Lessons

Lesson Info

Review & Questions

Let me go through in this first segment I'll talk a little bit more about each of these just so we can really get specific about this the number one you've got to be where the work is come it's going to be hard to get to the big time of whether it's producing music recording music or engineering music if you're living in fargo north dakota you know because music isn't really made there um is going to be the hardest thing you've ever had to do probably I mean it's not gonna be true for everybody but for me it most definitely was the hardest thing I've ever had to put myself through you may have to absolutely scoring zone party you know, I've had this conversation a lot of people in the past and they're always like but I this or but I need to do this this is why rar this person did such and such you know what would you say to that person I was like well someone so was in north dakota and he did this or that like are you I don't have to be in l a right? Well, I would say there's always an...

exception to anything but you're not playing exceptions you're playing what's your best chance you're trying to give yourself the best opportunity in the best chance to be successful the easiest way that you could get there and even kind of contradicts it's not going to be easy, right, it's. Not going to be easy, no matter what, but this is the easiest way. I think this takes your chances from, like, you know, one percent toe, like eight percent, you know, like, which is still isn't good, but it's, the best opportunity you have, the best opportunity you have is to be in the areas where the music is made, because you're in the area. Come, you have to be around the people that you're trying to become, you know. Now we got a great question, actually coming online from natural area tracks, and they're asking, andrew 00:01:57.826 --> 00:02:00. were usually side projects when you into honey, what 00:02:00.33 --> 00:02:02. were you building your resume in music while you were 00:02:02.7 --> 00:02:04. in turning in a studio? No, 00:02:05.52 --> 00:02:06. the answer's no. 00:02:09.52 --> 00:02:13. I did a couple of little things, basically, and it 00:02:13.45 --> 00:02:17. wasn't the purpose of it, and the goal of it was not 00:02:17.92 --> 00:02:20. to build my resume. It was to make sure I was up on 00:02:20.8 --> 00:02:23. my chops to make sure I didn't lose it, because when 00:02:23.95 --> 00:02:25. you're in recording school, you're being filled with 00:02:25.84 --> 00:02:28. this information, and this is how you learn this. 00:02:28.33 --> 00:02:30. This is how you learn this, and what happens is when 00:02:30.95 --> 00:02:34. you leave the school and go out into the world, there 00:02:34.1 --> 00:02:36. could be a dry period where, because when you get 00:02:36.63 --> 00:02:38. into a big studio, you're not going to touch the pro 00:02:38.56 --> 00:02:41. tools rig when you're an intern, it's just not gonna 00:02:41.32 --> 00:02:44. happen, so I kind of had this again, this we went 00:02:44.19 --> 00:02:46. back to my plotting, I was like, I don't I don't want 00:02:46.33 --> 00:02:49. to fall victim to this if you don't use it, you lose 00:02:49.06 --> 00:02:50. it type of thing, 00:02:51.42 --> 00:02:52. so 00:02:53.66 --> 00:02:56. I did some stuff like it wasn't I would like make 00:02:56.79 --> 00:02:59. my own tracks, which I was completely out of practice 00:02:59.08 --> 00:03:02. on cause I hadn't been doing it for a long time. You 00:03:02.39 --> 00:03:04. know, some of you guys here that are also music producers 00:03:04.92 --> 00:03:08. will have an easier time at this because you you do 00:03:08.01 --> 00:03:08. this. 00:03:10.62 --> 00:03:14. You have to keep using your chops and that's what 00:03:15.12 --> 00:03:17. that's why I was doing the work that I was doing but 00:03:17.92 --> 00:03:20. absolutely not I was not trying to take on project 00:03:20.46 --> 00:03:23. because it was my game plan was where I was going 00:03:23.25 --> 00:03:27. to go so I was still I knew what the steps were in 00:03:27.95 --> 00:03:30. my head what I where I wanted to go and that I wasn't 00:03:30.99 --> 00:03:33. worried about getting credits or getting on projects 00:03:33.34 --> 00:03:36. I was worried about getting an internship at the studio 00:03:36.83 --> 00:03:39. and once I was an intern I was worried about finally 00:03:39.61 --> 00:03:42. getting to be in a control room in a real session 00:03:42.59 --> 00:03:45. like my goal wasn't to start making records around 00:03:45.47 --> 00:03:48. town I do that that would come your game plan point 00:03:48.19 --> 00:03:50. there rising part of your game plan yeah my game plan 00:03:50.83 --> 00:03:54. was was I have my sights set much bigger than that 00:03:54.38 --> 00:03:56. much bigger than to just be making records in the 00:03:56.78 --> 00:03:58. local scene like I could do that 00:03:59.55 --> 00:04:01. I knew that I could just set up a shop set up shop and do that but I had bigger aspirations and I wanted to be on the big sessions with the big people so I dedicated all my time to that and what I wasn't doing that I was waiting tables because like we said you have to pay your bills I mean that's understandable so the answer the long answer to that question is no I wasn't doing that at all I'm interested cause I thought you were for record label for a long time, but I worked on the the product side. I was happy with promotion and marketing, etcetera, but a lot of people came in to doo like admin jobs, thinking that would help them get some recording studio experience and it never did you recommend not doing that. I mean, you obviously did some things like cleaning floors and all those things, but I do see there's a distinction in that you know, if you go into work in the accounting department, the chances are you're never going to get into the studio. Yeah, you want to be careful about positioning yourself because there becomes a fork in the road that goes business creative. And if you start going towards