The Los Angeles Recording School

[alphacat]

Funny SAE came up...

So I went to their open house here in San Francisco recently. I've been wanting to take some mixing classes since I'm pretty happy w/ my arrangements at this point but know that the songs' mixdowns could sound a lot better. I had no real idea about what the SAE curriculum was all about, but figured that I could learn something useful even though I've been playing with sound of all kinds since 1989 or so (I'm older than most of you. )

It was an eye-opener on a lot of levels; first off, seems I know a whole lot fucking more than I thought I did.

Their shorter electronic music course (3 months full-time, $2000 US) - without boasting, can say I feel confident that I could teach 90% of that course.

The ATP course mentioned above (the $20,000 US with macbook, protools, logic, etc.) is 9 months full-time; this was the one that I realized I was looking for more, learning solid & universal studio skills on real consoles (SSL, Neve) as well as other areas of pro sound like surround mixing, foley, ADR, sound design, etc.

The people generally seemed to know what they were talking about (the tour guide was a Witch House label owner....heh) and conversely, nobody else in the fucking tour group I was in had the first idea about anything. When the school's finance director started talking about financing options this one middle-aged aspiring hip hop impresario raised his hand and asked with a slight lisp: "Um, yeah... so what's the best music software?" and when the finance guy recovered nicely from that one, about 5 minutes later the same guy raised his hand and asked "Um, so yeah... what's the best sound card?"

Anyway, I digress. The whole point here is that this stuff is really, really from the ground up: they assume you don't know squat when you walk in the door because in all honesty most of their applicants don't.

You can learn a lot of what they're teaching organically simply by doing: spend 3 hours a day making tunes and experimenting and trying to learn new shit from books, videos, listening, etc. - and many people will learn it in a much more applicable way than what they're going to teach you. HOWEVER: they also will teach you stuff you won't learn on your own usually, not the basics but some of the finer points like contract negotiation; and the access to resources of studios and gear is almost worth tuition in and of itself. Let's also not forget the networking that comes with an environment like this.

In the end I'm not going to do it right now because they're not fully accredited in California... if I'm forking out 20 grand, you can bet I wanna get a degree out of it. But I think the SAE program has a lot to offer if you're serious about it. If you know nothing the EMP course might not be a bad idea, and if you know something and want to get serious and maybe try to make it a full time career, check out the ATP course.

[makemerich]

i dont know your age or qualifications either btw. but if your over 24 , and have a limited income. you could be partially if not entirely covered by grants. and yes this will work for m.i., etc.

[hifi]

I am going to this school on Saturday to get a tour of it and was pretty excited, until i read some reviews from alumni, some saying the teachers dont know anything, just there for their dollar, many of them bail out halfway through a class, not getting the promised 900 hours of hands on studio time and that it was a waste of $24K. just wondering if anyone here has gone to or wanted to go and what you guys have heard, it was kind of a big let down reading them.

I want to go to the LA recordings school aha. And, I know 2 people that have went and 1 person that is currently attending. Both people I know who went said it was a good school and they learned a lot but none of them produce EDM just play instruments so I don't really know since it's kind of a different perspective from them and my own.

[Sirius]

when I grow up.....

I WANA BE A TONEMEISTER!!

!!chea

[alphacat]

when I grow up.....

I WANA BE A TONEMEISTER!!

!!chea

Yeah, one must admit that's about the sexiest fucking career title EVAR.

