music/ recording schools

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:26 am

Im going to be a senior in HS this upcoming year so ive started to look at schools
Music has always been my passion and these last few years i have devoted my life to recording and producing my own music.
Im lloking to gt into a music college but i have no idea which to goto
all have mixed reviews and i can tell you now that i definately have the drive to squeeze every last drop out of all of these schools, but i need one thats right for me.

First off i definitely don't want a school focused on rap/ hip hop production

i play real music on real instruments and have almost my entire life.
my top 2 choices right now are berklee and MI and i was wondering what your suggestions would be

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:50 am

Don't see how you could wrong with Berklee. I have had the distinct pleasure of working with many graduates of the school over the years and the depth of their knowledge and expertise in both their instruments and the entire music process was outstanding. A degree from this or any of the other top schools would open doors in teaching, performing, or production to be sure. I assume when you wrote MI, you meant Muscians Institute LA, Calif. another great school, also to be considered Oberlin,and Julliard, which teach both music and production.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:00 am

I know a guy who went to Berklee & got a master's in music & recording arts and sciences. He actually bought for himself that $20,000 Sony DMC 100 digital console which everybody calls a baby Oxford. And then he purchased a second one for a federal government based studio he got employed with. I had never touched one of those Sony consoles before. But when I tried to play him some of my work, I noticed that in spite of his outboard API 3124's & Meyer HD 1 monitors along with his Manley tube limiters, my work sounded profoundly mono. He said no, it was in stereo. I said no it wasn't. Well, I sat down behind the Sony console & without the manual, without any training, I figured out what buttons to press so that we could monitor in stereo. He was completely blown away & chagrined, it was mono. So for the past three years, he had been monitoring everything in mono, thinking it was stereo and never realized it. And he had a master's. What's that tell you? And places like Full Sale used to teach people that "ribbon microphones are noisy". What school should you go to? One that will teach you how to make a living.

I don't got no college learnin.
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:48 am

I recently overheard a SAE instructor explaining stereo mic placement to a trainee: he completed his entire lecture without once using the words 'phase' or 'comb filtering'. He parroted the 3:1 rule without any explanation other than "I tried 4:1 once, but I prefer 3:1". Rolling Eyes

If that is typical of the instruction you can expect from SAE its a total waste of time and money.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:46 am

The best thing you could do is to get a good four year education at a good college that has a recording program. Get your degree and while pursuing your major try and get into some other fields that are related like videography, music, business and engineering. Then if one of these does not work out you have a broad based education and can pursue some other line of work.

Best of LUCK and let us know what you decide.

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:44 pm

IIRs wrote:

I recently overheard a SAE instructor explaining stereo mic placement to a trainee: he completed his entire lecture without once using the words 'phase' or 'comb filtering'. He parroted the 3:1 rule without any explanation other than "I tried 4:1 once, but I prefer 3:1". Rolling Eyes

If that is typical of the instruction you can expect from SAE its a total waste of time and money.

Fortunately for the SAE students it is not typical, but a sad case nonetheless. They should straighten this guy out. My teacher at SAE was more elaborate on the stereo mic placement than what you describe.

I am not advertising here, but as a former SAE student I have the experience to set the facts straight.

While an SAE course might be no replacement for a full degree in engineering it is a way of getting into the game. While the theory is probably not as in depth as a regular engineering education the pace is very fast. In audio terms 16bit/192KHz.

You have to realise that SAE audio diploma stage is done in 12 or 18 months. While that might sound like an overseeable timeframe it is also rather short for the knowledge you'll be accumulating especially if you want to do it right. I heard a story of a foreign student that slept in her car in fromt of the school so she could get in early and book whatever studio was available. While I wouldn't want to sit next to her in a studio, she got more than her fair share of studio time that way.

I cannot imagine someone actually graduating from an audio training not being able to tell mono from stereo, barring perhaps those who have only one ear working. With the head master audio I had it would have been impossible to graduate that way.

To sum it all up:
Is it expensive? Hell yeah but I'd reckon not more than other private audio schools out there.
Is it worth the money? Only if you have no other way of attaining the knowledge and you put great effort in it.
Will it get you a job? Like I said, if you put great effort in it, it probably will. There is limited time to build up experience, you got to make the most of it while you're there.
If you're young then I'd look for a "regular" engineering school like Thomas suggested. You get to hang around your teachers longer and soak up all you can in a more sensible timeframe too: 24bit/96KHz.
Good luck! Thumbs Up

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:45 am

I know Berklee is one of the top choices for a Music Production / Audio Engineering education.

But if you're after a school that's focused on rap/hip-hop production, you may want to check out New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music.

http://clivedavisdept.tisch.nyu.edu/page/home.html

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 6:29 am

I have had a lot of people from places like the Recording Workshop and Full Sail apply for jobs here at Acoustik Musik. I have to say that the applicants can be put into two broad categories. Those that paid their money and got the degree and those that paid their money and learned something. Just having a degree from Full Sail or Berkley doesn't mean much except that you paid attention, took the test parroted back the information that the instructor gave you and passed the courses. What differentiates the two categories is that some people took the time and trouble to really learn what they were being taught instead of just being able to parrot it back on a test.

I attended OU in the 60's. I was a broadcasting major. We did not have fancy studios, big audio consoles or a lot of the stuff that places like Full Sail can offer their students today, but we learned our craft very well. We had to help the professionals run the station and if something broke down in the middle of a shift we had to help them fix it. I remember working at television as a duty director and having the sync generator go bad. We had no back up so we had to sit down and trouble shoot the problem to get us back on the air. I learned more that night about trouble shooting, about how to check burning HOT tubes and about video signals than I could in a month of classes. It turned out to be something really simple and was nothing more than a bad tube but the education I got at the side of a real broadcast engineer taught me more than I could ever repay. We had to get the station back on air for the 10 pm news and we were scrambling but it was "real world" and everyone pitched in. There were other times that we had to help align a VTR with the engineer telling me to "adjust VR22 until the sync pulse is two divisions high on the scope while he was adjusting something the back of the machine. It was real hands on and I really learned everything so well that the following semester I taught the freshman class in audio.

Today you sit in a classroom, watch movies on a large screen TV and never get your hands dirty or face a real crisis deadline.

What ever college you go to make sure you don't just learn enough to get by but really learn about what it is that you are doing. it will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.

The two things that OU taught me that have been with me since I graduated were how to study and how to find information. If I had not learned anything else those two pearls of wisdom would have been worth the price of admission. All the hands on working with professional was worth a lot and I probably learned more outside of the classroom than in one but the whole experience was well worth it.

Best of Luck!

Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:29 am

Check out McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. www.mcnallysmith.edu
They offer bachelors, associates, and diploma degrees in performance, production, and business.

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