Are you drawn to sounds? Do you love playing with sounds, analyzing sounds or crafting your own? If yes, then you have a budding sound engineer within you. You can go ahead and brush up your existing skills to start a rewarding career in sound engineering.
Sound Engineering Overview
Sound Engineering consists of designing or engineering sounds to convert it into soulful, entertaining and mood-elevating music. This conversion process includes recording, mixing as well as the mastering of sounds to make it into refined, well finished musical productions. But to get started with sound engineering you need to have an idea about the musical potential of sounds. Also, you need to have an innate passion in you to persevere until you have achieved the desired end results…’ sound engineer’, to be honest, is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Sound Engineering: A complex field of study
Recording self-created musical productions on mobile phones is not sound engineering. The path to professional sound engineering could, in fact, be bumpier than what you had imagined. There will be trying moments in the course of your career voyage when you’ll feel like giving up all together…there’ll be moments of frustration when you’ll not be able to craft the sounds of your choice despite burning the midnight oil over it! That’s when your determination & passion will let you stick to your dreams. Getting the proper training and practising dedicatedly will let you master the right skill sets for a career in sound engineering.
Perks of Sound Engineering Career
Once you have mastered the right skills you can do the job you love almost every day. That gives you maximum job satisfaction. Also, your career as a sound engineer can be financially rewarding. A well established sound engineer will earn as much as $ 50, 000 per year on an average. That, of course, is a decent income!
Tips for a successful career in Sound Engineering
However, before you have scaled the heights in your career as a sound engineer and have started receiving autograph requests and invites to all major award functions, you need to pay heed to the given tips. Read on to learn:
- Don’t be over-focused on Mastering alone
Your DAW may contain myriad fanciful mastering plug-ins but you should not get enticed by those. Mastering is the last & final step and before you master Mastering you need to be adept at the various other vital steps preceding Mastering. If you are confident about those steps, you can easily learn the skills of the final step; i.e. Mastering.
- You cannot handle all of it
Your energy & passion as a budding audio engineer may make your dream of doing everything right from writing to performing to recording to mixing to producing to mastering all by yourself. But, you have probably heard of the age-old adage, ‘Jack of all trades master of none’. So, trying to do everything all by yourself may actually end you up reaching nowhere. As a sound engineer you’ll draw your salary chiefly for three tasks; i.e. recording, mixing, mastering. Also, you could be hired for only any one of the above three steps. In other words, you need not be an expert in each and everything all at once. After you have learned one step well and you are confident about it, you can shift your focus to another area and try to excel in it.
- Equipment is not to be held responsible
Most of us will consider it to be the fault of the equipment we have if the final piece of music turns out to be below our expectations. The very moment we start considering our equipment as the culprit, we stop trying to improve our skills…and that, of course, impedes our growth as a sound engineer. Expensive equipment does not necessarily mean you’ll do well at your job. In fact, it is who need to practice & perfect your skills before investing in pricey equipment.
- Stardom cannot be achieved overnight
Sound engineering is a complex niche and you are likely to commit several mistakes prior to reaching the most desirable level of perfection. You need to accept that you cannot be a professional in one shot. So, instead of getting frustrated, you should try and learn from your mistakes. That kind of approach will help you shine like a star in the music industry!
If you are interested in Sound Engineering, the above tips might help you. To learn the best skills you may learn Sound Engineering in Bangalore at Audiolife. Visit Audiolife.in to learn more about the academy.