#1683376 - 08/13/05 02:08 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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ptuzer
Senior Member
Registered: 02/24/02
Posts: 479
Loc: Toronto
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The Beatles made me do it.
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#1683377 - 08/13/05 02:33 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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PookyNMR
Senior Member
Registered: 01/01/04
Posts: 43
Loc: Edmonton, AB, Canada
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I grew up in a very musical family. My father was a folk style guitarist (he also played the Euphonium (4 valve) (which I learned as well) and the French horn). My mother plays the pipe organ.
I played many instruments in my younger years. I started playing guitar at 8. My fingers were too small, so I quit until 12, then I took it up again and haven't looked back.
When I was around 15, my older brother in law arrived on the scene. He was a professional touring musician. I hung around with him a lot and toured with him as much as I could learning every part of the production from the pros.
I started going to University to take Chemical Engineering, but decided that it was a waste of my life. My mother asked what I wanted to do if I could do anything. I said music. She said why not take a few years and check it out. So I enrolled in a great jazz college in our area. I loved it. I graduated with distinction. A few years after I graduated I was able to do music full time. Since then I have been involed in live playing, running live rigs, and recording. Haven't looked back since,
_________________________
Nathan Rousu
HV Studio
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#1683378 - 08/16/05 08:45 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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Cojonesonasteek
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Registered: 01/24/05
Posts: 14
Loc: Austin, Texas USofA
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We always had music in the house when I was growing up - Mom had been a professional musician in the late 40s/early 50s (she even had her own TV show in Cincinnati), Dad did musical theatre and had a great record collection (I just hated all the opera he'd play on Sundays after church). Mom taught me how to play her ukelele when I was about 6 and I graduated to guitar by 8 or 9 and started writing songs. Dad bought a reel-to-reel deck with track bouncing capability while in 'Nam around 1968 so I started doing my own rudimentary recordings with a couple Radio Shack mics in the early 70s. I still have a tape of me playing a dead-on version of Leo Kottke's "Vaseline Machine Gun" in my basement in 1974.
When bands I played in got to go into pro studios I caught the bug and eventually learned enough to drive solo and produce/engineer stuff for other people as well as my own material.
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#1683379 - 08/17/05 04:02 PM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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d-dmusic_dup1
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Registered: 01/03/01
Posts: 553
Loc: Markham
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Hmm....I know why I started doing this but I can't figure out why I'm still doing this. It sure ain't for the money.
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#1683380 - 08/21/05 10:26 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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mixfix
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Registered: 07/03/05
Posts: 22
Loc: Hollywood/Burbank
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In my case I was a guitar player and drummer and had played in MANY bands playing many styles, and spent a lot of time on the road. Eventually, I ended up recording under various situations and got familiar with doing that but still did not consider being anything other than a musician...
After a while I got to the point where I needed to "settle down" and did not know what to do because I did not want to do anything other than music. One day at rehearsal, our keyboard player showed me an ad for a recording engineering school and a light went off inside my head.."hey, I could do that and that way I could settle down and stay involved with music and maybe even make a few bucks..." It did not take long for my love for engineering to equal my love for being a musician.
Well I did not go that that school but I made some connections and started as a gopher at a real studio. I learned under experienced people. A few years later I studied electronics and one thing led to another. I ended up doing both maintenance and recording/mixing at various studios and after a few years moved into post sound. that is the (very) short version.
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#1683381 - 08/23/05 08:53 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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Kendrix
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 09/06/01
Posts: 2150
Loc: Rochester,NY,UNITED STATES
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JJ's history could largely apply to me- except that I didnt end up doing this as a career.
I alwayus had an inherent and very deep appreciation of music- really deep.
Some of my very earliest memories are of banging out melodies (the "Theme from Exodous" comes to mind) on my kiddie xylophone or my neighbors piano.
My dad was a music nut. We had the best stereo in town in the mid-sixties. So, it was a mix of DNA and my environment that got me hooked. I always had very good ears for sound and music.
When in 6th grade i wrote to all the majors asking how i could become a recorging engineer.
Noone answered.
Somehow, even then, I was more into the technical aspects of production than being a rock star.
I played sax in shcool and bought a Gretsch for 200 bucks in 1968. Ive still got it. Played in a few garage bands and did a little gigging.
Got heavily into the NY concert scene (such as at the Fillmore east) in the day.
