I teach some classes at an audio school. It is a complicated thing. Imagine that you have nine months to train one hundred assistants, none of whom you have any power over and who are paying you to be their assistants, and they are only there for five hours a day. By the way, you have to prepare them completely for recording, mixing, editing, midi, live sound, and post. Get the idea?
It is a very complicated world in the studio these days- Protools alone is a whole studio, from composition to prepro, to recording, to manipulating, to mixing, in a box. Compare this to the world that Phil Ramone or Bruce Swedien walked into- a couple of microphones, hit record. Now look at the responses above. One person wants insane editing knowledge, another wants comprehensive understanding of recording techniques. Everyone wants them all to understand studio etiquette completely. Fifteen years ago when you started out, the only requirement was to keep your mouth shut and we, as senior members of the audio commnunity, showed you the rest, understanding and saying that knowledge comes with experience. If you weren't a putz, you got to keep learning, if not, you were out.
What no one says, and why the schools have to exist now, is that no one wants to train an assistant and none of the studios do it anymore. Go figure- music people wanting something for nothing. Everyone dreams that a young Bob Clearmountain walks in 10 years into his career, nine months before he's ready to take off, and you get to ride him into the sunset, having him do all the work for you, and for free because he wants the opportunity. Great assistants have always been rare, almost exactly as rare as great engineers- there's a relationship there.
The reality is that there is a such wide spread in the quality of students (and it changes every month- one class can have amazing kids, others can be full of morons) and so little time, that the most you can hope for is to make them understand that what they do is a craft and that they will have to work their asses off to succeed, but that it beats the hell out of having a real job. After that, they have to go out into the world, find their way, and hopefully run into some folks who support and train them.
I am with Ross. The freelance nature of our craft, coupled with the very unique fact that we all work alone (how often do two engineers work together?) makes for an environment where everyone says "Sink or swim- I did it on my own," which is wrong. Now that you have arrived you do it on your own, and everyone will do it on their own once they have arrived, but along the way they have to be taught. Our craft is under serious attack from the forces of economy, and a lot of knowledge is being lost. I would love to see a much greater sharing of knowledge in our business. I don't know how that would happen exactly- I'd love to see it discussed. These forums are a huge step forward.
