or call (800) 755-7597

Issue #102

Weekly Newsletter

by L. Swift and Jeff McQ

X

or call (800) 755-7597

Student Successes

When Jimi and Brian get you learning on the job, you’ll be amazed at the connections and experience you gain in a short period of time. Read below about a Recording Connection student in Canada who went from NO experience or connections to working in Winnipeg’s emerging hip-hop scene in just a few months!

STUDENT SUCCESSES

 

Recording Connection student Darryl Thiessen connects with the Winnipeg hip-hop scene

   
Darryl Theissen

Darryl Theissen

How does a guy with a love for hip-hop and no prior studio experience end up becoming an audio engineer with one of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s most promising hip-hop collectives? Just ask Recording Connection grad Darryl Theissen.   It was Darryl’s desire to plug into the music industry that led him to the Recording Connection. “I really wanted to be just involved in music,” he says. “I thought this was a good way to break into the industry, in that way…I don’t have a lot of connections to any sort of music scene at all. So I entered the program and saw it as more of a way to get my start.”   Darryl was placed with producer/engineer Len Milne at Bedside Studios in Winnipeg, and despite his lack of experience, he says his mentor helped him find his way. “I didn’t know anything,” says Darryl. “He just kind of took it really slow with me. He was really nice and kind of explained different amps, different preamps, microphones, just very basic to start off with.”   That’s not to say Darryl wasn’t thrown into the thick of things; in fact, he recalls getting his hands on the gear the very first day. “He got me in there hands-on right away, which is something that I really enjoyed,” he says. “I remember my first day, he had a guitar track and he was about to edit it, and he said, ‘Hey, can you edit this?’ I was sitting behind the desk, and he was behind me for the first five or ten minutes just to make sure I wasn’t making any mistakes. But then after those five or ten minutes, he was like ‘Okay, you’ve got the hang of it.’ Then he kind of just went off to the side, and he was still keeping an ear on me, but I was making most of the right calls. Every once in a while he would be like, ‘Check that again,’ and I fixed it up.”   Besides shadowing his mentor on sessions, Darryl also got to connect with other producers who came to Bedside to record. “I got to watch a couple different producers do different genres of music,” he says. “It was very interesting, because everyone has their own way they’re going to do things, their own process. That’s when I started thinking, I gotta start thinking of what my process is.”   It was one of these connections, in fact, that helped Darryl get introduced to the Winnipeg hip-hop scene, and ultimately helped him get hired.  
Bedside Recording Studios

Bedside Recording Studios

  “Bryce Kaminski, a producer that had come into the studio while I was apprenticing there, he was actually really nice. He was just opening up a studio at the time with some of his friends, or it was actually part of a label. They were looking for an engineer…and then he asked me. And I said ‘Of course. I’d love to.’ So it lined up perfectly…right as the program ended…that’s how I kind of got introduced to a whole other group of people through him.”   The label, it turned out, was YSMG (short for “Young Successful Music Group”), an up-and-coming hip-hop collective of a number of rising stars. The group now rents space at Studio 11 in Winnipeg, where Darryl now spends lots of his time tracking for rap and hip-hop artists. His most recent project is an album for rapper Finalie, slated for release on January 31. Darryl says he’s still learning to adapt to the needs of different artists, but he loves what he does and he loves the people he works with.   “[It’s] definitely a huge learning curve for just getting what the artist likes,” he says. “I mostly do tracking, so it’s just trying to make the artist happy with how they’re sounding at the moment so they can get the best vocals…I absolutely love working with music and engaging with the artists and groups to hear what they want it to sound like and helping them find what they’re looking for…It’s one of those careers [where] you never stop learning.”   A few months ago, Darryl Thiessen had no industry connections and no training in the studio—just a love for music in general, and hip-hop in particular. Today, he’s doing what he loves, and is working hard toward a successful career as an audio engineer. He credits his in-studio experience for helping him get the training and connections he needed to get started.   “Working with a mentor really helped me learn what it takes to make it in the industry,” he says. “The thing that stuck with me the most out of my time in the program would be to always pay attention to detail, because it’s the details that make a song sound professional.”   
 *  *  *  *  *  



or call (800) 755-7597



Mentor News

MENTOR NEWS

 

RRFC INTERVIEW: Recording Connection Mentor Gregory Hainer talks video games,
post-production and sound design in Laurel Canyon

     Recording Connection mentor Gregory Hainer has carved out a niche for himself in post-production providing Sound Design, Voiceover / ADR, Music Composition, and 5.1 Mixing for Film, Television, Video Games, Location Based Entertainment, and more at Scorpio Sound, his private studio, located in historic Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles, CA). A master of sound, Gregory is often called on by his clients to create sounds that the standard audio post audio house employees can’t do. In his 20 plus years of experience, he’s worked on such major video games as “Batman: Arkham Asylum,” “Guild Wars 2,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” “Dishonored,” and “Plants vs. Zombies 2” as well as feature films such as “Black Hawk Down,” “We Were Soldiers,” “Prince of Egypt” and many others.   Given his wide range of expertise, Gregory brings a rather unique and well-rounded perspective to the table and stands out as an ideal mentor for our students who are interested in audio related aspects of film, video games, or any post production related venues. In the following excerpt from a recent interview, Gregory weighs in on the importance of hands-on learning rather than just getting something conceptually (the “knowing” versus “doing,” paradigm as he puts it). He shares what he looks for in an apprentice candidate and talks about some of the Recording Connection apprentices he has hired on, which has enabled them to earn credits on some very notable projects.   
 *  *  *  *  *  
  
