The Urge...

Every now and then we all get the urge to stop faking and get some formal training. Maybe we feel stifled or stuck in our recording work. Maybe we've decided it's time to get serious and make a career out of audio, or music, or some related subject. Maybe our parents are on our case about doing something with our life for a change. Could be we're considering going to college. Or maybe we're in college and beginning to think we aren't all that interested in political science after all, while the band we're in is really beginning to crank and after the last gig, where the producer visiting from LA said . . . .

Anyway, we figure it would be really cool to really know this stuff, so that we could make really cool recordings 'n music, instead of just guessing and fooling around with it. And of course we'd dig getting a real job in the industry, maybe become a producer, work for a major label, go on tour, work in films, who knows? The first step seems to be getting to a point where we know enough that somebody'll actually hire us to do what we really like doing! It's a nice fantasy. Fortunately, it can, on occasion, become reality.

As we get to thinking about it, the first questions that come up are where do we go to get training and exactly what kind of training should we really be getting? If we send off for literature from all the places that advertise in the recording mags, we get back some fairly glitzy brochures pitching short professional/vocational courses, usually aimed at giving us enough chops to get an entry-level job in an established full-service studio. The tuition is often a little heart-stopping, and various unkind folks may suggest to us that the courses are a rip-off, that what we really need is college, what we really need is physics, what we really need is music, what we really need is a job, that you can't learn this stuff, that you can't get a job in the field, that you can get a job but can't make any money in the field, etc., etc.

It's all a little confusing, daunting and discouraging, and it sure makes making a decision tougher. What's a body to do?