Benefit of experience...

spark240

I see so many posts nowadays ( mainly on Facebook groups) on what seem to be very basic recording questions....I.e ..how do I record my guitar ?....How do I add reverb to my vocal?

I think one of the issues is that for me .....and likely a lot of us in the age 40-60 bracket....we have learnt using hardware, where you physically plug in and you can almost see the signal path until it comes out the other end...it seemed like a real pain then......now I think it’s underestimated how valuable this experience was....

New users who dive straight into the digital domain just can’t see underhand signal path....

what you reckon?

TheBigDipper

spark240 said:

I see so many posts nowadays ( mainly on Facebook groups) on what seem to be very basic recording questions....I.e ..how do I record my guitar ?....How do I add reverb to my vocal?

I think one of the issues is that for me .....and likely a lot of us in the age 40-60 bracket....we have learnt using hardware, where you physically plug in and you can almost see the signal path until it comes out the other end...it seemed like a real pain then......now I think it’s underestimated how valuable this experience was....

New users who dive straight into the digital domain just can’t see underhand signal path....

what you reckon?

TBH, many of the questions I see are from people who expect it to be easy and have never opened the manual. They wouldn't just get into a car and start to drive it, but...  

Musicwolf

Where do you start?

For those of us who have been at this since the time that dinosaurs roamed the earth it’s easy to forget what we were like, and the mistakes that we made, when we started.  I can just about remember trying to get my head around the semi-parametric EQ on my first Tascam 244 Portastudio (despite reading the manual) or plugging a guitar directly into the recorder and wondering why it sounded so horrible.

Then there was the fact that you had to build your gear up over time (it was far more expensive in real terms).  My son has set himself up with his own recording setup (he likes to do this on his own and only ask Dad for help when he really must) – it’s on his phone.  Of course if you are working on a PC you have a huge learning curve before you can even get to hit record, it’s no wonder that people have questions.  Once you have got all the technology running you still have to learn all of the other skills required to make a recording.  When you are learning the steps are something like;

Does it sound right / wrong?  Hopefully most of the population can hear this (otherwise we’ve been wasting a lot of time and money on mixes that nobody else can appreciate)

Do I know what is wrong?

What do I do to fix it?

It’s that last step that takes a lifetime to get to grips with.

sev112

NTheBigDipper said:

spark240 said:

I see so many posts nowadays ( mainly on Facebook groups) on what seem to be very basic recording questions....I.e ..how do I record my guitar ?....How do I add reverb to my vocal?

I think one of the issues is that for me .....and likely a lot of us in the age 40-60 bracket....we have learnt using hardware, where you physically plug in and you can almost see the signal path until it comes out the other end...it seemed like a real pain then......now I think it’s underestimated how valuable this experience was....

New users who dive straight into the digital domain just can’t see underhand signal path....

what you reckon?

TBH, many of the questions I see are from people who expect it to be easy and have never opened the manual. They wouldn't just get into a car and start to drive it, but...  

absolutely that’s how the majority under the age of 50 deal with cars,  they don’t look at manuals, they don’t open the bonnet, and in fact the cars are designed not to be maintained and tweaked by the average driver these days.  Whether that is a good or bad thing can be debated but there are definitely benefits of having that way

Fez

We see similar issues with our engineering apprentices as they get next to no hands on experience at school and college. There is so much for them to learn now though. 

Hick81

What’s a manual? 

Is it some new type of plugin I’m not aware of? 

PhilKing

I think not looking at the manual started when they stopped giving you printed ones with the equipment.  I always feel it felt much easier to have the manual to read, even if you didn't actually turn on the equipment.  When I got my Tascam 388, I read the manual from cover to cover.  With Cubase, I ended up looking up just what I need to know (and buying a precoded keyboard to help with the shortcuts).

Whistler

Hick81 said:
What’s a manual?
Is it some new type of plugin I’m not aware of? 

I hear it is a PDF, an optional download.

Danny1969

I think learning on hardware setups in the nineties was very useful to me. Not only can you easily follow the signal flow in terms of aux sends and buses but you also learnt about preserving a good signal to noise ratio while trying to keep enough headroom. There was also a fair bit of crosstalk in a lot of inline mixers from the eighties and nineties too, a little bit of everything would bleed into every other channel. You just don't get that with digital. 

Personally I find todays young engineers very good within their workflow and organisation when working within the box but they don't always  have the experience to work outside it in terms of setting up the patching, purely because they have never had to. A lot of older guys I know are pretty much basic audio electronic engineers as well as recording engineers and would think nothing rewiring a single balanced aux send to feed both channels of a headphone amp when they have to or knock up a quick attenuator to convert line levels to mic but a lot of younger guys are less practical in this respect. These are skills learnt when working in a real studio rather than skills in a pure digital environment. 
But as in any work life there's no substitute for experience and when your engineering a large session with 8 musicians or more all set up and ready to roll that experience gained from learning and fucking up on your own in your own time is invaluable. 

TheBigDipper

PhilKing said:

I think not looking at the manual started when they stopped giving you printed ones with the equipment.  I always feel it felt much easier to have the manual to read, even if you didn't actually turn on the equipment.  When I got my Tascam 388, I read the manual from cover to cover.  With Cubase, I ended up looking up just what I need to know (and buying a precoded keyboard to help with the shortcuts).

I'm sure that's likely for some people. Everyone has their own learning style preferences. I often download the manual for stuff and read it even before I've selected the product and made the purchase. I find it much clearer (and much, much faster) to read the book than trawl through YouTube vids. I started using Logic in exactly the same way you started with Cubase. I wasn't prepared to put in the effort to learn a huge piece of software from front to back. It hasn't (and never will) make me a good user of it, though. I just get by. And don't know what it is that I don't know, obv. :-) 

I've been known to ask the odd dumb question on here rather than dive back into the documentation, too. No-ones perfect! ;-)