How did you get started in audio engineering?

[Laura]

Back when we were kids in the 60s my dad would bring home his tape recorder from the office. It was a big reel to reel with like 6" reels. A tape recorder was a huge novelty back then... I don't think they were available to the general public (my dad worked for the university.) We used to listen to the radio and go "fishing" for hits and record them. I always loved audio!

[oddselction]

Personally I first started on drumset in 5th grade. Then changed to guitar completely by 7th grade. In 8th grade I started to get my hands into about a grand worth of my own PA. A year later I got an itch for a multi-fx guitar pedal and got the GNX4 by digitech. Being that I had not taken any lessons except for one intro to live sound, my recordings in protrax stunk. Then I started playing in my drummers studio around 8th grade.

After 1 1/2 years of saving and research, I bought a studio bundle of M-Audio studio speakers and 1 Vocal Condenser and 1 Multi purpose Digital Reference mic. About 3 months after that I bought my Presonus Firepod and the HP4 Headphone/monitor controller.

[Latigo]

I sorta grew up in the family studio. As of this week its mine. Dad's ears are not too great any longer from too many years of audio, so he's semi-retired from the family studio.

Latigo

[oddselction]

Originally Posted by Latigo

I sorta grew up in the family studio. As of this week its mine. Dad's ears are not too great any longer from too many years of audio, so he's semi-retired from the family studio.

Latigo

I am jelous of people who get this sort of chance! I try to get any new equip and my parents don't understand a word that I am saying and tell me that I don't need it.

[MetalDave]

I started playing with a small tape deck when I was about 10 I did remakes of old cheech and chong jokes. then I got another tape deck and started doing lame sound on sound. I started playing guitar when I was 12 and started trying to record that also. I would record don kershners rock concert in mono off of the TV. I kept messing with recording and finally when I was about 23 I got a 4 track Fostex recorder. I messed with it alot until a friend of mine Lee, needed it more than I did. I sold it to him and he still uses it to this day. He also has a 8 track digital recorder. I started running live sound and playing with alot of effects. I ran sound for several bands in the area I am from. after about 8 years of that I went on the road with a band called Black Eagle. I ran sound for them for about 5 years. I ran sound every night when we came back to town I ran sound here also. we di a show every night. I remember playing in Butte montana Sunday night Jamb session and we had to play in Caldwell Idaho Monday evening we had a school bus that went about 55 MPH and I got to Caldwell at 3:30 pm the next day. we started setting up and had to start playing by 9:00 that night. I still ran sound after leaving the band due to differences in opinions. Ihave ran sound since here in my home town where we didn't do a sound check. we set everything up and plugged everything in and the band started playing the first song and I set the sound on the fly. Everyone was in sheer panic but me. (you can't panic in these situations). I love sound it is one of the few things in this world you know is there but cannot touch. Well after coming back home I started a band with a friend. he wanted to know what he should buy with his Musicians friend Card. I helped him pick out several items and after he maxxed out the card I bought about 3,000 worth of computer stuff and we had a studio. His son got into some legal trouble last year and thinks I ratted him off and so here I am starting over again. I am buying everyhting over again. I will have a nice studio and do what I started out to do 37 years ago... And they lived happily ever after... The End.

[macgrathloy]

Hi, your suggestion make me started in the audiosector.
thanks

[Hippofish]

I wouldn't call myself an Audio Engineer, more like a Audiophile turned engineer due to the fact I don't want to pay $150 an hour to get my band recorded.

We started our band in 1991 when I picked up a guitar for the first time and decided it would be cool to play it. My cousins who are brothers are in the band with me. Jamie, our lead guitarist and singer has currently left the band due to an illness, but Matt, my drummer and I have been playing together since 1991 and we are pretty tight. My guitar playing hasn't progressed much past the point of when I first picked it up but we still play together just fine.

We bought a Tascam 4 track cassette recorder in 1992 and set about recording five "albums" of material in the next seven years or so. I think using only a few tracks, like four, really makes you think about how to maximize your recording abilities and when you listen to your recordings and hear what you accomplished it gives you that feeling of when you climbed the ropes in gym class. I just fell in love with creating music. I have the same love for making movies and taking pictures though, so my studio for recording the band is also a video studio and photograph lab. I am surrounded by computers and monitors. (by they way most of my monitors really fuck with my signal flow on my amps. LOTS OF BUZZ from them).

After using the Tascam for many years and getting some DECENT recordings out of it we wanted to move forward and thats where I was introduced to MOTU and the 896 and I fell in love again. However it's been a long road into the digital age for me. I have tried a few programs and not really liked them. One of the best ones I used at first was the AUDIODESK which came with the MOTU, but the crunching time after recording was almost impossible to deal with and took the wind right out of my sales.

What little recording knowledge I have I learned by doing myself. Once you learn that the trusty SM57 can really capture just about everything, you just go out and spend about $400 on mics and your set to go. I'm not saying the SM57 is the best mic ever, but for $100 it's nearly impossible to beat that mic. In 1992 I bought one and I still have it to this day, along with a few others, but the original is marked and I still put it back in it's case each time I use it. It's like a baton of valor for me now. It's been through everything I have with my recording career and it knows what I like to hear.

I have recorded at least 200 songs over the years and I still have the passion each time I step out into my garage based studio. Nothing like good high ceilings to record the drums. Something I learned over the years.

So even though I don't consider myself anywhere near an audio engineer, I have been attempting to become one since about 1991 when I got my first real six string, but I didn't buy it at the five and dime. I did play it til my fingers bled, it was the summer of 91 actually.

Michael

[Belied]

I started out with a crappy Tascam 4-track in 1991. My initial recordings utilized a headphone turned into a microphone and a not-so-awesome-sounding Telecaster my mother gave me. I'd been singing in a punk band for about a year and a half prior, so i was starting to get my musical wits about me... or so i thought.

By 92 i had a Yamaha drum machine (i don't remember the model), a practice amp, a few pedals and an actual mic. It was all still incredibly lo-fi, but learning to polish a turd in that environment has made me appreciate modern technology all the more.

Between 93 and now i've managed to get into a number of different studios and have released many songs on both vinyl and CD. But now that i can afford the gear, i'm more prone to record entirely at home and not spend money on high pressure studio time. I prefer the 'sit back, relax and take 6 months to record' approach to stressing out under financial constraints. Things just turn out better.

Anyway, that's about it, nothing special. Just another music freak who started out with crap talent and crap gear and spent some years trying to improve on all fronts.

[Apman23]

I started out experimenting with recording early bands I was in, then somehow became a slave at recording studio in my area...basically the guy that ran the studio made me do everything from mic set up to tracking and mixing to whatever had to be done while he sat around and smoked cigarettes. When a session was finished if he liked it cool, if not he would tweak out some crap, bout it...never got payed, but it was good experience. Ahh, the early days...

[Equilibrium8]

I started off by playing around with my dad's old 4track reel to reel recorder and an awful cheap soundcards MIDI (with which my attempts at writing industrial music tended to come out sounding like Pacman on crack).

Due to me doing that and because the bands I was in would always borrow my dad's PA., the band guys would always take it for granted that I would sort out the sound. My interest grew, and I went from reel to reel to 4track Fostex tape machines to studying with the digital multi-tracks at university.

So, although this is what I live to do, it did come from circumstance rather than a set decision on my part.