the business side, it's kind of hard to be considered a creative person because there is a perception in the music business and again, there are some few exceptions. Creative people are creative and business people are business like. The two really don't mix, and there we'll talk about that later in the course. Um, there's going to be, you know, ah, a whole segment on how to conduct yourself in that matter because once you get later in your career and you kind of become a little more established that's very important to realize that the business side of making music and the creative side of making music our separate animals and you have to know them both be very well versed in both of them. But they don't really mix well together. You want to try to keep them as separate as you can. So going into something like accounting, I mean, really, I would say you try to get any job you can in a studio. I ended up answering the phones at the front desk for about six months, and that kind of became my door into becoming the intern. But you want to. You want to be where you're going to get the opportunity to get in the control room. As long as you maybe discuss it with the people that are offered you the job well I'll do anything to help you guys out because I'm here for you and I want to be here more than anything so if you want me in the accounting department I'll go there but I want to be in the control room that's where I want to be and the absolutely right now we need you in the accounting department by all means you'll go it wouldn't be your first choice but in the end right now you need these people obviously way more than they need you the interns or diamond doesn't they'll find him anywhere so you have to make yourself valuable bye cleaning the floor that can't be clean that's never been clean before or if it's in the accounting department than in the accounting department you know I'll tell you a little story about what I did also when ah when I first got my internship and again this goes into the re kon thing again in the preparing I'm just going to keep stressing that over and over again when I got hired after my interview and they're like ok, we're going to start you tomorrow you'll come in at nine a m I knew I mean it's no secret that responsibility of intern is doing food runs you know when you're in the studio, people never don't they come in for fifteen hours and they don't leave so when they want to eat they send the runner the intern out to go pick up the food so the first thing I did was I drove within a ten mile radius of the studio and I wrote down every restaurant that was in a ten mile radius then I went and this is before yelp and all the things that would make this actually pretty easy to do now it is I went and got menus from every one of those restaurants and in my first couple of weeks it's in the building I found I asked people the people that were coming to the studio some of the sessions but what do these people like to eat what do what are their trends in their habits and eating do these okay this session they order italian food three days a week this session they ordered chinese food twice a week and japanese food the other three days so I would put menus of the type of food that they like in the control rooms it's things outside the box thinking like this doing this and this is all contributes to being better prepared than anybody else most people and I know this because when I was an intern I was the only one that thought of this type of stuff don't think like this and these are the things that get you noticed by the studio are you going to know that they're noticing you? Absolutely not they're going to be no back pat patch pats on the back man that was great good job it's going to be thankless and it's going to seem like nobody cares and to some people this is the breaking point to some people they're like well I'm not gonna put up with this I've been working my ass off and nobody's even notice that I did anything that's completely untrue because what I have interns in our studio I usually don't even speak to them for months but I notice every little thing that they've done I don't know everything about you even though I've never actually spoken to you and you will and you won't know one day I'll just be like yo come in the room and then I'll call him by name I'll be like you know so I heard you're from here like tell me about like and they're always thrown off by like well what the hell like how did you know all this stuff I didn't even know you knew I existed was like I've known about you since the moment you walked in the door I know a good or bad I know that you know I came showed up for work one day we had an intern watching tv in the lounge with his feet on the couch that's the last time I ever paid attention that I got he could have been the best engineer in the planet he could have been the next doctor luger max martin is a producer but I'll he'll never get that chance because he had his feet on the couch it's little things like that and it always goes noticed as much as you apply this to your own aspect you have to understand that me being the one watching I'm still this so I'm watching you and you'll never know the same way that when I was an intern I was watching the other interns I was watching the engineers the clients and they never knew yeah uh what are some other ways I know the internet you mentioned the internet but you could do re con um would you like call up the location that you want to work at yes and absolutely I always recommend face to face is always the best way to go and again you don't want to you want to be over you don't overstep your bounds like you don't want to show up every single day like hey give me a job maybe give me a job but this business is a little bit different than like the corporate world where they may be more turned off by that like these people are looking for passion they're looking for ambitious people they're looking for people that want this more than anything so being persistent like like I said with the