So this week I believe I'll jump on the bandwagon with the rest of the bloogers and industry people hoping to milk some press from silly crap. I'm of course referring to the Kanye West, Bob Ezrin, and Matt Brevner gibble fest. It appears that talking about Kanye, Trump, or whoever says stupid shit to the press at every opportunity works dandy for us bloggerators hoping to get lots of hits on Facedribble. Dandy I tell ya! Now, normally I like to talk about music, but I'd like to take this opportunity while I have you all here slathering and foaming at the tarderators to point out something: Stupid crap should not be tolerated. The only way we can stop stupid crap is to stop giving it the press it so richly does not deserve. Paying attention to dumbassery only encourages them. In fact, what if we ignored terrorists too? It would never happen with the current fear equals money based media regime, but really, would they continue to blow themselves up for God if they got zero press out of it? Now I'm not suggesting that Bob or Matt are stupid. Kanye appears to be a complete tard, but whatever. He may well be a genius judging from the amount of press he gets. It's more than likely we're being played by media consultants doing pretend stupid and the dude is laughing all the way to the bank. We've turned him and a whack of other media sluts with no discernible skills or talents into huge celebrities by wallowing in their douchey drama. Some people should be quite beneath our dignity. Imagine a world with no more Kanye, or Paris hilton, or Trump, or whateserface with the big ass. Eek. Stupid people might get bored. As to the general scrap, I have no opinion. Don't really care. I gather someone suggested Kanye was an idiot to which someone else lept to the pulpit hoping for facefart shares. I've heard some of Kanye's tunes, don't like em. I don't like computer generated music for the most part. I don't even know if Kanye is one of those autotuned computer guys or not, all I recall after listening to a few tunes a couple years back was "meh". If I went and checked He'd be getting youtard hits via being a say-stupid-crap media slut, so I won't do it. The only way to stop Kanye and all the media sluts from saying stupid shit is through ignorementation. Matt suggested Bob's school is preying on hopes and dreams and I do have an opinion about recording schools in general. There's nothing in a recording school you can't find online, and ear training just takes time. You can become as good an engineer as you're going to be with or without school. The talented unschooled will always kick the asses of the schooled. Most well known audio engineers will tell you this too. However. Any gig that's perceived as fun, like art, music, computer gaming development, interior design, acting, is always hard to make money with, or even get started in. Everybody wants those gigs and competition is fierce. Anything that gives you an edge is a good thing, and school is a major edge to getting started in any gig. The clue is in the first syllable: edge-yumacation. If you're gonna sign up for classes in any art endeavor, or anything that takes talent, you should realize right off it won't make you better at the actual gig. You still have to practice. All it really does is show you what you're aiming at and how to get there. That's a great thing, but I've run across many who figured school would give them the talent and skills as well. Or in the case of recording school, assumed their ears would be fully developed when they emerged from the hallowed halls. School or not, it just takes a few years of doing it a lot. School also saves you a lot of time learning the basics, and believe me, speaking as someone who learned everything online, you can waste days and months searching online for something that a teacher could answer in seconds. Most of your time figuring stuff out online is spent weeding through endless expoundmentation by self proclaimed experts who know zero about anything. Or worse yet, sales asshats posing as experts. It's hard to find solid info online about the basics of how sound works. What a sound wave is and what it does, and how your ears perceive sound. That's important stuff that gets buried in endless drivel about cool gear with blinky lights. If someone starts a school of anything, they have to pay the rent with it. So it'll cost you, and they will in fact be preying on hopes and dreams. Deal with it. Every dream gig is fraught with vultures, you're gonna have to learn which vultures can do something for you and which can't. If you want to get an edge you have to pay for it. The other good thing about school is you start right off making connections. To make money doing anything fun requires connections as much as talent. To acquire connections you might try to be likable too. I ran across a bad soundman with bad attitude the other day. Incompetence is one thing, trying to blame it on well experienced players is just stupid. I gather he had better more important things to do. Like programming phat beatz. Or maybe he's slowly realizing he has no talent or ears and chicks don't dig sound dudes and he wasted a year and 12 grand taking courses to make shit money humping gear. Sound is like music in that you have to love it and dig fiddling with stuff. Don't get into it because of some perceived cool gig thing. Get into it because you love it. Like music, those that make any real money with it are very very few, and especially these days with the industry being whacked hard with the digital stick. There's basically two paths to take in life, either chase the dream or chase the dollar. Chasing the dollar is way easy: find something that makes good money, and go. Chasing the dream is tougher. We only ever hear about the very few who chase the dream and make money at it, and half the time the perceived financial success of the lucky few is massively exaggerated.
You'll find in life that everyone's fulla shit. Parents and teachers will tell you you can be anything you want. They're fulla shit. They just want you to find interest in anything other than smoking dope and gaming. That's how you find your aptitude. Successful producers and engineers are also fulla shit. They're good at it and got lucky. The perception of success is almost always planted to get the good gigs because perception comes before success. This is why blinky lights are so important. One last thing to consider about recording school. Is it music or sound you're interested in? Most people really like music and would like to be a part of the creation. That's cool, but not really what audio engineering is about. it's about sound more than music. You should dig shaping and fitting together all sounds, and here's the important bit, not just the sounds in your favorite genre. So put down the bong and the controller and get your fat ass off the couch. You got stuff to do. BTW, I also am fulla shit.