Randmness

A week or two ago a friend of mine graduated from a recording school and told me that he was going to be interning at a studio and asked if I had any words of advise or any pointers that I could give him.

Recording studios are more than a place that someone rents to lay out some tracks; they’re sanctuaries. Recording studios are around to make sure the client feels relaxed enough to let loose and be creative so they can do their job. This means that the people working for the studio do their jobs, along with acting like a concierge service to ensure the client has everything they need to do their job.

An internship at a recording studio is a weird thing. An intern’s job basically consists of a few, but very crucial, tasks: cleaning up messes, running around town to get things for the studio or session, and depending on the studio they’ll help setup the equipment for the session and help break down the equipment when the session is finished. The hours are long but the amount of experience that you could gain from interning is priceless and will stay with you the rest of your life.

To give you a little background I used to work as a recording engineer at a studio in Hollywood. I started out as an intern and worked my way up to ‘Director of Operations’ where I used to help the studio manager with the day to day studio workings, edited audio and worked on sessions, and even helped build and wire up one of the rooms there. It was a very fun job because you never knew who would be in to work and no two sessions were ever the same.

Over the years we had a lot of interns that would come in and work for us. Most of them were about to finish school and a lot of them expected to be thrown into the first session that came in. This is rarely happens. As with any job you have to prove yourself before you’re given any real responsibility. As the head engineer used to tell the interns “How am I supposed to trust you to work with Madonna if you can’t even take out the trash?”

Over the next post or two I’m going to try and give out as many tips as I can to survive being an intern at a recording studio. Hopefully they help!

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