lair everything like I turned in my application like okay well take this and we're not really hiring right now or or we'll pass this off to the manager and be like okay great you know I just want you to know that it's like my dream to work here and you know this place is exactly what I want I just want you to know that I will be an amazing okay thank you for that we'll take that under advisement you know and you don't come back the next day and say the exact same thing but if you don't hear anything you come back you know a month later two weeks later make sure that that they know that you make sure that you back up what you're saying if you're constantly showing up and saying I really want to work here then they know okay this guy really wants to work and if they have an opening which eventually they will they're going to remember oh but what about that guy that wouldn't stop showing up like he seems like he wants to be here and again that you're free help like somebody that wants to be there and not get paid for it is always going to be wanted you know what I'm saying like at the world what's the worst that could happen you suck and they fire you and you know but there will be more willing to take a chance because number one doesn't cost them anything and number two you seem passionate and what you know what they got to lose. They could end up with a great asset to the facility, which is what you want to market yourself as. And more importantly, when you get in the door, you have to back that up. And the way you do that is by doing things like getting the menus, learning about everyone, that's in the studio, figuring out what clients worked there, how long they've worked there for, oh. Just the simple list things I'm trying to think of it I know there's more stuff is that a little earlier I think is so important which is being aware of what you can bring to the studio so even if it's not coming out of your mouth right just that in the inner ninja place you know you know that so that you know and you could even say I have a lot to bring chris I have these kind of organizational skills I've great people skills you know, just knowing that because it's true I mean as a as a producer and a you know, career long recording musician and touring musician there there are so many people who want to do what you're wanting to dio and so what is going to set you apart I think I think your advice about being prepared is so important and just being polite and having good people skills and we're gonna talk about eye contact and all of that stuff so but knowing your own value is really important even if you're not spouting off about it yeah and you and the thing is is you khun you you always live within your head like come you're going you need to find out everything if it's none of your business you find it out knowing something that's none your business is fine until you open your mouth that's when it becomes a problem because that's how gossip spreads and that's how things get around but if you're using it in your head on ly for your own personal maneuvers that's how you set yourself apart from other people and that's how you're going to weave through something that's so competitive there's going to be people that are just so damn talented that they that they bypass all of this and they just get right to the top but you can't count on that you can't be like I'm going to make it because I'm so talented well if you are that talented and you work this hard you're going to make it very, very fast and it's going to happen but we're not relying on that we're relying on our preparation our game plan and our ability to outwork everybody around us is what's going to get us through the very, very small odds of getting in this business even though it's small odds it can be done because I mean I'm no different than any of you guys I just worked so hard and I followed these steps to get there so if you do the same things you have a good you have a better chance and if you don't do them the game plan is just it's so important like knowing where you're going to go before you go there and knowing why you're going why you want to go there is going to make getting there so much easier and you do that by your re kon, you're driving around, looking at the finding the menus to the restaurants. You're see what else did I do and there's so much stuff another thing so I used to deliver pizzas when I was in high school so I thought okay one of my first weeks on the job there was a client there that was kind of a division and he made us think about is food not being hot enough when he got there even though the place that he ordered from was an hour away you're going to get a lot of unr action all things like this like why's my food not hot and your mind is like because it took me two hours to bring it back but you know but they don't care about these things chances are they don't even know the place was two hours away and they don't care so I had a leftover pizza bag from when I delivered pizzas so I used to bring that in the car with me and I would put people's food in the pizza bag or there there was a couple days where I didn't have the pizza bag I forgot it so I turn the heater on my car on and wrap the food bag around the heater and turn the heater on blast even those one hundred degrees in the san fernando valley it's things like this that you have to think about like okay you're using engineer problem solving skills like what is engineering it's taking knowledge thatyou know applying it to something that you don't know and figuring out how to do it. So, okay, this guy wants his food. He wants it to be hot and it's an hour away. How can I make that happen, engineer the situation the same way that when you're in the control room and you can't get the right kick drum sound that you want, you engineered a way to find it. Will you engineer a way to make the guys food, huh? Because right now, that's, what you're doing, you're not engineering a song right now. Your engineering, a guy's food order. And when you do that, you