I recorded my very first CD containing my original songs with the help of a friend who happens to own his own recording studio. As a way of attaining experience and “seat time”, he had invited me to take all the studio time I required for free, and he would record and 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 encounter. Digital recording was an innovative concept, and my friend had one of the first set-ups for recording direct to PC hard drive. It absolutely was an amazing experience. I observed how my buddy did microphone placement for vocals, guitar amplifiers and drums; how he placed instrumentalists in different rooms so they could play live “together” and he could record several tracks without audio bleed-over; how he solved problems on the fly when things didn’t go as he’d planned. I paid close attention during the mixing procedure, as my friend would make the smallest modifications to the track volumes or equalization to enhance the sound. I kept asking queries about the procedure and my friend would patiently explain the whole process to me and at the same time answer all my queries. And together, we made a record we were both very pleased of.
I never thought my first recording encounter can be of great help until I was placed in a scenario where I need to use my know-how on digital recording. First, as a small-time musician that hosts events with no sound engineer I need to rely on myself in order to make the audio sound good. It was actually astonishing when I was able to manipulate the sound equipment and manipulate the sound mixer with ease. I learned a lot of that basic lessons from my recording experience.
The other scenario that drew on my know-how was when I became the audio engineer and wrote the music score for two short movies my son wrote and directed. By my own criteria I believed I was not competent, but with the knowledge I gained from my previous experience I was able to manipulate the sound elements in order to create ear friendly music and sound effects. In addition to that, I found a way how to remove those unwanted noise in the background from the film and this is very much helpful whenever the background noise affects the movie quality.
In taking on these tasks (which at the time I thought were more than I could manage), I found out just how much that my first recording experience had taught me. I also realized from that encounter just how much we actually learn things by simply doing them.