j-far wrote:kobeaki wrote:j-far wrote:Audio Engineering is something that I'm looking towards as a career. kobeaki, if you are interested in helping me out with some tips and other info re: your work and stuff, I'd like to talk more about it.
absolutely...first off find the the best gig you can in the best studio you can find, be prepared to be poor for awhile, learn everything, i mean everything you can, soak up everything you can like a sponge, have a great attitude no matter how stupid or (Please Use More Appropriate Word) the producer or the client is, be clean and smell good, learn the tools you'll use, say buy a mac, buy the L.E. version of pro tools, learn it and know it like the back of your hand, record your buddies for free, the practice you'll recieve is more valuble than the $50 bucks or whatever...
it truly is a system where you'll get out exactly what you put in....when i started,, working 110 hour weeks, @ 7 bucks an hour while using a 1099 tax form, is the standard and the norm, dont be afraid of that, and in those conditions is where you'll get your real knowledge and experience, much like being a rookie and playing in the finals...also get a good reliable car, as you'll probably be a runner for awhile, just take it and the small abuse you'll get...
the fringe benefits greatly outweigh the downside...
Well. thanks for the advice man! Anyways I'm from an electrical engineering background so I might not be as near to the creative side as you guys do. I might be looking more at a signal processing oriented job, may be a little more involved in the technical side.
I'm also looking at the Creative Engg. program in USC, which seems pretty interesting. Do you have anyone working with you from similar backgrounds and what kind of work do they normally do?
I also have a pretty decent experience in video editing and sound mixing but I have mostly done amateur jobs for my university so thats how I got interested in this field.
as well as ae should be having some live sound experience, most engineers nowadays, dont know the difference between ohm's laws and indian meditation oooommmmms, that is a tragedy, back in the day you had to be basically an ee to be an ae, it makes a tremendous difference in understanding the equipment...so thats not bad thing at all, there is a documentary on Tom Dowd, anold skool ae/producer, anyway he started his as ee working on the manhattan project, nuclear science, etc...
the point is you already understand electrons, diodes, thermal valves etc, it is a good starting point...
i neither had any ee training nor knew anything about music(notes, reading) but tons of passion, as erik could tell you there are generally two types of engineers, the ones who are classically trained, and technically proficient or those who are more vibe guys...id fall more into the latter, and neither is wrong...
the only downside to being an engineer, for me, is that my love of music got severely tested...