A handful of years ago, I recorded a CD of my own songs with a friend who had built his own recording studio room. As a way of attaining experience and “seat time”, he had invited me to take all the studio time I required for free, and he would record and mix the music for me.
This is actually my first official recording experience despite that fact that I’ve recorded a few demos years back using a rather vintage four track cassette recorder. My friend was one of the few individuals who got their hands first on the innovative concept called digital recording and this friend of mind had one of the first sets ups used for recording straight into the computer hard drive. It absolutely was an amazing experience. I observed how my buddy did microphone placement for vocals, guitar amplifiers and drums; how he placed instrumentalists in different rooms so they could play live “together” and he could record several tracks without audio bleed-over; how he solved problems on the fly when things didn’t go as he’d planned. I paid close attention during the mixing procedure, as my friend would make the smallest modifications to the track volumes or equalization to enhance the sound. I kept asking queries about the procedure and my friend would patiently explain the whole process to me and at the same time answer all my queries. Collectively we created a recording we can both be very pleased of.
I do not think I realized just how much my first recording experience taught me until years later, when I was put into a couple of situations that drew upon my knowledge. The first one was as a small-time music performer, in hosting events where there was no sound engineer or sound person; if I intend to make it sound good, it was up to me. It was actually astonishing when I was able to manipulate the sound equipment and manipulate the sound mixer with ease. My first recording experience provided me with all the basic knowledge that I need.
The other scenario that drew on my know-how was when I became the audio engineer and wrote the music score for two short movies my son wrote and directed. By my own criteria I believed I was not competent, but with the knowledge I gained from my previous experience I was able to manipulate the sound elements in order to create ear friendly music and sound effects. In addition to that, I found a way how to remove those unwanted noise in the background from the film and this is very much helpful whenever the background noise affects the movie quality.
In taking on these tasks (which at the time I thought were more than I could manage), I found out just how much that my first recording experience had taught me. With that experience I was able to conclude that you actually learn a lot when you start applying what you’ve learned in real life setting.