and here are some of the responses I've had, they are each fascinating and thought-provoking, just the kind of thing I was after. Dig in!
"Going back to the early seventies, it was not uncommon to find
sound engineers wearing white coats - IBC and Lansdowne, Abbey
Road, CTS spring to mind.
Certainly I think that the role of an 'engineer' has changed
dramatically. Back in the early seventies, a studio engineer
was not expected to be or encouraged to be creative - that was
the job of the 'producer'. This itself was a similar bone of
contention as many engineers resented the 'producer' and
considered that the end result was totally the work of the
engineer. To emphasise the point, some would give the producer
a fader labelled 'DFA' to influence the outcome . . . . (often
justifiably!).
My first experience of working (as producer) was with one
engineer at Lansdowne who simply refused to write any text on
the channels on the mixing side of the desk on the basis that if
I didn't figure out where things were appearing, I should not be
sitting there in the first place. I learned fast!
Also, apart from the core hardware, they knew how to mike up any
instrument that was thrown at them. There was also a training
path of sorts through the 'tape op' system - that of course does
not exist these days.
Most of the engineers that worked with at the time knew quite a
lot about audio and recording, microphone techniques, etc -
(they read electronic mags, not Q) and given that studio
hardware was possibly less reliable back then, if anything
stopped working, they needed to have sufficient understanding to
fix the problem. The more adventurous of them did indeed
develop their own techniques to achieve astounding results - but
this was more about impressing their peers than their clients!
Disc cutting engineers were even more technically savvy - which
i think goes with the technology that they were working with -
and their coats were even whiter!
BBC sound engineers wre totally 'electronic engineers' and had
no creative credentials, talents or musicality (actually there
were a rare few who had musical abilities) and it still amazes
me today that the BBC are totally unable to record and balance a
rock concert satisfactorily - you can always tell when it a BBC
recording - no vocals - maybe all bass or no bass at all - all
hi-hat/no hi-hat - utterly lifeless and a travesty. I dread to
think how many rock concerts the Beeb has ruined over the years
. . .
So, the blurring of the role of the engineer and the producer
has taken place, plus it seems that with digital recording you
can get away with far mor - or to look at it another way, get
away with knowing far less.
There is much more of 'fix it in the mix' attitude than in
former times.
Back in the early seventies, the company I worked for used to
record six titles per session - and I had just four hours to mix
twelve titles (from 8 or 16 track) - recently I had the
miserable experience of working in a west end studio where it
took the two house 'engineers' over two hours to set up the
miking of a drum kit and routing stuff through the desk . . . .
. . yes, times have indeed changed . . . ." (George Barker)
"
My training is in research science, but I’ve always had a
keen interest in music; starting from the childhood piano lessons, through
playing guitar in indie bands, until I discovered deep house music and moving
more into production and putting together a home studio. I am currently an
assistant professor in virology, but continue to produce EDM. I like to think
I’m the only person who’s worked at biosafety level 4 and has a label deal!
To begin with, I have no problem with the use of the term
engineer in an audio recording context, regardless of whether someone has a
degree or attained chartered status. You can be a great artist without going to
art college, and look at the great science that has been done in the past by
hobbyists, and the clergy in particular. George Stephenson lacked any
scientific education, invented the safety lamp by trial and error and was
fairly convincing at designing steam locomotives. I think the current
sociological climate, where so many have access to university, has made a lot
of people think that, if you don’t have a degree, you can’t possibly be
considered equal to those that do.
I also think that the person you quoted in the article who
said “the audio ‘engineers’ you describe are generally not scientifically trained”.
I don’t know of any engineers who are scientifically trained; that is not their
job, and it shouldn’t be.
Science is an abstract concept, which uses experiment to
derive a set of conclusions, which establish a working theoretical framework.
Engineering is concrete; engineers take this framework and apply the knowledge
to a tangible output. The scientists come up with the rules of fluid dynamics,
the engineers build the plane, the scientists work out the laws governing
transmission of forces, the engineers build the bridge. Building a bridge is
not a place for experiment.
As for Drew Daniels’ comment about miking a guitar amp, for
from being non-scientific, that is the essence of scientific discovery. Pure
experimentation is what science is. If you look at the philosophy of the
scientific method as put forward by people like Karl Popper, knowledge can only
come through experience. If you don’t try that other mic at that other distance
at that particular angle off the axis, you can’t know if it will sound better
or not.
The major sticking point I see with the term ‘engineer’, is
that is purely, and perhaps arbitrarily used to define the people either side
of the glass. You can make a very convincing argument that hearing a guitar
part and knowing that it needs a 3 dB peaking cut at 2.6 kHz and that
compression from a Distressor will sound better than an 1176 is an artistic
skill, rather than an engineering one.
My own personal thoughts are that the recording engineer is
artist, engineer and scientist; it takes intuition, technical knowledge and
knowing how to experiment to do the job. Engineer is just a job title. They may
not be able to play the musical parts, they may not be able to build a mixing
desk, they perhaps inhabit the middle ground, maybe they should be ‘artineers’…" (Fynn Callum)
"I am an artist, not an engineer.
