mark fassett wrote on Mon, 25 July 2005 10:47 |
I learned in radio... started as a DJ, then learned how to do production on an old ampex 440.
Learned music production by myself on an old teac 4 track reel to reel.
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Same here back in the early 70s when I was around 15 after listening to Beatles Hard Days Night over and over and over again. I was mesmerized by the vocal dynamics and overall mix. I began on one then two then four wonderful old TEAC 4 tracks, bouncing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth using minimal shure type vocal mics and pzm area type mics. What a wonderful experience. I got hold of a used 8 channel mixer that didn't work very well, opened it up, figured the circuits out and troubleshooted the problems myself with a voltage meter and w/o schematic, bought the parts and soldered these in myself and went to town. Can't even remember the mfg now but it was some early Telefunkenish looking piece of shit.
I experimented for months on end moving instruments around, cabs around, drum kits around, pianos around, placing mics and recording in and from every crevice of the house, ceiling, walls, hallways, attics, outdoor deck, barn, open fields cranking Marshall plexi cabs to 10, in the car, van, etc. I learned the value of No EQ requirement later if done right at the front end, about natural reverb ambiance, plate echo ambiance in tiled bathrooms and bathhouses and developed the array of advanced multiple micing techniques by trail and error that I still use today 36 years later.
By the time I got to a pro recording studio, when I was 19 or 20 I realized, I knew more about mixing and micing than the house engineers. Same at audio school I enrolled in later. I knew more about the physics of sound than my instructors and left laughing at them two weeks later. Man how I miss the wonder of it all of those early years. It was all novel and the world of audio was a new frontier and exciting. The world was my oyster. Nothing was taken for granted, and there were no forums to whine in and let everybody solve your problem for you. Becoming an audio engineer meant being a fucking engineer, i.e., defining the problem, and working through it logically, incrementally, and systematically until a workable solution presented itself. My my how things have changed over the years ... If you won't get your hands dirty in the trenches... then how will you ever know when they're clean after you wash'em?
~skygod~