and those held one, maybe two songs with 8 tracks, recorded at the optimum sound quality level. Even that forced me to make better recordings, simply because disk space cost an arm and a leg then. Now you have hard drives in the terrabytes, and there's really no quality filter for "crap" that you used to not be able to afford to keep on your zip disks or hard drive or whatever.

A) If you are a band, why spend top dollar for an excellent sounding recording when you can pay a modest fee for a pretty good sounding recording? My impression is that only the really top producers, and the directly-connected Hollywood stuff (like score work etc.) can justify huge expenses these days. The studios that are probably hurt are the mid-grade ones that used to charge a few thousand for a recording, and record demo-grade or lower-fidelity material. Even a few thousand can get you some nice recording gear to record at home, at your own leisure.

B) The digital audiophile market is split, which doesn't help things. Analog vinyl diehards seem to dominate audiophile sectors. My impression is that a lot of the former audiophiles moved to top-end home theater, for various reasons.

C) Even if you wanted to pay top dollar for an excellent sound recording, there is little incentive because the pay for top recordings is reduced these days. Actually the pay for bands *period* is reduced. The dollars and sense just doesn't work out.

I think that you're probably right. At a basic level, it boils down to saving money--EVEN IF those bands have to steal from pro audio torrents. I mean, what stops the honest person from stealing a $2000 ProTools program, when they don't have to pay for it?. I mean, the whole slap in the face is that some bands and engineers are often getting those programs by stealing them, but it's kinda like stealing a book, but realizing that you can't read the language anyways. I'm not sure if there's the appreciation for the power that has been afforded them.

I think that my personal gripe is that bands can be spending more time on their mixes and mastering....but it still turns out sub-par! I had a conversation with John Golden tonight, who's mastered tons of big acts, and he said that he was impressed by our master mixes, because we left a ton of headroom. He said that he gets some mixes that all the VU meters are lit up as one big continuous block--they screwed it up before they even handed him the masters. Then he tells them, "I can do this, but it's already all maxed out at 0 dB. Did you guys use any limiting or compression software?". There's just a real misconception of how to make good recordings these days, and then you have the bands who do try to get things done properly with top notch mastering, and the mastering engineers can't even do anything!

A little information goes a long way. I thought it was common knowledge not to slam the recordings to get them loud--that's the mastering engineer's job. But yeah, that's just one symptom of the bands being given the power, and then not knowing what to do with it. Like I say, it's like having a book but not being able to read it because it's in another language. Sure all that information is in front of you, but if you can't translate it, then it really just amounts to a hill of beans in the end. Same thing with the manuals for the equipment---they're usually big and intimidating. Well, without reading that big and intimidating book, you're not getting the most out of your equipment. For the people that steal the programs, do they even have the manuals? I know that the Wavelab 6 Essentials pack that I bought, even to get assistance/ help online, you have to have registered your code as being legitimate.

Is ProTools completely software these days? If so, not much. Elsewise the hardware requirements would make pirating ProTools tough. You don't see pirated UAD plugins, simply because there is a hardware requirement for them.

In some ways I'm surprised other manufacturers, at least at the high end of the market, don't take the UAD approach when it comes to writing plugins etc. On the other hand, PCs are so powerful that the difference between Sonar and Cubase and Protools is far less than it used to be, and people bitch about the UAD cards... so...

You would think.

Now, I've seen plenty of (admittedly more dive oriented) club sound guys redline everything, too. At this level, I've actually had to yell at a guy who didn't know the difference between a gain pot and a fader (and consequently struggled correcting a distorted microphone). Oh well, the pay is low for dive sound bars and that's what you get. Makes you appreciate the good sound guys more.

Not usually.

I'm not sure....but I know that my friend got Cubase off of a pro audio torrents--I said, "okay, WHY?". Same old story--struggling musician, pawning off equipment, can't even afford rent, etc. I told him "well {censored}, dude, you have bigger priorities than making music in a crumbling economy--free equipment or paid equipment notwithstanding".

I do know that with Wavelab 6, they made me remove all the usb stuff....dongles.... so that there was no way to send it to another computer. I had no intention to do it, but they've really got pretty high security on their stuff nowadays.

Yeah, my experience with most live sound guys is that they're just totally inept. I mean, some are really good, but others try hard and all and certainly there's certain bands that pose more of a difficulty than others (ie: if you have an accordian, a triangle player and a digeridoo player rather than the standard guitar/ bass/ drums/ vocals format), but i've had shows where onstage vocal monitoring is non-existant, or I can't hear what the person is doing right next to me. The polite request for more usually results in marginal, if hardly improved results. It's enough to make you want to hire your own soundguy, but even the cheap house soundguys here are usually $80 bucks, and it's just really not set up for bands to sound good.