I
have owned 7 and currently own 5 mixing desks. I am self taught but
that means learning from everybody I work with and from reading
listening and watching. I try not to describe my self as a sound
engineer, but the moniker chases me around. I also feel the word
musician to be rather grand in my own case. However, I get paid to play
in bands alongside excellent musicians and record and mix, and teach as
good audio practice as I can. As long as I am honest and my skill level
is sufficient for what I attempt, I am ok. God help me if I ever stop
learning.
For
a week, some years ago, I worked as the designated sound engineer on a
youth project at Abbey Road. I looked cluelessly at the huge consoles in
the two studios we used, never having encountered anything on that
scale before. When introducing myself to the house assistant, he said
"Ah, so you are the sound engineer", and I knew I was in trouble and
out of my depth. I soon earned his scorn, and if I won it back it was by
project managing, getting my hands on when appropriate and leaving them
off for most of the time. I did a good job but the title of sound
engineer was the wrong one. A misnomer.
I
met John Oram recently. I absolutely consider him an engineer. He knows
what goes on under the hood and at the controls. I am still a something
though. I am more of a creative contributor who uses recording and
mixing. Perhaps I am a sound designer. 4 years at art college and a
masters degree in sonic arts would seem to make that a far better title
and helps to expose the engineer myth. Mind you, I drive a car. I
neither engineered it nor designed it. Maybe I am a sound navigator. Who
really cares?
Last
year I made a sound art piece on my computer, uploaded it to the net
and it went viral. The original blogger described me as a DJ. Something
of an assumption, but more honestly it was a journalistic device to help
describe me, where he could perhaps have said 'sound artist'. One
subsequent critic said "where do these DJs get off?" Well I did not call
myself a DJ at all. So if you want to call me a sound engineer, feel
free, I can't stop you. And you can't stop me messing with mixing desks." (Paul Chivers)
"First off, you need to know that I am from Canada, in the province of Quebec, where we have an association called the Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec (roughly the Quebec Engineers Board) that protects the use of the term Engineer. To become an “engineer”, you have to obtain credentials that are approved by Canadian Council of Professional Engineers that define the study program required to use the title. This protection has made it impossible for people to call themselves “Sound engineer” in Quebec (the Council does not have a Canadian program for that, to my knowledge) and, as an example, Microsoft was forced to retire the term Microsoft Certified System Engineer (that I have passed) in Quebec (although MCSE is tolerated). I myself have studied Electrical Engineering and am part of the OIQ.
As you could guess from my reading of Sound on Sound, to which I actually subscribe, I am also deeply interested in sound and music. Actually, I originally had studied in engineering because I dreamed of designing and manufacturing sound synthesizers. The opportunities that followed my degree made it that I became a computer systems’ consultants and I worked very successfully for over 20 years in that field, until I thought I needed some change so I went back to school in 2008 to study audio “engineering” at a college level.
During this 20 years career though, I was passionate enough about music to educate myself and learn the tools of the craft: I had a personal computer running what was then Cakewalk sequencer’s in 1988. It must have been version 2 running on Windows! So I started with outboard synths, MIDI and grew progressively has the software upgrades got to market (Cakewalk
Pro, then Cakewalk Pro Audio, and then Sonar) to learn about all the
technical stuff involved in recording, mixing, mastering music using these tools.
And so in 2008 I’m back on the school bench with kids 20 years younger than me, mostly interested in producing “beats”
with at best a secondary degree (which turns out to be 11 years of
school here) so with very little technical, mathematical and scientific
knowledge; and teachers just about my age (sometimes younger obviously) with no degree whatsoever but that had had a career (or something resembling it) in producing music in the Quebec music industry. I took this decision with the intention of changing career and make a living in something I loved. This is the place I understood the difference between engineers and non-engineers.
Most of the teachers were really musicians that had learned to use audio gear and computers to record their own music first and then work in studio to record others. They were pretty good at that and I enjoyed learning from them in general. But, I was told falsity more often than not when the course were very technical (think of artsies presenting the Nyquist theorem, acoustical principles, or digital compression techniques to an engineer). And also, these folks had a very negative opinions of engineers in general. They tend to look at me as too technical and not “using my ears” enough to a point where I sometimes felt they were condescending toward the profession.
What I found the difference is, is a matter of efficiency. People that approach recording, mixing and mastering from a “musical” perspective “ear” the results they want to get,
but they will do a lot of tweaking and trial and error to get there;
sometimes taking path that are actually pulling them away from the
result. Evidently, people get better with experience, so I could not compete with the teachers in terms of efficiency. But humbly I could get a recording, a mix or a mastering job done in a quarter of the time my colleague would. That’s because engineers, to the contrary I think, will try to define a path to get to the results and follow that path, making changes as required in the process. The former are more exploratory, sometimes giving birth to very good ideas that we engineer will not find, but at the expense of taking much more time in the process.
It might not be the same everywhere, but to me it was a revelation.
After finishing the
course, I tried to get a job into recording studios or gaming
production facilities, but I could not compete with the low wages that my colleagues were commanding. So I decided to continue doing music as an hobbyist and pursue my former career in technology. After all, it is not so bad being an engineer, even if it is not an audio one!" (Sylvain Roy)
