I recorded my very first CD containing my original songs with the help of a friend who happens to own his own recording studio. He asked me to take all the time that i required to record my songs and to gain more experience he also offered to mix the music for me.
This is actually my first official recording experience despite that fact that I’ve recorded a few demos years back using a rather vintage four track cassette recorder. Digital recording was an innovative concept, and my friend had one of the first set-ups for recording direct to PC hard drive. It absolutely was an amazing experience. I observed in awe how my friend edited my recording by doing the vocals, adding the instrumentals, and record multiple tracks. I paid close attention during the mixing procedure, as my friend would make the smallest modifications to the track volumes or equalization to enhance the sound. He would clarify different parts of the procedure to me, answering my continuous, pesky questions. Collectively we created a recording we can both be very pleased of.
I never thought my first recording encounter can be of great help until I was placed in a scenario where I need to use my know-how on digital recording. First, as a small-time musician that hosts events with no sound engineer I need to rely on myself in order to make the audio sound good. It was actually astonishing when I was able to manipulate the sound equipment and manipulate the sound mixer with ease. I learned a lot of that basic lessons from my recording experience.
The second situation where I was needed to use my basic knowledge was when I was hired as an sound engineer and was tasked to write musical scores for two short movies filmed by my son. Not really being qualified (I thought), I felt overwhelmed and quite out of my element; but I had learned enough from that time in the studio to detect when an audio signal was too loud or too soft, and how to compensate; and in post-production, I was able to write and record multiple songs on a Mac computer, and I knew how to make the adjustments to balance the sound levels. I even discovered out how to remove unnecessary noise from the audio of the film itself, when background noise affected the quality.
In taking on these tasks (which at the time I thought were more than I could manage), I found out just how much that my first recording experience had taught me. I also realized from that encounter just how much we actually learn things by simply doing them.