Got to see many of the very best calssic rock acts in their prime.
However, I also did really well in school and i was somehow contaminated with the idea that musicians were gypsies and that I could/should do better with my life. What a crock.
I got a degree in physics ( very relevant to acoustics and recoring) put time into my day job and went for a number of years without actively participating in music.
Mid 90's I got transferred to Tokyo. My apartment was not far from the section of town where all the music retailers had their shops. We bought an ensoniq keyboard so my daughter could continue her piano lessons in japan. The keyboard was polytimbral, had a midi port and ended up in the same room as our PC. Before you know it I had a sequencer, then a cassette based 8 track, some real mics, yada yada yada.
So, my mid-life-crisis home studio was born.
These days i do this as a hobby- largely for my own entertainment. Writing an producing demos of my original stuff. I agree that the combination of right and left brain skills that are involved in this makes it really interesting and rewarding. Time really flies when I'm in the prodiuction zone.
Would love to figure out how to ease into semi-retirement while doing some sort of production work for a modest income.
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#1683382 - 08/27/05 03:17 PM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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Jessica T
Senior Member
Registered: 02/22/05
Posts: 207
Loc: St. Petersburg, FL
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Hi everyone.
This is my first time visiting these parts, although I've hung around in KC for a while now. I'm 20 years old and I feel like I don't know nothin' compared to all of you.
Let's see, where do I begin? Well, I've always had this ingrained passion for sound and music ever since I can remember. But unlike all of you, I didn't come from a musical family, although I really wish I would have. My mom is a portrait artist and my dad was a firefighter and is now retired. He was very mechanically enclined with only a slight interest in sound. We listened to plenty of recordings on a regular basis, but my interest in it as a lifelong career sort of sprouted out of nowhere!
In my teenage years, I started doing what a lot of you have done; working with El Cheepo mics and various tape machines, experimenting with variable speed effects and inherant room ambiances. I made a lot of very cheesy Halloween mixes and would play them for Trick Or Treaters on Halloween night each year! When I was a junior in high school, I sang in the chorus. The music teacher opened my eyes to the joys of performing and all of the musical stuff that I had been missing out on all these years. After a year in her class, I came away with a renewed passion and kind of a reminder why I started all of this. In my senior year, I had a few internships that shed some mmore light on things, and then a year of kind of wasted time at a community college. Now, I'm here at Full Sail, about ready to graduate, thankful that I've come to the right place and that I know what I wanna' do with my life!
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#1683383 - 08/29/05 01:49 PM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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BrianK
Senior Member
Registered: 12/17/00
Posts: 228
Loc: Los Angeles,CA,UNITED STATES
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Jessica - welcome; your experiments are just as valuable as anyone else's, no matter what the gear. You are learning about SOUND and how to work with it - that's all you need to be doing.
Kendrix: >>Would love to figure out how to ease into semi-retirement while doing some sort of production work for a modest income.">>>
That does sound good - and one of those things in life you KNOW you would be good at. The world of gear really does allow you to have a pro setup at home - do you have something to practice on before you go "to the world" with your services?
_________________________
Relax and float downstream...
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#1683384 - 08/30/05 08:14 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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Kendrix
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 09/06/01
Posts: 2150
Loc: Rochester,NY,UNITED STATES
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Originally posted by BrianK:
Kendrix: >>Would love to figure out how to ease into semi-retirement while doing some sort of production work for a modest income.">>>
That does sound good - and one of those things in life you KNOW you would be good at. The world of gear really does allow you to have a pro setup at home - do you have something to practice on before you go "to the world" with your services?
However, Im just makin demos of my own songwriting efforts- and am either playing or programming every sound myself. The typical lone ranger situation.
A barrier to me working on the music of others is that my recording space is small and I dont have that many channels of quality mics/pres that I can record simultaneously.
Ive actually thought about looking to work as a lowly assistant part time at a local studio jsut to buid out some commercial experience (the Studio at Linden Oaks is nearby).
Any thoughts on this?
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#1683385 - 09/06/05 05:00 AM
Re: what made you start doing this?
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Björn Fröberg
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 11/29/03
Posts: 3859
Loc: Pietarsaari, Finland
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Well, the combination of an interest in music and hifi and finding a music school that teaches sound engineering did the trick for me. I got hooked before I even noticed it.
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- Bob Freebird
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglas Adams
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