How did you get into engineering?

[hey_mavis]

Im sure different people got into the field in different ways.

I'll go first, I started out with music, singing, song writing and playing guitar, and I became obsessed with guitar sounds, and kept asking why my guitar sounds never sounded like greenday or metallica.

I became hooked on going into music shops and trying out different guitars with different amps and pedals. But I still never got that exact sound like the album.

Then I read somewhere that metallica stacks their guitar tracks to make them fatter and at that moment I realized that the RECORDING made a big difference.

Later on my uncle gave me a DAW (digital orchestrator pro, anyone know it) and a four track and I started making beats with a lil keyboard, I wanted to sound like dr dre. I made a replica of one of his beats and I realized that the tones made as big a difference as anything else (this is all when I was about 14-16 or so).

Then I got my first job as an assistant engineer and that was it, I was hooked.

[Steffmo]

I was...still am a session drummer and keyboardist. Then I got into producing.

Then I noticed that if the budget was iffy...as it always is when you are new....the producer got ditched.....but the engineer stayed on.

I got into engineering.

[cornboy7x]

i was in the eighth grade and was in band called twin midget. we were deftones wanna bes. through a series of friends we got in touch with a guy paul bertalano or something like that, cant remember exactly what his last name was and im sure i just butchered it. but he had a pretty sweet home studio in his basement. all adat with i think a behringer board and UREI monitors. thats really all i can remember from his studio, but from the moment i walked in the door i knew thats what i wanted to do when i "grew up".

now im "grown up" (my wife begs to differ) and i havent looked back since. i make a good living and support my family working in the audio industry. granted i fix and install way more studios than i get to work in, but i still have my own studio and get to do a lot of recording. but being a tech pays the bills.

[mixerguy]

i was abducted.......

[hey_mavis]

oh I almost forgot! when I was 10 or so I walked into my first studio, I have no idea what equipment they had (other than a mackie 32 channel console) but I just loved the buttons and lights and the feel of it.

I remember being in their alone, turning the lights off and imagining I was in a space ship of some sort....

yup, I would say that's the beginning of my gear slutty-ness right there, tho at that time (at the age of 10 or 11) I had no idea I would ever have my own studio...

[colinmiller]

The whole astronaut thing didn't pan out.

[EJW]

I bought a drum mic package years ago to do a demo...so I had a handful of mics. Then I just kept going

[vernier]

Started as a kid, always had a recorder.

[sonicdefault]

You guys are crackin' me up.


My first experiments in the engineering world were kinda on the destructive side. Like removing components out of my sister's radio, and then watching from the closet as she fiddled with the knobs, and slapped the side, desperately trying to hear her jams. Later, I moved on to more insidious psycho-terrorist behavior. Things like inserting counterfit backwards-masked messages onto her eight track tapes, making her think they were talking just to her. And still, there I'd be, in her closet giggling in all my brilliance as she would put in Hotel California, or maybe Saturday Night Fever only to hear my scratchy little voice talkin' to her. (that is until I felt her hands around my throat)

I remember one time, the TV repair man was at our house. And, as he knelt there going about his work. I bombarded him with what must have been a couple of hundred "technical" questions I think he kinda liked it though. Most people were probably uninterested in his highly skilled labor, but at such an impressionable age, I was ripe for a mentor. This of course, was in the days when televisions were full of tubes, and he told me that there was a certain tube inside my tv which had such a high voltage (or perhaps current), that it would instantly electrocute anyone who touched it! Now... imagine how my eyes lit-up upon hearing this! If he only knew... this little destroyer of worlds was already invisioning removing that tube, and sticking it in someone's stereo . It was the first time I realized that tubes could be both dangerous and fun. Needless to say, this is when I started blowing up radios.

And, as you might expect... this was all the education I needed to start a fruitful career running the sound at,,, my local church . Let's just say there were many prayers said during those years. And, i was so good at it, they decided to give me an early retirement (with pay) at the age of 15.

