I have recently bumped into an alarming number of acquaintances who are leaving the audio industry after decades of hard graft. A couple are returning to college to study unrelated subjects, journalism and computer studies, one is driving a truck, two are moving sideways into video and one plans to be a plumber. The others haven’t a clue what they’ll do next.
These are not tape-ops, wannabes or bluffers. They are top professional who have produced or engineered chart albums.
I hope the grass is greener in their chosen pastures. At least they see some grass upon which to graze. Sadly, the modern recording industry resembles the Kalahari Desert, a vast expanse of nothingness stretching out beyond the horizon, broken only by an occasional mirage of deceit in the form of record companies offering promises, promises, promises. Payment will be rendered if the record sells. But when and if and maybe don’t put bread on the table or pay the rent.
Talent is unique, experience hard-earned. It takes years of slog to hone skills that can be consigned to the scrap-heap in the flicker of an eyelid. And when that happens, our industry is impoverished.
On the other side of the balance sheet, there are tens of thousands of young hopefuls studying for Music Technology degrees. For what? Twenty-seven grand of long term debt? Where is the work? Are these dreamers told that prospects don’t exist? Those few who do find gainful employment usually teach. We therefore have the ludicrous situation where students rely on lecturers, whose only experience is having studied the same course, perpetuating myths, magnifying bookish misconceptions, substituting theory for common sense
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that you can learn how to make records in a classroom, any more than you can read up on how to fly a jumbo jet. Unless you get airborne and have flown sufficient miles, no airline in their right mind would let you near a cockpit and neither would Ryan Air. Even a qualified pilot will often spend a decade assisting before being allowed to twiddle his joystick unaided. Why, then, should anyone assume that a couple of years spent messing with Logic and a Soundcraft Spirit desk can qualify the Mu-Tech graduate to teach, let alone produce a professional session?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for education. There are some first rate courses on offer, such as Tonmeister at Surrey University. What rankles is the implication that a recording degree qualifies the holder for a job. It doesn’t. Recording isn’t like plumbing or bricklaying. It’s an art, a combination of talent and experience.
Making records is alchemy, not cookery.
So the question that I ask my retiring friends is not why they are leaving the record industry, but rather, why did the industry leave them?
Eccentric
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