compasspnt wrote on Tue, 15 March 2005 10:09 |
I will say that I believe the number one requisite for staying power in this business isn't really technical ability (that of course helps a LOT), or musical knowledge (that can assist a bit, too), but is actually the power to keep on going, hour after hour, day after day, without griping or giving up. I've had a lot of guys hang around over the years, wanting to "intern," but have found few who can take it after just a short while. Those of you doing this professionally today obviously can "take it."
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Hey--
Well said, Terry. During my first couple of years as an assistant, I watched several people (all of them ten years younger than I was at the time) spin out and leave the business because they didn't feel that working 50-60 hours a week for next to nothing was "worth it." Apparently, they didn't notice that I was perfectly willing to not only do whatever was asked of me without complaining, but to pick up their slack as well--I may not have been making much per hour, but I was more than happy to make it up in volume.
The closest I ever came to complaining was the time I pointed out to my studio manager that I'd worked at least four hours and an average of nine-and-a-half *every single day* for the past thirty-five, was scheduled for five more days just like it, and "might I please have a day off to celebrate my wedding anniversary?" He gave me two, bless his heart.
How I ended up there and subsequently here:
I too had a transistor radio glued to my head from an early age; I wish I still had the tube AM/FM radio that my Dad rehabbed and installed in my room in 1967. Music was always pretty much the most important thing in the world to me--given that there are a couple of professional singers on my mother's side of my family and quite a lot of very dedicated amateur musicians on my father's, it doesn't really seem like I had much choice in the matter.
My father, a computer programmer by trade and a radio/electronics hobbyist, taught me clarinet and saxophone from the time I was eight or so; by the time I was sixteen I'd also taken up guitar and drums. By that time I'd also had my first encounters with assorted Wollensaks and then-newfangled cassette recorders in addition to the rudimentary PA systems available to high-school garage bands in the mid-70's--every time something went wrong with a piece of audio gear or a new piece appeared, I'd enter the room and notice that everyone was staring at me. What they didn't understand was that I didn't know any more than they did, I was just willing to mess with the stuff long enough to make it more or less work.
DETOUR (slightly) to college, where I finished an English major and nearly finished a music theory & composition major. Never did complete a degree, though . . .. Realizing that I'd gained whatever I was going to gain from my time at Rutgers, I dropped out and, thinking "here's something that interests me," went to recording school in Ohio. Had fun, did well, got home in April and suddenly realized that I was getting married the next month and I'd probably better do something about finding a job.
DETOUR completely for several years: Happy married life, supported by a job in small-corporate hell. For much of this time, I played bass in a succession of local bands. Somehow, it always fell to me to cobble together PA systems for shows and recording rigs so that we could make demos to get gigs (once again, "How come you're all staring at me instead of doing something with all that gear?").
Fast-forward to 1993: Two working bands (I was either rehearsing or gigging 6 or 7 nights/week) and an 8-to-5 straight job just got to be a bit much, so I got rid of the job. Around the same time, the chief tech here at Sigma took an interest in one of the bands I was playing in. We had been able to cut a few tracks on the sly in an 8-track facility; he offered to transfer those to 2-inch, do some overdubs and mix. At one point during the overdubbing process, he had to leave the control room for some reason (I'm not sure about this, but it just might have involved the fader PSU in the big room catching fire); when it became apparent that he was going to be MIA for a little while and that my singer was anxious to get the overdubs done, I sat down at the remote and did the punches. When he got back and discovered that I actually had some vague idea what I was doing in a recording studio (and was also unemployed at the time), management was alerted.
An internship began almost immediately; turned out that Chief Engineer also liked me on a personal level in addition to being impressed with my willingness to work. Five weeks (and a freelance gig helping rewire one of the rooms here)later, I worked my first session as a paid assistant: Mixing Bobby Rydell's remakes of his own hits, many of which were recorded in that room the first time.
A lot of blind luck followed; on two occasions (both of them, truthfully, before I was really ready) clients brought in outside engineers, then came back without them and asked for me to cut the sessions--that kind of made my reputation. Manager once referred to me as his "ace in the hole"--whenever another staff member had a blowup with a client, he knew that he could put me on the session and everything would be fine. Slowly but surely I found myself doing less and less assisting and more and more engineering (which paid double what assisting did); there were, however, more than one or two weeks in which I hit overtime on both sides of the line.
Eventually, Chief Engineer moved on. At that point, I became the Chief here myself. Now I've managed to survive two changes of ownership and am currently presiding over a studio that's under renovation--hopefully I'll have a room in which to practice my art by the middle of next month. Meanwhile, I'm covering this desk and looking around for freelance work to supplement this income.
Seems to me to be a pretty typical story . . ..
One other thing: Last October, I was working, by myself for that moment, on a mix for an album project and suddenly felt the urge to laugh: Here I was, actually managing to survive by doing something I absolutely love to do!
This will probably sound strange to some, but that moment alone (and I might add that it wasn't the first moment of its kind and I don't imagine it'll be the last) made all the hard, lonely hours and the lost marriage worth it.
--gmr