Sound Careers for Engineers

By Laura French, Star Tribune Sales and Marketing

Last update: July 20, 2003 - 11:00 PM

To succeed as a sound engineer, according to Scott Jarrett, you need the combined skills of an airline pilot, midwife, and waitress. The result can be a varied and interesting career path.

In Jarrett's case, it has led to New York, Nashville, and the Twin Cities. Walk into the recording studio, and the comparison with a commercial airline pilot immediately becomes clear: a control console can have 45 recording channels, each channel with its own row of buttons, dials, and levers. Jarrett says the majority of these controls will come into play during any single recording project. Knowing what each of the controls will do is the easy part. The hard part is getting enough experience to respond instantly and instinctively during a recording session.

Absolute Control

In addition to the controls, the engineer also needs to know how to arrange the instruments, performers, and microphones in the recording studio to get the desired sound.

Being able to figure out just what sound the performers and producer desire is where the skills of the midwife come in. Jarrett points out that most of the words we use to describe sound - bright, warm, lush, harsh - are actually borrowed from the other senses. When a producer or performer says the sound is "too bright," it's up to the engineer to translate that into technical terms. "Bright" is usually between 4 and 10 kilohertz, Jarrett says - so "less bright" would mean the lower end of that range.

The engineer has "absolute control, and no power" in the recording process, Jarrett says. That's why it's important to be able to provide service with a smile.

Jarrett recalls an anecdote - happily not his own experience - of a performer who had spent three months in complete isolation, wanting to clear his head of other music and develop a unique sound. Finally ready to record, the performer came out of the woods, only to walk into a blast of heavy metal music blaring through the studio loudspeakers. The performer stormed out - not because he disliked heavy metal, but because the focus he had worked so hard for was destroyed.

Computer Games and Concerts

While many sound engineers are musicians or at least music-lovers, music isn't the only career option. TV and radio productions rely on sound engineers, as they have for half a century. Computer game sound tracks are a lucrative new market, Jarrett points out, as is post-production dialog replacement for films.

Outside the studio, careers for sound engineers include setting up and monitoring live sound for music venues and theatrical performances. An engineer can also make the transition to producer, which might involve everything from selecting the material to be recorded, arranging the tracks to tell a story or create a mood, and helping to market the CD once it's finished.

Home Tools

These days, the big change is the digital recording editing equipment that lets any entrepreneur create a studio in the basement or garage. "In the Sixties, every kid had a two hundred dollar guitar," Jarrett says. "Nowadays, every kid has a two hundred dollar sound editing program on the computer. The home tools will change things - but only if someone sees the opportunity and creates the next form."

For more information on sound engineering and on Scott Jarrett, go to www.musictech.com.

Laura French is principal for Words Into Action, Inc., and is a freelance writer from Roseville. MN.

Recent Jobs: Technology Careers stories

Lack of Laboratorians: A "Quiet Crisis" - July 20, 2003

Lack of Laboratorians: A "Quiet Crisis" - A year and a half ago, Michelle Briski, Medical Laboratory Technician Program director for Saint Paul College, called the shortage of laboratorians a "quiet crisis in healthcare." Today, according to Carol McCoy, Clinical Laboratory Scientist (CLS) Program director for Fairview Health Services, "The shortage is only getting worse." More