Short Recording Courses (1 Viewer)

[RED(tape)MENACE]

So, there's a lot of studios offering short courses in recording theory and practice.
They tend to be for a few evenings over a couple of weeks, or weekends or whatever.
They broadly deal with signal flow, equipment and practical techniques with a bit of theory and maybe an introduction to pro tools or reason.
They may also include running through a mix with the mixer explaining what they were thinking with various choices of processing etc.

Couple 'o questions :

1. Has anyone done any of these courses?
2. Has anyone thought about it?
3. What kind of content would interest you in a similar course?
4. Would it be more interesting if it also offered comparisons and hands-on time with the fancy gear you read about in TapeOp, Sound on Sound etc. (Neves and Neumanns and all that lovely stuff)?
5. Anything else I've forgotten?

Cheers!

 

[pad]

well i'd be interested in doing a course that teaches me more about reason and abelton and pro-tools and mic positioning and mic types. basically a course in good home recording. i have no interest in the fancier things nor do i have any huge interest in obscure theory. i just want to know how to get the best sound from my mac. does that make sense?

 

[Moods For Mallards]

I second Pad's comments, to an extent. I'm sure there are people who want the more in-depth theory, etc, but I would definitely be interested in a kind of hands-on do's and don'ts, Applied Leaving Cert recording gobshite course.
And I'd like someone to teach me how Ableton works 'cos I just don't get it, but that's another day's work.

 

[Goodbye]

Learning is doing.

I mostly learn how do shit by just figuring out how to do shit.

I know if I had any formal training, it would, ahem, stifle my, cough, creativity...

Plus I ask shitloads of annoying questions whenever anyones doing stuff.

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Yeah, I'm thinking that you can learn theory from books.
Mic choice and positioning are something that you can't.

 

[Goodbye]

Mic choice and positioning are something that you can't.

Thats an art form

 

[Beanstalk]

An ideal short course would go into the practical things like

• mic positioning
• mic types/selection
• room sizes/shapes/reverb
• signal flow, sends, inserts
• Compression/EQ
• Quality/strengths/weaknesses of different outboard gear & desks
• session back-ups and formats (RADAR/DAT)
• baffling
• loads of gaffer tape tricks
• ...and assorted "artist pandering and manipulation"

The course would be mostly hands-on, but you're still gonna need to do a small bit of theory to explain things like reverb, standing waves, signal flow, compression, etc...maybe you could draw up a recommended reading list before taking the course, or write a few summary pages for the potential student.

As for learning software like Pro-Tools, Abelton, Reason or whatever...no need to do a course on this...there are oodles of free tutorials on youtube to teach this.

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Cheers Beano.

 

[hugh]

As for learning software like Pro-Tools, Abelton, Reason or whatever...no need to do a course on this...there are oodles of free tutorials on youtube to teach this.

Well there are but you can spend forever wading through them before you find the good ones. Having someone telling you face to face what you need to know (and with whom you can interact and ask questions) saves a humungous amount of time ...

 

[ogy]

might be hard to organise but i think something i'd love to do as part of a course is record 1 or 2 songs with a band and get talked through the whole process by an experienced engineer (such as yourself) I definitely think after all the essentials such as signal flow/mic choice/eq/compression/reverb/mixing etc are covered to actually see it all being used in a real situation, to see what order you approach it in, why you make certain decisions, would be a really important step that most courses don't offer.
i know its gonna be different for every track but that bit of real experience is what most courses lack i think. and you could do a mates demo for free but still be earning which would be good.

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Hm.

So maybe do routing, basic editing, automation (maybe most important, I dunno how much the average recording musician knows about how much automation can help them), setting up auto punches. Maybe a bit on plugins too.

Hm.

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Cheers Ogy, that's something I'm definitely looking at as part of a course, although it could be something that's also offered seperately.

 

[pissypants]

From having talked to a few people involved in sound training in one way or another, anecdotally it seems a lot of courses have started to slant more towards software use, like learning reason or ableton because they can make more money from doing that (because of the amount of people into making dance tunes and djing) and the resources required to run a course like this are easier to come by.

Yes, you'll still do some studio stuff, but you'll spend more time learning software (including protools and the like) than placing microphones in front of instruments.

From my experience, even though I went on a good course, the one thing I felt a bit short on when I left was knowledge about microphone placement, which I went on to learn about through experience and experimentation.

Some more emphasis on this would have been absolutley invaluable: I can envisage now a setup where a student would have have to mike up a small band, getting the best sound possible, using no eq or f/x, just using microphone placement and setting an appropriate level, with a selection of different types of mics available.

 

[lemonbravo]

-Getting the best out of your monitoring environment, practical acoustic tips etc.
Tips on optimising you monitoring chain, that sort of thing.
Maybe DIY guides for making broadband bass traps, for home studio setups they're probably going to be the most useful.
with lists of material suppliers in Ireland.

-operating at safe levels- the difference between analog signal levels and digital. How to get better sounding recordings with what you have, to work at levels where your analog or digital equipment will sound best. Gain staging, that sort of thing.

 

[Goodbye]

I need a sound on sound studio hob nobs makeover thing

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Monitoring - yeah, big time.
Even just talking about setting up the monitors in a logical way can help some folks.
Gain staging - HELL YEAH. That'll probably be item 1.