You are likely to record a gold/platinum album if you....

[Chris Kress]

You are least twice as likely to record a gold or platinum album if you DO NOT complete a music engineering degree.. The link below is to a quite solid poll conducted on this forum..
http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=80537

If you care to comment then please comment PURELY from the statistical basis that as of 11/30/06 the vote looked like this:

Yes- I have an audio engineering degree and am a chief engineer for gold/platinum records 19 29.69%
No - I do not have an audio engineering degree but am a chief engineer for gold/platinum records 45 70.31%

The data speaks for itself...

[Windtaken]

or those who have recorded a gold or platinum album have less need to pursue a music engineering degree

[djui5]

[joaquin]

Originally Posted by djui5

ditto
that

[Mr Skills]

The is an example of why you have to be careful with statistics. Engineering degrees have only become common relatively recently. Older, more experienced engineers/producers are more likely to have made platinum albums. I suspect they are also less likely to spend time on internet forums (as a trend, of course, not a rule).
..


..

[RoundBadge]

[dave-G]

... or maybe it's just that a preponderance of folks with shiny metal records are old enough that they started their careers during an era before the schools sprouted up en-masse .. ?

[edit -- nod at Mr Skills]

FWIW, I'm no big fan of the schools, nor did I go to one, but I don't think this analysis is especially roadmap-altering, either way.

-dave (Aluminum-and-Magnesium-Record-winning engineer)

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by Chris Kress

Yes- I have an audio engineering degree and am a chief engineer for gold/platinum records 19 29.69%
No - I do not have an audio engineering degree but am a chief engineer for gold/platinum records 45 70.31%

The data speaks for itself...

Ah, but to be even remotely meaningful you would have needed two more responses:
"I am a professional recording engineer with a degree but no gold records" and
"I am a professional recording engineer with no degree and no gold records"

This would give a clearer picture of the overall percentage of engineers with and without degrees and with or without gold and platinum records. For example if only 29% of the respondents have a degree then the rate of gold records between the two groups would be the same. Or maybe there are only 19 respondents with a degree and 100% of them have gold records!

Your survey is meaningless

Higher education may or may not make you a better engineer but at the very least it should improve your critical thinking skills.

[warhead]

Did you verify each of those platinum / gold claims?

You could have had your chain yanked on most of those responses but who knows.

War

[u b k]

Originally Posted by Chris Kress

You are least twice as likely to record a gold or platinum album if you DO NOT complete a music engineering degree..

the data speaks for itself.

data never speaks for itself, it just sits there silently, waiting with infinite patience for people to misinterpret it.

your data is neither valid, nor representative, nor statistically significant. even if it were any or all of those, it still would not support the assertion quoted above. to support your assertion, you would need to know what percentage of non-degreed engineers have made gold/platinum recordings, and what percentage of degreed engineers have made gold/platinum recordings. you would also, aside from the data, need to eliminate or disprove any spurious variables.

but you asked the wrong questions, and you used a horribly inaccurate methodology (poll).

what your data would support, if it were good data, is this: "70% of responding chief engineers for gold/platinum recordings do not have a degree in music engineering. 30% do."

the road from correlation to causation is a long and difficult one, and i'm afraid you haven't even found the on-ramp yet.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

[dlmorley]

Statistics!

I have a gold disc from Belgium. For a Dance CD from the 90's. 25,000 sales!
Watch out diddy...

No degree here (except for a degree of luck)

Where were these gold discs? USA?? UK?? Luxembourg?? Belgium ?? Lapland ??
What percentage of people WITH a degree compared to those without have a gold disc?
Proof that the questionees DO have a gold disc

Labels hype sales so much these days anyway. Hold back all orders and let them fly on one day just to make sure you are in the charts so you can say you had a hit or a gold disc. Have you noticed HOW MANY "Artists" have "hits" these days?

I think maybe the same question but "have sold 1 million copies of a specific album"

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by u b k

data never speaks for itself, it just sits there silently, waiting with infinite patience for people to misinterpret it.

the road from correlation to causation is a long and difficult one, and i'm afraid you haven't even found the on-ramp yet.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

LMFBO

Statistics are a funny thing and very few people really understand how to use them and even more still believe in them.

Did you know that the biggest increase in Heroine overdoses is among white women over 65?

It's true. A few years ago there was one case. Last year there was 4. It multiplied by 4. A 300% increase.

Doesn't that appear to be a problem? That's statistics.

I go for chaos theory in general.

Try this test if you are bored.

Roll a dice at least 30 times. You will definitely not get 5 ones, 5 twos, 5 threes, 5 fours, 5 fives and 5 sixes.

In fact, you can continue rolling until the end of time and you will never get an even mount on all 6 sides.

Kinda weird. Ehhh? Even weirder. You'll almost always have more sixes than any other number.

I actually have a friend who believes that all probabilities are 50/50.

Either you get hit by a bus, or you don't.

[DeathMonkey]

I would add this thought - people without a degree have only their demonstrable skills to use in getting jobs. Unless they have talent, they are unlikely to get far enough to amass the resume necessary to operate at that level, whereas plenty of tin ears with fancy paper float through the corridors of power. Credentials and bullsh*t can get you pretty far, especially if, as a producer, you know who to hire.