[RandoRando]

So i took my tour this past Saturday, actually seemed pretty cool, the SSL mixing boards were really cool, all the class rooms running pro tools HD except for the pro tools m powered class that was running LE i believe. The first teacher was a post production class, showed us a clip from battle star galactica with just the dialog, never realized with the boom Mic they only record dialog. then he showed us with all the Foley added and sound effects. Sound design definitely appeals to me after seeing that, next class was about 5.1 surround sound. Another student moved the joystick on the board which was panning the guitar of this song he was using and he recorded the automation of it. pretty cool, the next class was about midi and piano editor on PT and the teacher made a 8 track or so marching band song with his midi controller using just one vst of presets in about 2 minutes. then the final class was about mixing and EQing the various tracks and recording environments. The last bit was about career development and copyrights and all that. All and all the teachers seemed pretty cool all about 20s to 40s of age. but i did see the teachers and director of the school who fit the negative reviews i read. I am definitely looking more into SAE down the street though, because of the great reviews i read about them, its cheaper than LARS, and tuition includes a i mac with all the software and hardware and headphones.

[RandoRando]

Xrylex. What course did you take and how was job hunting afterwards

i did the audio engineering program. i didnt really do the traditional route of hunting for a job after. i already have a decent career as a dj and went to SAE to get a solid foundation of the fundamentals because up to that point everything i knew was self taught. I always felt like i was missing something and i wanted to learn the process of recording (beyond the electronic music world) to help me make the transition from dj/producer to recording artist.

somewhere along the way i got really interested in music business and ended up as the A&R manager for an electronic-rock record label that specializes in Film/TV licensing. Without having the education from SAE i probably wouldnt have even been interested in a position like this, but oddly enough a ton of the stuff i learned in school (the basics really) are actually super helpful in my day to day stuff and drastically improved my production skills. it also kind of set a fire under my ass after spending 20k on school...

one thing i will say is, if you go in expecting that this school (or any school) is going to give you a career of any kind in music, you are wrong. a huge part of it is luck, timing, and networking. i already had a decade of dj'ing under my belt, had a few releases out, had traveled all over the states as a dj, and had been taking big steps to advance my career for a few years leading up to going to school.

hope that helps

you kind of look like marilyn manson in a good way

[IC0N]

I highly suggest SAE. They teach you everything about audio engineering. If you do the 9 month program, they dont have a huge emphasis on electronic music. But the cool thing is is that some of the instructors have their own projects and are always down to help you with stuff. Plus you have alot of time to be in the studios and work on school project or your own stuff.

[SLASH]

fyi.school does not lead to job. I have no degree and I'm a post production mixer. The best way is to find somewhere you can work as a runner and work your way up through the system (which is hard right now in this shit economy) Almost everybody in the industry came up that way. I was in college at Long Beach Community College and I dropped out to deliver tapes as a runner and moved around the studio system that way. I'm pretty sure nobody else from my school (at the time I was enrolled) made anything of their schooling. I actually joined school so i could get student loans to buy gear and I got a grant to pay for my school. Some of the bigger facilities require a degree to get hired off the streets, but you can get hired at those same places if you know somebody or have enough credits to surpass the value of a degree. Also I think you live in victorville? you HAVE to move to LA. even when I lived in Long Beach a mastering engineer came in and said "you HAVE to live in LA" . I got a job up here, moved up here and then it all made sense. I've been doing this for 6 years and all of my friends are video editors, motion graphics artists, picture colorists, directors, sound engineers, producers, and financial people for various studios or stations. That equals work. Also I would like to add that my school advice is to go for computer science/engineering and that also relates directly to music programming and production. Robots are the future and will take everybodies job, if you can make robots you can make money.

lastly, I knew the manager of my bank, he got laid off and asked about where I worked and what I did. He went to one of those Hollywood recording academy places ( I didnt want to be a hater and burst his bubble and tell him to do something else with his time) I saw him on Hollywood blvd. over the summer and he was hella depressed because he can't find work in the recording engineering field. experience counts, a degree means almost nothing.
hope this sheds lights on your decision Rando

[RandoRando]

yeah this was a while back, i did take a tour of sae though after LARS tour, and they definately seemed alot more professional. But them not being accredited yet didnt appeal to me, so im lookin at other career fields as of right now. and i think i would need to live in LA if i attended that school cause its a 80 mile drive for me. :\