Just what I Discovered From My Initial Experience With Recording
A number of years ago, I recorded a CD of my original songs with a friend who had built his own recording studio. He told me to take all the time that i need to record my songs and to gain more experience he also volunteered to mix the music for me.
I had recorded simple demos before using an older four-track cassette recorder, but this was my first official recording experience. My friend was one of the few individuals who got their hands first on the revolutionary concept called digital recording and this friend of mind had one of the first sets ups used for recording directly into the computer hard drive. It was an incredible learning encounter for me. I observed in awe how my friend edited my recording by doing the vocals, adding the instrumentals, and record multiple tracks. I paid close attention during the mixing procedure, as my friend would make the smallest modifications to the track volumes or equalization to improve the sound. I kept asking questions about the procedure and my friend would patiently explain the whole procedure to me and at the same time answer all my questions. Together we created a recording we can both be very pleased of.
I don’t think I realized just how much my first recording experience taught me until years later, when I was put into a couple of circumstances that drew upon my knowledge. The first one was as a small-time musician, in hosting events where there was no sound engineer or sound person; if I intend to make it sound good, it was up to me. It was actually surprising when I was able to manipulate the sound equipment and manipulate the sound mixer with ease. My very first recording experience provided me with all the basic knowledge that I need.
The other scenario that drew on my knowledge was when I became the sound engineer and wrote the music score for two short films my son wrote and directed. Not really being competent (I thought), I felt astounded and quite out of my element; but I had learned enough from that time in the studio to tell when an audio signal was too loud or too soft, and how to compensate; and in post-production, I was able to write and record multiple songs on a Mac computer, and I knew how to make the adjustments to balance the sound ranges. In addition to that, I found a way how to get rid of those unwanted noise in the background from the movie and this is very much helpful whenever the background noise affects the movie quality.
These projects made me understand that my initial recording played a huge role. With that encounter I was able to determine that you actually learn a lot when you start applying what you’ve learned in real life setting.
