Audio Engineering School is a Waste of Time and Money
Posted September 23rd, 2009 by Dan
Most people don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Or what they’re talking about. I’m just speaking generally. But this affliction is particularly evident in the recording industry, where technology, artistry, and bullshit all come together. I should know, because I don’t know much or have much experience but I like to pretend that I do. And that’s why you’re reading this right now.
Traditionally, a future engineer would start far down the totem pole at a large commercial studio, and would be subjected to years of bitch work, ridiculous scheduling demands, and little to no pay. He would generally be expected to know or learn electrical engineering principles, systems wiring, and signal path flow before ever hitting the record button. If he was able to deal with this reality without quitting or proving to be a total idiot, he may have been allowed to start basic session work and learn a few techniques from the more experienced engineers. And if he proved to do a decent job, he might get put on the payroll and be allowed to assist in some important sessions before finally starting to run sessions on his own. As you can gather, this was a long process, often taking place over 20 years or more. And that was just to become an “engineer.” (There are some great books available from big-time engineers like Geoff Emerick and Mike Shea if you’re interested in how it used to be).
Enter Pro-Tools
I never could have put up with the engineering paradigm of yesteryear. And I didn’t have to. 10 years ago a bought a Power Mac G4 and a Digidesign 001 (in 1999, this was the equivalent of today’s “M-box“), and thusly automatically became an engineer. See how that works? Buy an M-box, become an engineer. It’s that simple.
Well, there was that whole problem of me not knowing what the hell I was doing, but I did record my band, mix it, and put it on a CD. That’s the power digital recording has brought to the masses, and it’s totally revolutionized (or ruined) the industry.
This paradigm shift has also given rise to a new, and highly profitable, audio engineering education industry. The democratization of recording has created a flood of new prospective producers and engineers who are willing to pay for a “professional” education in order to get a leg up in this highly competitive market. Earning a degree from audio engineering schools like Full Sail, SAE, and numerous programs throughout the country has even become a respectable alternative to a traditional liberal arts or technical degree (and like traditional degrees, they cost a shit load and probably won’t have anything to do with the profession you end up working in.)
Since I didn’t go to one of these schools or programs, I like to make blanket generalizations and cast judgment upon them and their students.
Those Lovable Audio Engineering School Idiots
One of my favorite studio moments was when producer Jimmy Zampano (Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Babyface) got drunk and asked the local Pro Tools certification director why his students didn’t know how to plug in a microphone. Now granted, you don’t have to plug in a microphone to use Pro Tools, but you might want to know how the audio got into the program in the first place. The Pro Tools routing scheme is designed to emulate an analog console, where sound actually enters from somewhere. Students should probably learn that the vocal track in their “demo” session came from a real singer and a real microphone, and not from a sexy cyber-woman inside the computer.
Now I don’t mean to imply that students of full 4-year audio engineering programs don’t know anything about the analog realm. Hell, at Full Sail you get to hop in front of an SSL 9000 console and get right to making beats. What’s a compressor do? What’s unity gain? Doesn’t matter. Figure out how to get that signal through and into Pro Tools and you know it’s gonna be “warm.”
See the problem with engineering students isn’t that they don’t get to use the best equipment, it’s that they don’t get to use the shitty equipment. There are people out there making major label quality records on $5000 setups. But that’s because they’ve learned how to use what they’ve got and realize it’s full potential. How are you supposed to know that a project done in a million dollar studio sounds good when you haven’t done anything like it on the low-low first?
I hear Full Sailers talk a lot about all the awesome gear they’ve used and the awesome techniques they know about. I don’t ever hear their recordings. And when I do, they suck. It’s the classic “college kid” syndrome: lots of book smarts, no experience.
Don’t get me wrong. My first recording sucked too. And so did my second, and third, and fourth. Hell, they still blow (just kidding, they’re awesome) [Watch it, cowboy. Ed.] But that had nothing to do with equipment, and everything to do with just doing it. Nobody is getting paid to shadow the big boy engineers for ten years anymore, so it doesn’t make sense to start screwing around on big boy tools. It’s better to go get an M-box and use it until you really, truly can’t do any more with it. That’s the point when you actually recognize the value of better gear.
As in most other higher learning institutions, audio engineering instructors are generally people who couldn’t hack it in the real world. So they apply for teaching positions based on certificates and degrees they got from other audio engineering schools and programs. It’s great, because it’s a self generating profession. (It does, however, suck for the instructors when they finally have the soul-crushing realization that they aren’t good enough to do what they actually want to do. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Venturing out on your own teaches you a very important lesson about your future in the recording industry: whether or not you have one. Going to school masks this discovery, because you’re paying someone thousands of dollars a year to lie to you about your prospects in the real world. People who go to school for IT are probably going to get a shitty IT job after graduating, because IT jobs are easy, plentiful, and pay pretty well. Audio jobs don’t and engineering school isn’t going to prepare you for that.
You learn a lot more about yourself when you have to start paying your own bills. I didn’t understand this until I got out of college, when I found out that Political Science wasn’t going to cover rent. The same goes for audio school. Go out and get some real world experience before you waste daddy’s trust fund or take out a mint in loans that engineering gigs won’t pay off. $140,000 isn’t going to buy you a credit on a good album, and probably won’t get you anything more than an internship at a decent studio.
At the end of the day, you’ve got to do work. Being able to deal with failure in the real world is much more valuable than succeeding in the protected environment of an audio engineering program. There is no replacement for real experience.
Tags: audio engineering, audio school, Full Sail, MTSU, SAE, studio
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