Joe Irvin
Conductor
(I'm the one in the middle)
Posts: 815
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Post by Joe Irvin on Nov 18, 2009 17:55:01 GMT -8
Do any of you out there (Brendan, Chris? etc) have your own studios, or do private recording and/or production? I was just wondering what you guys use. Anyone out there composing on Sibelius or Finale? Cubase, Pro-tools? Anyone out there doing any dabbling in analog? What kind of hardware? Is it easy to get started? Is it possible to turn a profit?
What CAN someone with 4+ years of music schooling get a job doing that actually has something to do with music?
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Post by Demetris Christodoulides on Nov 25, 2009 14:10:54 GMT -8
Joe, sorry to chime in so late. I have a small mini studio at home and i also work at one of the biggest studios of my city.
At home i mostly do mixing and mastering, not recording. Recording requires 2 things: 1) great mics, expensive mics...(big diaphragm mics for instance, by schoeps or neumann are more than 10-15k euros each) and most importantly you need 2) great acoustics which is a very large subject to analyze here but one things for sure, it can't be achieved at home at any case. Except if you're a big-name musician with the money necessary to hire professionals design and build it for you in a vast home or something that is, i.e. very few people in the world actually have acoustically correct and good home studios.
At home i've bought pro tools m-powered 8 which requires its on hardware to run, either M-AUDIO's or DIGIDESIGN's (the company that makes pro-tools, but anyway all of those companies are one now). I got the m-audio profire 2626. I also got 2 esi n-ear 05'' self-powered studio monitors which run on an intel core duo 2 quad q9650 (4x3ghz each cpu), 4 gigs of ram, windows 7 ultimate, lots and lots of hard disks (external and internal) and 2xnvidia geforce 8600 gt gpus. But thing is that i don't have the money to set proper basic acoustics at the flat which i rent now and the work i am able to do here at home is usually simple and small-scale.
For the big works i got to the big studio where i work which is e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t at all aspects. Here they use PRO TOOLS HD 8 with all its hardware, neumann, akg, sennheiser and schoeps equipment worhy of more than half a milliion euros but do an outstanding job providing a specially deep, warm and crisp sound especially for small acoustic ensembles and classical / chamber and modern orchestral music which is what the studio specializes at.
I'd recommend
PRO TOOLS, for AUDIO recording and mixing it's by far the most quality, brilliant software in the industry as we speak, in all major studios SONAR and CUBASE are good for midi / vst instruments and all applications, synth music, electronic music and artificial non-acoustic instruments' work is what goes in here SIBELIUS is top-notch for notation and sheet music
But i'd never recommend opening a studio on your own unless you have the basic (+) knowledge and some decent experience and of course a circle of clients 'cause it will take you down financially. I'd recommend taking classes on those programs above but firstly reading (formally if possible) the well-known international bibliography on ACOUSTICS, SOUND ENGINEERING AND RECORDING, ROOM ACOUSTICS and basic musical theory / harmony before anything else, then find a good sound engineer / teacher to work with and learn by, then you see where it takes you from there, esp. if you work for some years in a major studio and manage to gain some trusty-towards you clients to help start you off.
It's a major but very fun genre, contact me in private if you need more info!
Cheers D
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Joe Irvin
Conductor
(I'm the one in the middle)
Posts: 815
|
Post by Joe Irvin on Nov 25, 2009 16:33:12 GMT -8
Hey thanks for replying. I'm a bit familiar with Pro-tools, and I agree, Sibelius is a great program. It's what I've done all my composing on. I was just a bit curious. I've been lurking at homerecording.com for a couple weeks now. It's just something I'm looking forward to doing in the future, so I don't really have any immediate questions, but it's good to know that when I do, there's someone here that I can contact.
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Post by Brendan Anderson on Nov 25, 2009 16:55:41 GMT -8
Ah ha, and thus comes the question on the minds of many college senior music majors: what kind of job am I supposed to get now?! ;D Certainly you need to first decide on what you're passionate about - if it's recording and sound engineering, then Demetris is absolutely right in suggesting you find a great studio and try and get a job/internship/gruntwork/custodial-job there. Seriously - look at Media Ventures - all the composers were tied up with projects and Dungeons and Dragons came up - the only guy left who had the time to work on it was their intern and thus Justin Caine Burnett ends up with a big orchestra job. Don't be afraid to start very small and very humble - make good relationships with the people you can learn from, be responsible with the work you're given, be open to new projects that might not even be your specialty, and you'll do well. I use Finale to write music, mainly because I took a college class on it and so was able to learn the program extensively. Most of the writing I do is performed by live musicians so I don't do sequencing work much anymore. Good equipment is important, but keep an eye out for hand-me-downs...you never know when a successful composer/sound-engineer will be upgrading and want to get rid of his perfectly good older stuff. In fact, I'm using a mixer in my home studio right now that once belonged to a now Oscar-nominated composer. Yay me. I've arrived in a niche in the non-profit world and there are lots of opportunities to engage your passions with organizations that exist to serve others.....but you won't get rich doing it. But I've had great opportunities to use every single aspect of my music education this way - something I wouldn't necessarily be able to say if I focused only on the biggest and best music-making companies to work for or if I tried to do everything myself from scratch as a one-man show. Good luck Joe! -Brendan
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