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.

Musicians still generated a large percentage of their revenue from the hard-copy sales of their music, and with the same amount as they had for more than five decades early in this millennium. This meant that touring and playing concerts were the essence of promoting a new record. While ticket sales for concerts did signify a minor revenue stream for the artists themselves, both they as well as the record companies labels saw the bulk of their income from record sales. However, with the popularity of the Internet and the availability of purchasing recorded music at reduced prices (or for nothing at all, if one is willing to violate a few barely-enforced copyright protection laws), every aspect of music jobs has undergone a significant change.

For the musicians themselves, they can expect to earn the lion’s share of their revenue through performances, with sales of CDs, iTunes purchases, and ring-tone downloads representing only a fraction of their income. As a result, the record companies themselves now take an immense interest in obtaining some percentage of the revenue from concert tickets, t-shirt sales, and other ancillary markets related to live performance.

Indeed, today, the music industry has become more concerned about looking for fans who would love to hear it live – and pay for it – rather than getting them to purchase recorded albums. The shift has been so dramatic that roughly all independent record stores have gone bankrupt, supplanted by mega-sized institutions like Wal-Mart and Target that not only offer CDs, but also just about everything else a customer might want. Even at these huge corporations, sales of CD’s are at an almost all-time low. The bottomline: recording music isn’t anymore as profitable as it was before.

Thus, music jobs (e.g. sound engineer, sound editor) will be harder to come by since the music scene is on the hots for marketers and tour promoters. If one wants to find the most lucrative line of work in the so-called “recording” industry, one shall most probably find the best music jobs in these fields after formal training in one of the many music schools.