I can understand what your friend says as for 4 years I worked in professional AV engineering and didn’t do a course for this, just about everything I know is self taught. and in recent times I also taught myself accountancy skills, and how to build small telephone exchanges (as these are more valuable than multimedia nowadays)/

The reality is there are loads of these courses, it won’t do you any harm to go on one but it may be teaching you stuff you already know and there is no job at the end of it. a relative of mine went on one and did well but he now works in NHS as a frontline care assistant and is training for nursing and medicine as thats still a valued career.

it appears they do do part time courses so you might be able to fit it in alongside work.

I certainly wouldn’t give up the day job to do it. Fruit and veg (particularly exotic foreign ones) is worth more than music and media content in todays economy..

What are you hoping to do after you graduate?

I have a degree in sound engineering – it’s right down the bottom of my CV and gets a brief mention, as it really is true that no-one in the industry cares about qualifications in sound engineering (at least if you’re wanting to do studio or live work). There are plenty of jobs where a good degree in sound engineering is useful though, but these tend to be well-paid engineering/research type jobs rather than sitting behind a mixing desk.

That said, I knew this when I started the course, and I’m still glad I did it. As well as teaching me lots of useful stuff it gave me a more professional attitude and made me really determined that this is what I want to do with my life.

If you want to get into doing sound for gigs, a good thing to do is get in touch with your local stage crew company for some work. You’ll get to crew for big arena shows (basically lugging flight-cases around, setting up staging, coiling cables and getting shouted at by lots of aggressive men), but at the same time you’ll be meeting top engineers and system techs (and getting paid). I do stage crew work alongside my regular job, and in the last week I’ve worked on Peter Andre, JLS and Scissor Sisters (hardly my favourite artists but still, the techies for those kinds of tours are at the top of their game and useful to meet).

I think as long as you’re under no illusion that the course will get you a job, go for it. At the end of the day, if you’re dead set on being a sound tech you’ll do it somehow. I’ve somehow managed to scrape a living through sound work since leaving uni (with long, frustrating periods spent on the dole and job-hunting). You’ll have to be prepared to be pro-active and a bit cheeky to find the work though, as obviously no-one advertises for sound engineers. I managed to blag a job as a runner at Abbey Road last year when I heard one of their runners had left, and I travelled to London and turned up on their doorstep asking for the job.

Btw contrary to what most people think, there is a lot of sound work out there, particularly in corporate events. Not always the most exciting work, but if you can get regular work doing AV teching for conferences and corporate stuff (the going rate is around £200/day) you can learn a lot on the job and it is about 100x more useful on your CV than a qualification in sound engineering. It’s perhaps a more realistic aim when you’re starting out than trying to get work doing sound for big concerts. You won’t get a job without relevant experience though, and you won’t get experience without doing work – it’s a frustrating catch 22. That’s what I’m trying to get into at the moment – I’m currently working as an AV tech and hoping to get more freelance work.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t much call for studio engineers any more – cheap gear and a decline in record sales have meant that the demand for commercial recording studios has declined dramatically over the last decade (nowadays anyone with a spare couple of grand can buy a laptop, pro tools, i/o, speakers and a few cheap mics and as long as they know how to use it properly, make half-decent recordings).

This does mean though that nowadays record companies are pumping all their money into live concerts rather than recording (lots of singles are made available for free download by record companies, not to mention Spotify, Grooveshark etc – the recordings are basically promotional material for the live shows). I.e. live events is a growing sector, and the demand for good live sound techs is increasing.

@General Lighting 411221 wrote:

not only are these quite boring, they get fuckloads of applicants though, the competition is ruthless (including from people older than me with experience) and very often the companies pick and choose so much that the company goes bankrupt or the project is cancelled (and the job disappears) before the position is filled …

Depends what you find boring I guess. Quite a few of the guys I was at uni with did post-grad courses and found jobs fairly quickly in audio research (for example at Dolby and Harman-Becker) and enjoy their work.

I agree though, the job situation is fucking dire at the moment. I came back from working overseas in September and moved straight to Bristol to find work. I’ve spent the last two months solidly hunting for jobs. I eventually started to run out of money a couple of weeks ago and had to look for whatever work I could get. I couldn’t even get a temp job in a call-centre or warehouse through an agency as there are so many people out of work right now.

I literally walked around the city centre with a bag of CVs and tried to give them to every job agency I found, saying I’ll do whatever job you have going (I think only one agency accepted it – the rest fobbed me off by telling me to email it to some address). It’s pretty depressing applying for a £6/h office job and knowing that I won’t get it because one of the other 80 applicants will actually have some admin experience (as opposed to an engineering degree, A-levels, and experience in much more challenging but irrelevant jobs). Most of the agencies were full of guys in their 40s doing the same thing as me.

Thankfully I found a job last week as a full-time AV tech and started the next day, so I’m safe at least until the end of the contract.

I think thats the issue (in any job) being able to do it effectively and companies only trust those who can deliver (which is why I keep my job) and it does mean working hard..

Last night after my normal office work I spent a good half hour painstakingly tinning the ends of a mains cable for a hand wired IEC plug (not too impressed with the lead free solder, its the first time I’ve used the stuff though).

Of course I could have just twisted the copper strand but this is the mains feed to a rack of ICT kit in a old peoples home – if the rack loses power so does the office phone system which they use to keep in touch with the NHS and relatives..

I find on the music scene there are a lot of sketchy “engineers” who actually have reasonable kit but know absolutely jack about the basics (stuff like leccy cables are important as your equipment doesn’t work withoyt them!)

@DaftFader 411231 wrote:

What I wanna do is set up my own studio to start with and produce music (also rent out studio when I’m not using it). I’ve allso thought about setting up a club as well. I don’t think I could work for some one else tho if i was going to do something in sound as I’d get pissed off with getting told what to do as it’s really something I like to do my self for me, but ofc would be nice to make cash from it. There’s no way I could lug shit about either as my back’s fucked.

thats the hardest one in the business TBH. if you did that I’d also suggest moving slightly outside of the centre of London, although South Essex is way harsh for licensing and the feds / SOCA will quietly check your finances (the bank has to give info) as its the usual way people used to launder their drugs money (shouldn’t cause problems if its all legit).

@DaftFader 411237 wrote:

Would learning it off my own back limit the chances of me getting jobs in the sound indastry? I understand it’s more who you know more then what you know (one of my college tutors on my music tech corse years ago told me this) I wanna know the stuff for my own benifit ultimatly.

I don’t think it would that much as it is “who you know” and I’ve got jobs in both ICT and professional broadcast being entirely self taught (i do not have a University degree). TBH the posts Biotech, Raj, Noname and Cheesweasel put on here as as good quality as 2 years of most college, and you won’t have to endure people wanting to be the next N-Dubz…