Which Recording School should you go to?...
NONE !!
Recording schools generally are taught by folks with little 'real' experience (or none at all!).
You 'learn' from folks who have never recorded a 'major' artist.
You 'learn' from folks who 'talk' big, but do nothing, and generally have never done anything.
You will sit with a bunch of other kids in a studio or classroom with little individual instruction.
The instruction will be geared to the less than average or slowest students
And hey, THERE ARE NO JOBS in recording studios anyway.
Studios get hundreds of resumes a year from 'students' looking for work.
The 'success' stories happen to one in a thousand or higher.
Plus the employment 'statistics' the schools tout are basically FALSE !
No one is going to report they are working as an UNPAID Intern somewhere,
or are not working in a studio at all... so they make up a high salary,
and a dream job....and report a completely false sucess story...
which then the school uses as a sucessful story of full studio employment.
One guy who went to a local 'Recording School' worked as an unpaid Intern for a full year
at a studio, - never recording anyone - just cleaning the studio, answering phone calls,
running errands, cleaning the bathrooms, coiling cables....
and when he asked to get paid after a full year, was told to leave and not come back.
THERE ARE NO Paid JOBS in recording studios
Recording 'schools' - the ones you pay for - are generally NOT worth the time or money you'll pay....
you don't learn 'real world' techniques, nor do you generally learn how to really record bands
and work quickly and efficiently under stressful conditions.
Basically what most recording schools do is offer little more than a very simplistic description (often an inaccurate one at that)
of what things do and a quick demonstration of gear.
Recording Schools cost thousands and thousands of dollars.
One school charges nearly $8,000 for about 300 hours of 'instruction'.
That's about 25 bucks an hour - per student! - to be grouped with a bunch of other kids listening
to someone talk about recording or music, with the slightest amount of 'hands on' time at the gear yourself.
Are there any 'good' recording schools.... sure there likely are.
But you pay way too much to learn too little - in my opinion.
the BEST thing you can do is this:
Go to a City College or Community College and take their free (or nearly free) courses on recording.
Take courses in music too. Take basic business courses.
Community Colleges are the best places to start learning about recording
they're generally free, they often have good equipment, and you'll learn just about as much here as anywhere.
NEXT:
Find a few other folks who you like and get along with, and rent time at a local recording studio....
(don't be stupid enough to start your own studio!!)
- bring a band into the studio, and start recording them for free.
It's gonna sound like shit at first, but it's a start.
Try and find someone who knows more than you do... and who will stop by and help you mix the project
- and who will tell you what he or she is doing and why.
Then rent more time at the studio and bring another band in (for free), record them as best you can,
mix it, then start again with another band. Then you do it all over again.
Hopefully you and the others get better and better at recording and mixing, and hopefully you get better each time.
One of the really good studios here in the San Francisco Bay Area charges $350 a day (without engineer).
Find say a group of 3 other folks who want to learn recording and that's 35 bucks an hour if you work 10 hours,
and divided between 4 people that's less than 10 bucks an hour per person to be working in a 'real' studio with 'real' equipment.
Yes, you'll likely have to pay a 'real' engineer to be there with you at first,
and hopefully she'll take you through the paces and show you how this or that piece of gear works,
maybe correct some of the mic placements you come up with, or suggest another way of doing something.
You'll learn by making mistakes. You'll fuck up a lot. the stuff you record will sound like shit.
But you'll learn, and if you have talent you'll get better and better.
If you don't have talent, at least you'll have some fun.
And at least not have paid out huge bucks and not done any recording at all!
But really, you shouldn't become a 'recording engineer' anyway...
the world already has too many Recording Engineers as it is,
the pay is bad, the fun and excitment run out pretty quickly, and it's hard work.
The odds against you becoming a 'success' are high... thousands and thousands to one.