Originally Posted by bgrotto  This type of approach is almost (almost, I said!!) completely impossible for anyone wanting to work as a serious and well-rounded professional in a genre other than hip hop. Particularly if that person is interested in engineering as opposed to mixing. It's also a much, MUCH slower way to learn, and a still-slower way to develop a good, solid CV and client list.
How and when do you learn to set up a full band, mic up multiple acoustic and electronic instruments, and juggle all the things that go into an all-out basics tracking session? Your apartment and prosumer rig ain't gonna cut it, and a paying session in a big studio ain't the time to figure it out. The only way to learn, then, is by watching someone else do it again and again, assisting them once you know the ropes, and eventually taking on a client yourself.
As for mixing, you'll be pretty useless mixing live instruments without some kind of engineering experience; the two inform each other, and the best mix engineers tend to be damn good tracking engineers too. Again, you can mix beats on an Mbox all day, and you can get really, really good at it, but that's a very one-dimensional mindset and extremely short-sighted. Odds are, you're not gonna make much of a career outta working in just one style of music, doing just mixing.
And as you're trying to learn all this stuff on a crappy-sounding rig delivering mediocre results, your demo reels and client list are going to suffer until you can really get your shit together and blow some minds, which may never happen since you'll be stuck working on a crappy-sounding rig that's delivering mediocre results. You'll also miss out on a lot of the networking opportunities working in a higher-end, professional facility can offer. Spend a week in a great studio and you'll find yourself in the company of some heavy-hitters; if you're lucky and talented and cool (and ready!), you'll land a gig with one of them.
I'm sorry, but anyone serious about making a CAREER out of working in audio is a fool for simply buying into their own home rig and going for it. That's not to say it can't be done, but it's a much slower process, and it fails far more often than it succeeds. |