What does it cost to make a decent sounding album on a pc these days?

It costs talent and skill.

I find it a lot easier to just go to a good studio with a good engineer and pay a couple of grand for a decent recording.

Sure, I could buy a couple grand worth of gear, and spend a few years learning how to use it well, but who has that kind of time when you work full time, have kids, and gig with band and as a solo?

Studios are like bands these days, hurting for business. You can find some good studios for 50-70 dollars an hour or less and negotiate setup time. Some studios do block rates or weekend specials. As a matter of fact, my last two studio CDs the engineer gave me a project rate. I got 90 hours of recording and mixing for about 2200-2400 dollars. Since he had his own label, he fronted me the recording and I paid him back out of sales. No fuss, no muss.

There are lots of 50$/hr studios in my town but most of them seem to be almost as bad as the kids in their bed rooms in turns of the {censored} sound that comes out of them. I don't know if its a lack of effort when recording younger local bands or what......

There's a couple of studios that are pretty good around here, but they tend to charge more like $75 an hour or more. We did that once. Hard to justify the expense these days, when home studio recordings are okay enough.

We recorded at a place we dubbed "Big Lots Studio". The quality was so bad, we ended up re-recording the stuff ourselves.

How much money does it cost to make a decent album on a pc these days?

It depends on what you consider 'decent', and how much gear you want to invest in.

To get started with a decent recording setup to make anything close to what my studio CDs sound like, the research I did indicated I'd have to spend at least a couple of grand and take a considerable amount of time to learn to use it.

"Okay enough" isn't good enough for me.

So how much for "Okay enough"?

IMHO, the biggest cost is your time: what are you willing to spend, time-wise, to get better? I started making recordings in 1995 on a crappy ghettoblaster....and i'm still learning how to get better, and recently bought Wavelab 6 Essentials, for mastering and editing. If I added up the cost of all the time I spent, i'd be in the poorhouse....it has to be fun, first and foremost.

You need to take your favorite albums and understand what makes them great, from a production standpoint. Basic mic placement techniques, EQ, mixing, spatial panning/ depth are basic things that you can concentrate on to get things to sound great on a basic, fundamental level. IMHO, the problem these days (even above slammed masters) is poor mixes. A really weakly captured snare or drum sound can be brought out and given presence and EQ'd and given small but reflective reverbs in the mix to bring it out to give it power. I hear alot of long tailed reverbs on sounds--mainly drums, and it has this atrocious, cavernous sound...think: most of the 80's drum sounds. Now with early reflection/ near levels, you can bring those virtual walls in and create this gigantic room sound that's spacious, reflective and big, but not really detectable--great drum sounds in an actual room or studio room usually have a very high reflection, low reverb tail rate, where you're not even hearing the reflections. IMHO, engineers, for years, got that wrong....you don't hear the reverb as much as you feel it around you.

Same thing with anything--the rule is to get everything sounding great in the room (amps, guitars, bass guitars, bass amps, drums, etc), but the mix is also there to beef things up and reduce or increase things to. Great mastering can do this too, but IMHO--with all due respect to the engineer and mastering engineer--- a mixing engineer may be the most important cog in the end vision, because that's where all the elements come together in the pot of stew and start to work....or not work.

But a great mixing engineer (ie: Andy Wallace, Tom/ Chris Lord Alge) is paid very, very well, and is simply not at the price availability of many bands. Mastering engineers--who also do amazing work-- get paid well, too, but not as well as mixing engineers. That's my synopsis--all the critical points of the album that were supposed to pay off in the end come down to a great recording but poor mixing, and sometimes even great mixing of a poorly recorded album can only do so much.

But ultimately, everyone's gotta work with each other in the chain to communicate to deliver a great product. Bands need to contact producers/ engineers/ mixing engineers/ mastering engineers and give them an example of an album--not a song--an album of what they want their music to sound like, production-wise. Sometimes producers can point bands in the direction of the techniques and gear needed to achieve similar results....it's like people asking, "why can't I get my TubeScreamer to sound like a Big Muff?". You need someone educated that can use a variety of tools and sonic shaping abilities to be able to explain to you that, in that case, if you want a Big Muff sound then you should just go for the Big Muff.

Sometimes you just can't get the sound out of something without spending the money to do it properly. For example, there's no substitute for the "vintage" tube amp guitar sound, other than using a vintage tube amp with the right blend of preamp and power tube saturation, transformer sag and speaker breakup. You won't be able to dial that in from a modeller....now you have bands dialing in the "vintage" setting and being bummed at why it doesn't move them or have the total sound of their favorite recordings. It's because those recordings cost tons of money to make, and while you can scrimp on some of the cost by figuring out how to do it yourself, you can't scrimp on getting to a certain level of recording equipment, or music instrument equipment. You don't need to spend hundreds on a good mic--a 200 dollar condenser mic usually does the trick if you have a knack for EQ and mic placement.

