Why did you get into audio engineering?

MaellaJohn

MaellaJohn

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Fork out some tear-jerking stories about your childhood dreams, go on! And about how it was as a noob engineer, and all the confusion you overcame!

I'll go first. But I'll make it short and sweet.

Thought music was cool. Wanted to start a band. Started a band. Too poor to afford studio time. Learn to do it myself. Have a hard time. Read for 5 months. Try stuff out. Sounded like shit. Keep trying. Sound slightly better.

I haven't overcome too much confusion. I still have a long way to go.
What about you guys? :eek:
 
Wondered why my guitar sounded like shit when I plugged it into my PC when I was 14. Went in baby steps from there, finally finding this forum and deciding at the end of high school it was a career worth following. At that point I set a 2-stage goal for myself. First was to be the most prominent metal engineer in this country, and second was to become one of the best in the world. Childish, but hey, we need goals to keep us in motion!
 
Basically the same story as yours.....When I first started, I was using Audacity......haha!! And TabIt for drums.....actually, no, let me go back farther....

When I REALLY first started, I had a demo of Tabit, which only let me record so many bars...where I'd make drums....then, I'd use Windows Sound Recorder...which only let me record like 30 or 60 seconds at a time, and record blank audio for the entire length, save it, then add it to another blank audio file to make it longer.....the drums I'd have to splice in and it was really just horrendous. then Audacity....and I couldnt figure out why everything was so distorted (or I just didnt notice it).....and my recording out of my peavey transtube amp......no knowledge of impulses so it was just direct preamp signal. Ermz, I did the same - guitar to 1/4" to 1/8" adapter.....Just totally horrid. Moved on to Cool Edit Pro, started getting a littttttle better......finally tried Reaper, got hooked, started learning plugins and gain staging, and now my mixes sound 200X better than they did like 8 years ago. But they are still totally newb-ish. And I make drums in FL Studio which supposedly isnt so great? Still need to work on my humanizing skills and how to work with MIDI.....and automation!!! I rarely do automation and if I do, it's always something really simple. Confuuuuuuusion!!!!
 
See, right now I'm at that somewhat noob/ok level kind of. I'm 16 and it all started off about a year or two ago when I really enjoyed writing some cool guitar riffs and wanted to record them. So I started off with some free software way back in the day and gradually became better at it. Even though the riffs were cool, it sounded like shit. Then until recently(about 6 months ago) I wanted to get that real/heavy/big/smashingyouinyourface/serious sound(with drums/bass/vox etc.. and not just guitars). Now I discovered this forum, I got some nice software/hardware/gear and I'm really considering being a real AE as career in the future(I'm still in high school). I think audio engineering is really interesting and fun :)
 
Because I played bass, a damn boring instrument by itself, so I used to make drum beats on the computer to play along and one thing just led to another. I used GoldWave and Multiquence :D
 
For real though!
When I really first got into recording audio for music purposes, I was using Adobe Audition [used to be Cool Edit Pro]. Pirated, of course. Had no idea how to use it but I really wanted to try and do a halfway legitimate vocal cover for YouTube!
Instead of just going with what audio the camera recorded, I want to record in a "studio" setting.. oh, what a "studio" setting that was.. my cousin bought me a Shure SM58 for Christmas and I got an XLR to 1/4" cable, which I plugged into my laptop's mic jack with a 1/4" input to 1/8" output adapter..
I didn't understand what was happening but when I recorded, it sounded TERRIBLE. It was recording Stereo, and I didn't really get the difference between that and Mono. But the right channel was recording pure fuzz while the left had recorded the audio I was singing, but it was super distorted.
The problem was in the adapter.

Those were the days..

I can't wait until I am able to record live drums, and look back on how I am now, and laugh like I am about myself a year ago.
I'm having trouble recording two separate signals in two separate tracks. How nooby! The future holds many promises.

As for my "dream," I just want to have fun and try new things. I don't want to be a world-renowned producer or anything. I would much rather become a psychiatrist and practice audio engineering for fun on days off.
Imagine seeing a shrink with long black hair, tats, and the face of a metal vocalist.. It's going to be amazing.
 
I would always come up with awesome riffs and forget them overnight so I started recording songs to remember them. Then I started adding other parts like drums and stuff and then I wanted it all to sound good and it just went from there. I still have a lot to learn but things sound better than when I was recording my pedals into an imic and audacity when I was sixteen thats for sure!
 
Started playing guitar at the age of 14, by 17 I recorded an album all by myself, using gp4 at the time and mixcraft 2 (available here), sort a one of a kind album it misses some depth to it but all the elements are present.

Deep Space (II and IV are recommanded for an easy listening session)
http://www.reverbnation.com/forensicstech

After that I recorded over backing tracks and tried to perfect my shitty tone, my playing and I then tried to learn FL studio but that just didn't do it for me compared to mixcraft which I was really used to.

By 19 my dad and all my family where ashamed of me doing what I like the most with no income, so I decided to shut the fuck out of them by going to a «private school» by that I mean, ask the government for 16,000$ Canadian and waste it in then end by doing cocaine and recording all kind of stuff cause I just had broken with my GF and anyway I always was that kind of angry man and still am. lol.