Gregory Hainer

Recording mentor Gregory Hainer

RRFC: What makes Scorpio Sound an ideal place to record, edit and learn about audio?   Gregory Hainer: From a client’s perspective, I own the studio, so there is no middle management overhead to worry about because the owner/operator is also the creative head. This means I have the freedom to choose to spend a little more time with my clients in order to get things perfect versus having to be out of the studio by a specific time.   From a teaching/learning perspective, I’ll tell you how it differs from a lot of the other audio college classroom environments: Traditionally, audio skills such as sound engineering, editing, music composition, and mixing have been taught and passed down in a one to one fashion or a master/apprentice relationship if you will. Now, in my experience, you can effectively teach students a certain amount of base knowledge within the typical brick-and-mortar classroom with say 10 – 20 students per class, but you can really only go so far. You can introduce students to general “how to” concepts and the overall approach of the craft, but where I think a lot of the real world value and magic happens is through the hands-on experience and attention I am able to provide to a student here teaching within a real working studio. The “one student to one teacher” model that the Recording Connection uses not only allows me the time I need to spend individually with each student to make sure they are proficient in any skill but also ensures they are ready to enter the job market. To get them comfortable with real world expectations, I allow them to sit in and assist on actual sessions with my clients. I prefer to have students feel like they are bit more a part of the action versus just someone to run and get coffee for everyone.   One thing that I really try to instill in my students is the importance of practicing a skill or workflow as there is a big difference in simply understanding or “knowing” how to do something conceptually and the actual “doing” of it. It is crucial that they actively participate at some point versus sitting there passively taking notes while a teacher lectures. In other words, many students are capable of grasping a concept in an intellectual manner, but if they haven’t actually practiced or performed a specific activity such as engineering a voice-over session, then they often fail to perform adequately during their actual first job opportunity. And unfortunately, they likely will not get a second chance as there are just too many people out there nowadays trying to break into the audio and music side of things.   In addition to the real world studio classroom experience here at Scorpio Sound, a student also benefits from the personal connection aspect of the mentor/apprentice model. Not only is a student exposed to a working expert who has excelled in their field, but if the student performs well, then they already have myself as a professional industry reference when applying for jobs. In addition to this, as I become well-acquainted with a student’s capabilities and demeanor, I often will hire them to work with me on my clients’ projects thus providing them the real world opportunity to build up their credentials. All of these things contribute to making a student much more likely to get hired in the actual workplace than if they just graduated from one of the several more traditional audio schools not really knowing anyone and without any real world experience.   RRFC: What types of services do you provide at Scorpio Sound?   Gregory: Pretty much everything audio related actually. We offer the typical music recording services but are known primarily for our work in the Post Sound related industry for services such as Sound Design, Voice-Over Recording, Editing, Casting and Direction, ADR, 5.1 Mixing and Music Composition. I get quite a few calls for the more unusual or difficult to design stuff that many in-house audio teams can’t quite seem to pull off convincingly such as creating sounds for creatures, magic spells, sci-fi effects, light sabers and the like. But I will also get the occasional call to do the less-fun difficult stuff like cleaning up poorly recorded production audio from a film, or digging out inaudible archival dialogue from excessive background noise, etc. These are more along the forensic audio related tasks, you know, real CSI Miami sort of stuff. I recently learned that the director of an Independent film I worked on (“The Insomniac”) said in a film festival interview that I basically saved his film by fixing the previously unusable production audio, and along with the other sound design, mixing services and creative input, that I was the one person who contributed most to his film. I couldn’t have imagined a higher compliment from a director and that makes me think that all the personal one-one on attention and care I give to my clients and students is worth the effort.   RRFC: You mentioned that you had a few apprentices working on some of those AAA Video Game projects and that actually received credit. Was that Andrew Holscher and Will Dawson?   Gregory: Yes. Both Andrew and Will have worked on some of those. They got credit and they got paid. Will has also worked on a couple of other previous video games for me as well. Will is a great guy and his attention to detail and professionalism is exceptional. He not only has an unusually high degree of integrity but he is fun to hang out with. I recently invited him to go sailing with some friends of mine and the director of a film whose mix he sat in on. Andrew is also a real solid guy and has his hands in several aspects of audio and music. He’s the real gamer type, so he was super excited to be able to contribute to a video game project.  
Continue Newsletter



or call (800) 755-7597

Exclude from Search
 

Apply to Recording Radio Film Connection & CASA Schools

 
Please fill out the following information, and Admissions will contact you:

 
 



or call (800) 755-7597