So, how long have you been engineering?

[Sloan]

i pretty much jumped headfirst into playing and engineering back in my teens. ended up playing more than engineering through the years, but they compliment each other. if i'm not playing much, i record more and vice versa. just wish bands around here would be willing to hire someone to record rather than throwing up some radio shack mic demos and calling it an EP.

 

[blue_fAng]

That's some interesting math.

Maybe he started on late 2010 so it's still 2 years

 

[schwinginbatman]

I started about 2010, 2011? I can't remember for sure. My first recording was for one of my bands, and it sounded like dick. Amp sims, both tracks down the middle, e-drum audio out, plain bass DI. Then I did my other bands demo, sounded better but still like ass. Here I am now, recording one of my bands' second demo, and it's the best I've done yet, but it still doesn't meet my standards. I love it, but it is hard.

 

[JeffTD]

We are a bunch of masochistics

You say that like this bunch is a group of engineers.

 

[DeclanWhite]

I was using FL studio in 2009 to make drums, then recorded the line out of a line 6 spider amp into reaper at my high school lol (i was 16 and had no idea what i was doing)
then in 2010 after registering on this forum and learning a bit, i got an rme 800 because of the 'buy nice or buy twice' theory, as well as the tons of awesome reviews.

I recorded a couple songs for bands in 2010 and 2011, then in 2012 recorded my first proper EP for a band which launched me into the melbourne 'hardcore' scene.

now i'm pretty well known in my state for my engineering/producing. i think ive only really known what i was doing for a couple years though haha

 

[The StabbinCabin]

Messed with the soundcard until 2004. Messed around with a Yamaha MT120 until I bought my firestudio in 08. Didn't start understanding things until 2010. Really REALLY understood things in 2011.

So I was recording bands and getting paid in 08 but didn't start taking things really seriously until 2011. Not sure where that puts me.

 

[amarshism]

Engineered my first project 14 months ago.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

My first experience was on a 4 track cassette recorder, a Tascam Portastudio 424 mkI around 1994 I guess, almost 20 years ago now. But I've been doing this professionally for the last 7 years or so.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yep, my first recordings were done on the old Tascam Portastudios and stuff like that. Total garbage though, just recording jams and band practices with a mic or 2.

It was about 10 years ago when I started really recording ideas. Using a demo of TabIt and being restricted to only a certain amount of bars, I'd have to create separate sections of drums for song ideas and record each bit individually, then somehow I spliced them together using Windows Sound Recorder. Running line out/headphone out of some shitty amp and not understanding why it sounded so fizzy.....recorded a cover of LoG's "11th Hour" and was super proud, even though I'm sure if I listened to it again today I'd punch myself in the dick.

Wasn't up until I'd say 3-5 years ago when I really started making leaps forward. Still have yet to record outside bands and don't even have a proper "studio" yet by any means.

 

[nialldoran]

Seeing as everyone is sharing,

first thing i ever recorded was in my bed room and was ideas for songs,i had the shittiest cassette recorder ever, id record my guitars into that, then to put bass on top, id put the cassette with guitars on it, into my stereo and play it back while playing bass along with, tracking to a new cassette in the recorder, if the balance was wrong i'd move the recorder around or change my volumes on the amp or stereo, and take it again, didn't even consider computer recording for a while after that,

but that, moving it and getting different sounds is what hooked me, that was and is so interesting to me

 

[B36arin]

I started working at a local theater house, doing basic lights and sound when I was 12-13(I'm 23 now). I started recording my own demos about 5-6 years ago, and started studying audio 5 years ago, from where I really started to learn about studio engineering. Now it feels as if I'm slowly approaching the point where I'm figuring out what the fuck I'm doing

 

[Glenn Fricker]

15 years. Made a few good ones along the way, too

 

[scorpio01169]

Started recording ghetto style back in the mid 80s by recording one track of something on a boom box then playing it back and recording the playback and another track onto another boom box. although the end results were really shitty, i knew what was going on in the final take. Took a recording class in 94, learned on a Mackie+Alesis adat system and once I had enough money to get my own......Started buying gear in 2001 and still use the system to this day

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Way too long for how young I am. My "join date" freaks me out.

Yeah this.

Anyhow I started messing around with recording a couple years prior to joining this forum. So like 9 years or something like that.

 

[Sloan]

Every time I see adat, I always remember the album my first band did when I was like 15 or something. Recorded at some dude that did a lot of gospel bands....it sounded like shit, but to us it was so awesome. Haha.

 

[Nimvi]

Man, these "my first recording" stories bring back memories!

After having fucked around a lot with old cassette-deck recorders in my childhood, I too tried to record my first songs with the windows recorder. I didn't have a full-duplex soundcard back then, meaning that I couldn't hear what I was recording to. I had to tap my foot while listening to the original track and try to keep that rhythm as well as possible. The results where... interesting.

My first drumtracks were made with a program called BioDrummer. I had no clue what I was doing. Kicks were hard-panned left. Cymbals kept going from soft to superloud and changed panning over time. I had no idea what a "snare" was. I have also called hihats "hithats" for years, because of a spelling error in my samples back then. It was a mess. One of my friends still uses that program to this day though.

It must have taken me at least 3 years to figure out there was such a thing as multitrack-recording. Just throw everything on top of each other; sounds great! And make sure you can hear that hall reverb louder than anything else. That distorted microphone sounds really awesome huh? Destructive editing = manly editing.

Even after I had discovered multitracking, it took quite a while for me to realize that there was a panning option. Mixing shitty metal in mono is fun for a beginner.

But the most humbling thing of all was looking back at those times and projects recently, and finding out that when I thought i was EQing things, I had only been changing the frequency-sliders. I wish I could say that never happened again afterwards.

 

[Ermz]

If we're counting from 'working with bands', then since about 2005 for me. If we count plugging a guitar into an Assblaster Audigy 2 and wondering why it sounds terrible for a few years, then probably since 2001.

 

[botus99]

First multitrack recording when I was 11, in 1999, using this thing...

First paid gig, recording a local band's 5 track demo, when I was 15. I'm 25 now. Don't need to embellish things much more than that, I'm definitely a lifer haha