There is no such thing as International Certification, but there are some National Certification Bodies who's qualifications are accepted internationally - for example Rock School - their examiners can be found all over the world, but the qualification is set against our standards and rules. Luckily, these are sound and robust rules and standards so other countries accept them for what they are.

Being very honest here - if you live in India, spending any money on a foreign qualification in this area is wasted money. The recording industry is becoming more and more diffused, and large studios getting rarer - and to be ultra honest, nobody cares what qualifications you have in this industry, because just in the UK we turn out too many graduates from university in audio subjects who end up working in bars and McDonalds!

Some graduates are brilliant, some utterly useless. Every year I use quite a few freelance people, and I'm not interested in if they are a graduate or not, I just want people who can do the job, and the best ones in the last few years are just those who have been recording or involved in sound for years - usually having a home studio, or perhaps working in live sound, initially pushing flightcases, then ending up out front mixing.

Questions.
Do you have a home studio?
What kind of recordings do you do?
What equipment have you got?
How good are you now?

I wouldn't expect you to say you don't do any recording, don't have a small studio at home, or one you use regularly. I wouldn't care if your equipment was a cheap zoom and a pair of cheap condensers. I'd expect you to say you are pretty good with the equipment you have.

If this is NOT you - then I'd personally forget the course idea. Many students join courses to get access to equipment better than they have and have used, so use it to really improve. Some of the best courses - things like SAE, have been around a long time, and are internationally respected, but are very expensive. They are also quite exclusive, so entry rarely goes to people who are true beginners, unless they have parents with deep pockets.

If you want to be a doctor - you NEED a certificate that means something. Most successful people in the music industry don't have industry specific qualifications, because in the arts area, it's what you can do and who you know - and luck!

Last summer I had a call from a big audio company in my region.
The guy clearly said he went through his list of live techs and nobody was available. (so I was his last choice)
He called me because somebody said my name at some point on a job he did. I did the FOH gig and the next week he called me with 5 dates.
Why ? Because the venue said my job was well done and I did it with a smile and the band had a good time.

To me that's how the business work these days.

Indeed - the network and your history are the only critical fact.

With studios being perfectly suited nowadays to being in your home - you get judged by your worth.

In India, from the quick research I've done, things are quite similar, but seem to be perhaps 10 years behind us. The chances of getting a job in somebody elses studio look bleak without a track record. Nobody does training really any longer - so if you need something engineered, recorded or mastered, you call the people in your contacts, then you call the people in your contacts, contacts!

Qualifications that are worth having are also very expensive.

sam, post: 448418, member: 50435 wrote: hi
Is there any recording related course with international certification, if so where can i study them.

The only one I know of is the Tonmeister course.

You have to be a musician as well as an engineer.

In the UK this is run at the University of Surrey in Guildford.

Courses in Germany, of course.

But this qualification is very well respected and internationally recognised as it produces recording engineers to the very highest standard.

While a good recording program can teach you the technical aspects of the craft -mics and mic placement, EQ, Gain Structure and Reduction, MIDI technology, etc., they can't really teach you "how" to mix, because so many different musical styles require different mixing techniques, and when all is said and done, you need to be able to hear things in ways that result in solid final output. If you can't hear that the vocals are harsh, or that the kick or bass is too strong(or too weak) in certain frequencies, then you won't be able to mix, regardless of the caliber of equipment you're working with.
In that regard, a good program isn't necessarily "worthless", because you would learn the basics; and education is always a good thing, increasing your knowledge never hurts...but graduating from a program, even a respected one, will NOT guarantee that you'll be mixing pro releases the very next week...or even next year for that matter.

There are many "graduates" from recording programs who aren't all that better coming out of these programs than when they went in, and even the good ones usually end up working doing something else to pay bills.
And, the measure of your worth is based on what kind of audio product you turn out, and rarely - if ever - based on your education or certification. Thete are some schools that are highly regarded and respected - Berkelee, Middle Tennessee State (at least it used to be), but there are more than just a few graduates of those schools that are working "regular" jobs to make ends meet.

You might consider taking some classes and getting a certification in ProTools; this would probably mean more to a potential employer than any 2 or 4 year degree would. And, getting that certification would also open up potential employment opportunities to teach Pro Tools to other students seeking the same training.

Right now, IMO, Your best bet is to buy the best gear you can; get to know your DAW program (whatever it is) inside and out, and ... practice practice practice. Do it. Record and mix. Do it a LOT.

No one here was "born" an audio engineer. It took all of us YEARS of learning, both self taught and some formal - but always DOING it. Finding out what worked, what didn't, solving problems, becoming more experienced along the way, and committing the answers to memory.
FWIW, I'm approaching 38 years in the craft, and I am STILL learning. ;)

-d

DonnyThompson, post: 448432, member: 46114 wrote:
FWIW, I'm approaching 38 years in the craft, and I am STILL learning. ;)

Same here - after over 40 years recording - when you stop learning is the time to pack it in.

When you think you have nothing left to learn you start getting worse.

I really rather like it when somebody half my age looks at me and says "why are you doing that?" and shows me a far better way. Never to old to unlearn and relearn something better!

there are lots people who would spend a ton on going to recording schools who disregard the advice of seasoned pros by saying, "your old and therefore irrelevant" and "why should i help you? you just want free labor". mentoring is a most important component of the recording business. any great recordist has had at least one great mentor.

instead of wanting to go to school a young person would be far better off offering their services for gratis to a local old guy pro that could probably use a little help. i have seen more incompetent "interns" coming out of recording schools than ones who actually belonged in the studio. a recording schools main function is to make a profit. creating great talents or passing a dying black art on, is way down on their list of priorities.

Kurt Foster, post: 448462, member: 7836 wrote: instead of wanting to go to school a young person would be far better off offering their services for gratis to a local old guy pro that could probably use a little help.

What is very sad for the young ones, there is less and less pro studios around. When we will be too old to pass our knowledge and experience, a part of that history will be lost.
Youtube videos are not watching you and say, hey wait, you're doing it wrong !! ;)

I wish there was a campaign to make youtube videos subject to some kind of quality standard because the vast proportion are totally an utterly appalling.

There are of course, excellent ones and mainly these are the ones where the people (of all ages) doing them really know their stuff and are not passing on bad technique and incorrect info as 'expert'.

I use a few sites who offer how to do it's on adobe photoshop and after effects - where you don;t really need top follow it step by step, but see the process and how certain bits work.

Some of the Cubase stuff is laughable, where somebody knows their own tiny area of the product and then attempts to 'help' when really they are just showing off. Others spend ages on totally the wrong processes, when much better ones are one button press away- and so many have given no thought to how people will be using them. A good example the other day was where the cubase tutorial was using a built in sound card, not been available for years, and for anyone with a more modern one - the routing and naming he was doing would make no sense at all.

This is the killer - everybody has a different collection of kit. Upgrading from 8.5 to 9 meant that I lost all my old MIDI routing - you have to work these things out for yourself.

John Willett, post: 448427, member: 47971 wrote: The only one I know of is the Tonmeister course.

You have to be a musician as well as an engineer.

In the UK this is run at the University of Surrey in Guildford.

Courses in Germany, of course.

But this qualification is very well respected and internationally recognised as it produces recording engineers to the very highest standard.

Hi thank you for this information .I had done diploma in sound an TV engineering from Techshore Inspection Services.