Today I can achieve the sound I want to with the cheapest gear around and VST's and by knowing your plugins, but if I was to redo it I'll certainly wouldn't.

That School I went to was a «we are selling you a dream son but you will only know it in 3 months from there» but that's ok since I learnt things like Pro Tools,Reason and Cubase which opened my horizon and made me do dubstep, see here (), explore and not being affraid of trying, but it is still a let down.

I now focus on my recording and sometimes recording band which happens a lot more than before and it's fine with me.

Family still don't give a shit tho lol, if only I could whip them out my life.

EDIT: If you are interested here's my soundcloud which has dubstep d'n'b breakcore Death metal avant-garde rock and lots of shits. http://soundcloud.com/fastworker

I suggest this one for the great sounding Reason mix

http://soundcloud.com/fastworker/fastworker-pyramids-star-fixng
 
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i started making techno when i was 13,
god i remember how great it was when i had programmed my first beat, it was just straight quarternote kicks, like *kick *kick *kick *kick... i had that beat running for like 10 mins and kept laughing so hard all the time, i couldn't believe that i just had made this, it felt like a computer game to me
then it took me 2 years to realize that i could also record my guitar, at that time i didn't think that metal is also done this way, i thought its analog mixers and tape, and computers are only for techno
 
this thread puts a smile on my face... and makes me feel old even though I'm 24. After playing drums and guitar for a couple years, I wanted to record myself and things quickly turned into an obsession with capturing THAT moment and THAT performance with THAT sound. I've come a long way, but still have much to learn :)

Started at age 11, using a boombox that recorded to cassette with its internal mic. Found out putting it on the floor gave more bass and on a shelf had more high end (recording myself on drums)
Got a 4-track Tascam for recording guitars and drums with my only mic at the time, a $10 Radio Shack mic. The addiction was growing now :devil:
Got a 8-track Yamaha MINI-DISK (you read that right) mixer/recorder. A whole new world! I began multi-miking drums and recording practices with my high school bands (ages 15-17)
Got a Behringer 16 channel Eurodesk and a Emu MIO card, recorded live straight from the stereo out into the computer. This was my first experience with digital audio
Got a MOTU 24/IO and an Allen & Heath 16 channel board and thats where I'm at now. Done several albums and tons of EP's/demos. Some with only 8-12 tracks, some with takes upon takes and over 60 tracks in the session. Fuckin love it :kickass:
 
The first time I did any recording of any description, It was at Chapel Studios in the UK with Trevor Boulder ( ex Bowie ) and it was just the best experience ever. so I was kinda hooked.

Fast forward 10 years and I'm in a band. we set about recording an album, and built a studio in my brother garage. Set the Kit up, set the mics up, press record and it sounds really really bad. That was kinda when I started properly.
 
I started out in 1998 with Impulse Tracker, thought it was too complicated for me, so I dropped out of it. Then a few years later I tried Fruity Loops (so I guess it was version 1 or 2), made some really awful techno stuff, then "upgraded" to FL Studio and downloaded Cubase SX2 or SX3; Had a problem with Cubase that every time I turned on the orange listen button that I got a feedback loop so I never used it again for quite a while :D Then in 2001 I started as sound engineer at my churches youth cafe, mixed about 10 gigs a year there. In 2005-2006 I was as a sound engineer on a local 600 capacity venue and mixed about 300 gigs a year there, so my FOH/MON mixing experience went thru the roof there. After that I started mixing bands on tour in 2006-2008 and was interning in Harju studio in January-June 2007 and I recorded 15 demos there). Then in summers 2008-2010 I've been on Tallink-Silja cruise ships as vacation substitute sound and light engineer. Then after applying four times I finally got in to PIRAMK University of Applied Sciences in 2008 and I started using Pro Tools there. Then in 2010 my PC hard drive failed so I decided to go cold turkey on it and I bought a MacBook Pro, Cubase 5 and Pro Tools M-Powered 8 and Waves Platinum Bundle (+ Slate and other stuff) and went totally legit on all software and plugins.

Oh yeah, I started playing music as late as 2003.
 
Started, almost 10 years ago now, with me just wanting to hear different riffs layered together, then I got into drum VSTi's (started with FruityLoops :lol:). Started recording demos of song ideas and whatnot, then wanted to figure out how to make them sound more professional. Many things happened from there until now. I can't say I ever imagined myself pursuing this as a profession when I first started, but now I can't see doing anything else really.
 
After 8 years of classical guitar I switched to e guitar (with about 14yrs). Recorded ideas myself, but never wondered why it sounded shitty because the music sucked so freaking much :lol:
Met a friend through a friend, the 4 of us started a band for fun. The said met friend had a bit more knowledge then me with recording (I think maybe because of his father who was interested, Im not sure).
Started out with cool edit pro 2
Eventually at some point after we had 2 "CD's" made of funny songs that were more like rock than metal I started to dig a little deeper into it, as with serious music should come more serious production.
Spend lots of time reading over a few years in the internets about whats the deal with eq and compressors.
Found this forum through searching for metal samples, and realized that Andy Sneap produced most of my favorite Albums
Lurked a year before registrating, didnt dare to post anything for some time.
Got Cubase as Xmas present and from there on it really took off for me.
Now trying to improove and see how I could possibly make a living out of it some day.
 
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