surprise people, and you delight people and that's, how they're going to let you stay in the party and invite you to new parties. You know, man, that food, I don't know how you kept it hot. But, in fact, you know what? My assistant's going on vacation next week, what we want to fill in for him. One has nothing to do with the other but it has everything to do with it getting food has nothing to do with recording a song but it's the detail both in doing it properly that they're looking for the fact that you engineered a way to keep someone's food hot is going to get on a pseudo managers radar or an engineer's radar it's going to get on my radar you'll never know that I even knew about it but best believe I know I knew about it because as I'm eating the food I'm wondering why is this hotter than it normally is and me being a mixed engineer I'm very old and very very detail oriented I notice everything like that you know if I order like if I order something like a burrito from somewhere I notice that there's more cheese in it this time then and then there was the last two times I ordered it and these are all things that go through my mind and I'm thinking about and if I was to get some food that was extra hot that it normally wasn't I'd be the first thing I would think about is how did that guy accomplish that what was his frame what was he thinking to make this happen this is the type of person I want working for me somebody that and when we get into the details of what makes a great assistant engineer you'll understand why you'll understand why these details details are important. Um, some people, this is where they get lost, because they don't understand why one matters to the other. Why does my ability to keep someone's food hot matter when I'm a pro tools whiz it's like, because I don't care about your protocol skills, that's not what I need you for. Right now, I need hot food, I'm hungry. I have approaches operator, like I don't need that right now. But if you're great at this. You may be good at this other thing too, because if you're anything like me you're doing this because you're amazing at doing these other things you just want the opportunity to get to do them and the way you get the opportunity to get noticed and get to showcase your musical abilities is by doing the smaller task cleaning the floor with windex because that's what you write on the internet was the best way to clean this kind of floor I don't even remember what kind of floor was some kind of waxy marble it was it was hideous and part of the reason why was because no one had cleaned it properly but any questions you have any about I mean any question that comes to your mind kind of pertaining to your first step becoming an intern being in being a ninja in the intern environment please hit me up with any question I'll be happy to answer anything that pertains to that got a good one from the internet here that maybe well you guys are thinking of some questions you can cover this one I think is really good on its own you know not all internships end up yours worked out great not all of them do right so deejay area tracks that asks when do you know that you've reached a dead end in your internship and what can you do to avoid getting pigeonholed? Um well, that's kind of a tough question because good it's, hard for me to answer that without knowing the type of effort that was put forth by an intern. I mean, I understand dead ends can happen home. Dennis could happen when you work hard, but the way I kind of always structured my career and structured what I was doing is that there was something a place that I wanted to be or something that was in my game plan. If it wasn't working out or I felt like I was hitting a dead end rather than trying to look for other avenues, I would just increase my efforts. That's. The best piece of advice I can give is if you feel like you just squeeze every ounce of effort like is this as hard as I possibly could be working like there's? No possible way I can work any harder, then maybe it's a dead end, but I kind of find that hard to believe that that you they there is such thing as maximum effort, like again it's. Excuse my handwriting. I mean, have you, mac, have you done this? Have you max this out? Because the people that are at the top are obsessed. If you are obsessed and you're still not getting where you need to be, then maybe it may be time to explore another avenue. But the answer to the question is, how do you know when you've hit a brick wall when obsession is not enough? And I've never seen that before I've sort of got to that stage in my life where I'm kind of grumpy old man, you know? But it is a long time since I worked in the record industry, but what andrew was saying is exactly the same now as it was when I was working the record city which is almost thirty years ago nothing has changed and I think it's great to hear that if you apply yourself in this way this is how you're going to get your foot not only through that door but to succeed in your dreams to follow your obsessions, right? I mean a dream is a dream because it's what it's all you think about like this is not like getting a job like at the you know, at an office building or in it like this this is the music business like your chance to make music for a living they this is what it takes really because there are people that your competitors aire obsessed and like I said it's very cut and dry scenario we're working with here it says your competition and work harder than them so if your competition is obsessed that's a minimum requirement to at least be a cz good is that, um and not to mention when we get into the next segment, we start talking about being an assistant engineer if you're not passionate and obsessed, you are going to die like you're going. You are going to fall flat on your face because it is going it's so brutal that the passion in the obsession and the drive is what's going to fuel. You feel you. Excuse my grammar, fuel you through the very, very hard life of being an assistant engineer.