Recording - Real World Experience Versus Recording School

Anyone contemplating a career in the recording industry must assess early on in the process the important of real world experience versus recording school instruction. Both count for quite a bit, though most recording studios are more interested in what practical know how you can bring to a job, rather than what your academic achievements have been. This is not to suggest academics play no role in find a job in the recording business. 

Potential employers in the recording industry definitely place value on a potential employee's academic record. However, if the choice comes down to two applicants, one with only an academic degree, and the other with a degree plus experience, it is not hard to guess who is more likely to get the job. So when weighing the costs and benefits of real world experience versus recording school, it is clear that some amount of real world experience is essential. 

This means the best recording schools will offer you both intense, one-on-one mentoring and instruction so that you gain a clear understanding of all of the roles you may fulfill in the recording industry and what each one demands, and make sure it is also a program that will place you in real-life situations. Working in an active recording studio or other outlet of the recording industry will allow you to see how the professionals do their job, and gain savvy insight and a unique perspective into the real ways of the business.

This experience will not only make you attractive to potential employers, it will also increase the number of employers who will want to hire you because they will hear of you through the contacts that you make while working at the studio as a student. This is a combination that cannot lose, as opposed to those recording schools that try to stick to outdated curriculums that can be little more than lessons in technical and business theory.

Theory has its place, but without a practice in place, without a daily engagement with the actual field in which you wish to work, theory will be useless, because you will not have the "laboratory" of the real world working environment in which to try out every idea and lesson you have studied. And again, a mentor can make all the difference, leading you along at a comfortable pace out into the working world, helping you learn how to follow your instincts, and then letting you go off on a path of your choosing in an exciting and lucrative field.