Being imboldened by this, I started working the sound at my high school. Talk about fun! This is when I was first introduced to equalizers, and their many unique applications. I had a blast experimenting with people's voices while they gave speeches to the student body! Or, perhaps I might let my creative side emerge from the ashes like a screeching phoenix, during the school's beauty pageant. Okay... there were a few times when tempers flared. But, was it really my fault some of the contestants were less gifted than others, and unable to keep up with my remixes during their talent segment? Personally, I thought it really sorted out the talent from the posers. And, if any of the student council gave me a hard time, well then, they may have soon realized the pain and embarrassment of a bad microphone during honors day.

One time, our nerdy class president (who just so happened to consider himself to be the next Barry Manilow) mysteriously lost all the bass frequencies in his voice while he sang during a pep-rally. Bad mic? perhaps... However, it may have been related to the acoustics test I was performing while he sang. It wasn't my fault- He should have worked better on his timing. I was too busy to wait till after hours. It was a great life lesson for him anyway. You know what they say about being in the wrong place at the wrong time

After that, I decided to change my ways. I repented and went to work sound in the hills of a far away monastery. Every now and then, i rang the bell too loud, but other than that, they seemed to be happy. Eventually, i came to my senses, and I returned to the real world. These days, I simply overwhelm myself with lots of expensive gear to calm my tendencies towards audio mayhem. There's so much more I could tell, but I don't want to bore anyone


-SD


(all in good fun, and barely true)

[Eganmedia]

First I got a degree in English and realized I was unqualified to do anything. I was playing in a band and had a Tascam 388 set up in our rehearsal space. People started asking me to record them. So like most people, I decided to pursue a career path that didn't use what I learned in college, and had a high likelihood of failure.

That was twenty years ago, and I'm still failing...

[big country]

vernier
Plug in mic, hit record . . .
Started as a kid, always had a recorder.

you make it sound easy
LOL

[duckoff]

First I got a degree in English and realized I was unqualified to do anything. I was playing in a band and had a Tascam 388 set up in our rehearsal space. People started asking me to record them. So like most people, I decided to pursue a career path that didn't use what I learned in college, and had a high likelihood of failure.

That was twenty years ago, and I'm still failing...

Ditto except my degree was in Pharmacology & I had a fostex 8 tack :-)

[soundtx]

My wife was a singer when we first got married. But put it off for kids and life. when the kids got older and on their own she started singing again weddings small private functions. Me being the anal person that I am I couldn't stand the sound of the places she sang at. So out came the credit card, lots of reading books,internet and the likes. Started doing sound for her at first she hated it because during practice sessions I would practice on her. Now we run a music hall with shows every week.Started recording her because we would pay money and get crap, so bought some adats and started recording, same thing books, internet and lots of experimenting. Now have small studio up stairs at the music hall with daw and misc. gear. Man what a life changing experience.

[Sigma]

nepotism

[SighBorg]

I blame it on Kraftwerk... first tape I ever had was this Kraftwerk tape my parents gave me to go to sleep to. Man what a way to get a kid into sound.

Then later I saw Crystal Method get booed through a set on MTV. I was like d00d I got to start making sounds too.

Started off on a MOD tracker. Then "upgraded" to softsynths back when they were lame. Eventually got a keyboard. Literally spent every day all day programming patches for synths for years.

When rock bands started to sound like synthesizers (I call it Synthetic Rock) I started to get interested in more of the recording/mix side. Kinda identified with it I guess. The album that pushed me over the edge was Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory. The number of mix/production tricks that was pulled off in that album is still totally insane.

Now I'm not really doing a whole lot of engineering at the moment. But I'll be back in a year or 2, I promise

Started as a kid, always had a recorder.

Geoff?

[cavern]

necessity, when i started to want to record my material, i couldn't afford to go into studios so i bought a fostex 4 track and i started making mistakes. that was 25 years ago....