A good ear wins out in the end, it's the most valuable transducer in the whole chain. As long as you train your ear to be objective and measure yourself up against your favorite recordings and either succeeding or failing (failing is almost certainly imminent to start off), then you can start getting to something that you feel can compete with the best. If it's just simply "okay" or "alright", there's just really no room for marginal recordings these days.

Hey, I should have gone into greater detail. I am not really interested in learning to record. I just wanted to know what the people who would be recording me would be spending so I will not be ripped off. What you are saying is someone could make a great recording on a pc for a few hundred dollars if they have talent?

It depends on what they are recording.

A good room is a big part of acoustic recording. So are good instruments. And good players. Good mics, good preamps, good effects etc.

I dont think anyonw will be making a "great" recording for a few hundred. However, someone with talent, skill and has invested years of time will be able to make the most out of prosumer gear and get a fairly decent sound.

There is no cheap way to make a great recording, period. You could even go into studios and the people there might not be well suited for your style--most producers are groomed to be able to work with any band of any style, but honestly, most don't and most are suited better to "niche" bands. If you get a buddy to do it for cheap, it will probably sound like "cheap". Time is money and money is time, and when you want to do a few more takes to get something right, something that stands the test of time instead of you being unhappy with it in the month, the only solution is time. And everyone's time on this planet is worth something to them. Or it should.

I get bands coming up to me and wanting me to make them a great sounding record, probably on the accolades that i've got with my own band. I say, "sure, it depends on what you want and how much time you want to spend, but I could do a basic recording for you for a few hundred dollars". I've got thousands of dollars worth of equipment. The "few hundred dollars" is even too expensive for them, and it scares them off. Good! I'm not doing anything for free, unless there's something that they can trade me--money, equipment, connections/ prestige, etc. These are all basement bands that want to promote it to their basement crowd friends--ie: connections are non-existent.

The best I can do on a forum here, on a small basement/ rehearsal space recording, is to advise paying at least a few hundred dollars to cover someone's time for the recording, a few hundred for the mix. Maybe 500-600 total for a basic vocals/ guitars/ drums/ bass setup. You don't want something for free, because if it's not up to par, you can't demand anything for free. Here's my synopsis of the standoff: bands can't afford big studios, and small unproven engineers can't get work at big studios anymore. You don't know if they're going to do a good job, just as they don't have any proof that you'll pass their name on after they record you cheaply, to network. If the few hundred dollars scenario is too rich a gamble to pay a lesser known engineer/ producer to get you something done affordably, then go into a studio with an engineer/ producer that you like the work that they've done on some of your favorite records.

I would personally budget at least $1000 for something decent sounding. Our most well known studio in town charges $60 an hour (including engineer), and that's a helluva deal, because they've got a great room, API mic pres, a Neotek Elite console, and a Neve and some cool amps and guitars and things that you can use in a pinch. If you're well rehearsed, it should be no problem laying down a basic vocals/ guitars/ bass/ drums album for $1000, including some mix time. But really, the mix should probably be another $1000, as well. Because if you're tracking and mixing for $1000, that's about 16.5 hours, and you can really only go about 8-10 before the fatigue/ frustration sets in, as one engineer has told me (which I agree with). And when you start mixing, you should have a fresh mind. So you're looking at 3-4 days at 8-10 hours a day, which should yield you a really good recording/ performance/ mix.

I know that bands just want to put something out cheap, but the market is saturated....best to work on something great that is well recorded/ produced and well performed. Plus, it makes one feel like they've accomplished something--you know that you used all that top flite gear that is in the tens--more like multiple tens of thousands--range.

You could make a great recording on the cheap if you have a mac(2500.00), logic(500.00), a few good mikes (2,000.00), a really good interface ($1,500.00), a really good pre(1,500.00), really good monitors(1-2,000.00), a good room (?), a great engineer(?), and a great musician(?). The prices are averages, not exact. You could do it with less, or more commonly, a hell of a lot more.

Not a "great" recording, at least technically.

I would say that it takes about $10,000 minimum hardware and room setup to get great technical recordings for a simple rock and roll overdubbing-type scenario, not counting the cost of the talent behind the boards.

This is probably a severe underestimate, as (in my experience) engineers like to keep an arsenal of mikes for their acoustic recordings, both low-cost and high-cost. They may use the el cheapo SM-57 for some tracks, but they may prefer an expensive Neumann U87 for others. Same thing goes for plugins and outboard and whatnot.

Of course, "great" recordings musically have been made on a helluv a lot less. Even technically, some music genres too are much less expensive to set up a "great" studio for (all-electronic music, for instance).