Studios

Phat_Sam

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Does any one know of any studios in London that hire people for work experience/low level dogs bodies? I wanna get my foot in the door but I don't really know how or where to do it!

Cheers!
 
I study Music Production & Technology (hopefully going back to do my degree this year) and to be brutally honest mate, it just doesn't really work like that.

What you need to understand is that studio engineering is a vocation, not a career. You don't just sort of go to college - go to uni - get degree - find a job immediately - work your way up the company, the opportunity just is not there. The best advice I can give you is to visit the studios themselves, let them know what you can do, offer to work for free, and eventually, one of them might just take you on.

What exactly do you want to do? You should keep a very open mind when it comes to working professionally in music. You won't get to sit down and help engineer a track, then people recognise your skill, and you become timbaland mark II - it just doesn't happen.

There is definite experience in events, however - music is huge, and since then, companies like Oxfam (Oxjam) are putting on music events for charity - you can work at festivals with free entry to the festival itself. To start working in the music industry, you might wanna consider getting in touch with a good publisher, and start getting some connections and contracts set up - more will come from this - library music, paid production work, releases on bigger and better things. Offer yourself as a studio engineer at home too - engineer and remix tracks for people, mix down, run studio days on the cheap. It will all help you build a reputation. Hell, do it for free to gain some studio experience too. If you sit down to an interview and you can tell them you've been tutoring out of your home for 6 months, they will at least think you know enough for people to keep coming.

The other option is learning some about live engineering, getting some kit, and start being a band's live sound engineer. It's far from impossible - you might start for free, but deliver a good service, and you'll get a good name - and the world's not all farty indie bands playing covers - many bands play professionally - weddings, tributes etc - and will require an engineer.

Hope this is helpful, it's all about networking and meeting the right people so don't be afraid to get out there!
 
Yeah. Thanks man. I'm doing a degree at the moment. Something to keep me afloat before I gotta hit the big wide world and ting...

The degree I'm doing is pretty shit though. It's supposed to be a Music Production degree but it's more about learning music at the moment. (Not what I want to do at all!)

I guess I'm just sorta left in a bit of a rut at the moment. Wanna drop out of my course but don't really know wnough about production to know whether I'm good enough to do what I want. Ideally I'd love to hit it big in the DnB/Dubstep world but I know my tracks aren't up to scratch yet. I need to be a whole lot better to get far in that...

Just wanted some ideas and things to get me off the ground at the moment!
 
^^^ Sadly, thats all true. Theres so many less studios now that there was 10-20 years ago, and the ones that are about usually aren't as busy as they were. A lot of big mix engineers now will have done the classic Tea Boy - Tape Machine Op - Assistant Engineer - Engineer transition, but they will have got into it at a time where the big studios were a huge part of the business.

Live sounds cool, different story all together and can be very frustrating to say the least, but you might really like it.
 
it's definitely where money is too. my mate took £3k behind the bar at a night ran in a local pub playing house/garage/electro/classics. pa, tiniest lighting system ever, pair of decks, mixer, and some drink promo's. bang on.

Learning about music is good, especially theory, but I learned more in a week working on the desk at a theatre than I learned in 4 years at college. I was teaching the tutors things for some of it, and most people on here could probably say the same if they took the course. hahah.

My only advice from this point on is to get out there and just start doing it. Be on it every day, set up opportunities, get your music heard, and push, push, push. It's the only way you'll get any where in the music industry.
 
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