I know plenty of great engineers and producers with degrees and specialized training, but in all honesty, most of the total hacks I know went to school for the degree. Not saying a degree isn't valuable, or everyone with a degree is a hack, not at all. But if one IS a hack, it is more likely that they will try to get by with a degree than by working their way up the ranks.

This of course is different in the amateur and semi-pro ranks, where hacks both trained and untrained abound. Like me

[Kenny Gioia]

Good point.

Also consider:

If someone goes to school for a specific job, they are more likely to pursue that job regardless of whether they are good at it.

Whereas someone with no proper training, will probably only pursue that same job if they actually have a knack for it.

So there are alot more hacks coming out of the schools than there are actually doing it for a living.

[joeq]

This is great news for me, as I don't have an engineering degree!

Hot 100, here I come!




.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by Chris Kress

You are least twice as likely to record a gold or platinum album if you DO NOT complete a music engineering degree..

I think a better poll would be are you twice as likely to record a gold/platinum album if you've assisted or worked at(interned or tech) at a major studio?

If you've noticed a lot of the top engineers got their starts working at a major studio.

I think it will bring into light some of the drawbacks of making a career choice to engineer full time at some of the project DAW studios instead of cutting your teeth at a major...if you care about such things.

[Bassace]

i also have to gold discs from dance music ........ Hungary and cant remember the other.did nothing for the bank balance tho :).....i think they are overrated

[wineredno1]

Ive got the paper but ive not got the gold or platinum records, or the bank balance.

[Sinewave]

But what do they teach at these schools how to an engineer or how to use a particular software, i can't believe that any studio would hire someone just because he waves a paper from some school in front of thier face, his or her value would be as Computer operator not an engineer.
I have been fortunate to continue to spend time with a great engineer/producer who has done lots of work with Pop and R&B artist, and i have to say experience is the greater teacher.

[slipperman]

Originally Posted by Produceher

I actually have a friend who believes that all probabilities are 50/50.

Either you get hit by a bus, or you don't.

Yeah. OK. I'll buy that for a drachma.... but.....

What's the odds of getting hit by a bus, a train, a plane, an anvil, being born deaf, falling on your head from a great height as a lad... AND earning a multitude of gold and platinum RIAA awards... only to have them ALL taken away in a giant soundscan conspiracy...?

Leaving you with 2 cardboard, 3 bamboo and 1 balsa award.

In Chad.



























Knew I shoulda went to school.

SM.

[wineredno1]

I’ve found that the paper and the courses don’t do much to help you realise how to make a good record, they teach you the theories around how things work and they also try and inflict opinions upon you about what makes a good record. The best experience I’ve ever had learning about the creating and recording process is watching and asking experienced engineers and producers, nothing beats that.

[Mr Skills]

Record production can be learned ... but it cannot be taught.



.

.

[Makinithappen]

Originally Posted by Mr Skills

Record production can be learned ... but it cannot be taught.
.

[timmcallister]

Originally Posted by dlmorley

I have a gold disc from Belgium. For a Dance CD from the 90's. 25,000 sales!
Watch out diddy...

25K ?!?!?!?!?! wow, my band sold that many albums in the 80's.

I'm gold baby!!!!

[kats]

Record production can be learned ... but it cannot be taught.

The foundation of good engineering is a skill. It is not open to interpretation, therefore it can be taught just like any other skill.

But just like anyone can be taught how to play the piano, few can make music with that skill.

IE, it's a skill AND an art. Parts of it must be taught, the other part of it comes down to talent and is very subjective.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Windtaken

or those who have recorded a gold or platinum album have less need to pursue a music engineering degree

Or better things to do with their time than hang out on this board answering polls...

Of course, there might just be an even distribution on that one...

ANYhow, a truly scientific survey MUST select its subjects at random from a representative pool, anyhow, right? Accepting the responses of all who volunteer potentially skews the sample. This is more like those silly little "interactive" polls they put on once-credible-now-insipid sites like CNN.


That said, I'm mildly surprised that those with degrees have such a high representation. Of course, when I was active as a free-lancer, there simply weren't many programs or people who had been through them.

(Full disclosure: I have a cert from one two year program and completed the technical requirements of a second. [ANYTHING for free studio time. And the second joint had a Neuman and a Neve... where the first had TASCAM and mostly EV and Shure. Still... even though the second required much more book learnin' and even scientific calculator pounding, I probably learned more at the first... Why? Because there was more hands on and more time for un-prodded experimentation.] Further full disclosure: No gold product before I dropped out of taking clients and going back to recording myself. Which I found ENORMOUSLY more rewarding. Because -- once I realized I wasn't going to get rich -- it all went back to being about ME. Now I'm just happy making music. And working my unexciting but considerably-less-vexing dayjob. More power to you guys who CAN get up every day and do it in the biz. There couldn't be a music biz without you. [Hmmm... ] )

[djui5]

Originally Posted by kats

The foundation of good engineering is a skill.

Lesson #1.

Production and Engineering are SEPERATE ENTETIES! Might not seem that way these days, but they are.

[PhilRanger]

Holy Sh*t, I have a degree. Guess I better give up and become a hobo...