DO-IT-YOURSELF ENGINEERING OR WHY YOU SHOULDN’T RISK YOUR MUSIC WITH AN AMATEUR

By Mack McDonald

As audio equipment has become cheaper to buy and easier to run, many songwriters and composers have made a dangerous assumption – that if they can own the engineer’s tools they must be able to engineer their own music. In no other field would this assumption be tolerated. Owning a jigsaw doesn’t make one a capable carpenter (many fingerless fellows have learned this). Owning a horse doesn’t make one a professional jockey (the horse will definitely let you know). Possessing a scapel doesn’t entitle you to call yourself a surgeon (you get the, ahem, point).

And yet, in order to keep their costs low on the production side many capable musicians presume that so long as they can hear music well, they are capable of hearing sound like an audio engineer. Although a trained audio engineer has a background in music (most are players and many can read and produce music), it is a completely different discipline that compels them to hear sound in a way that a writer or composer never considers. For example, at every engineering school in the country audio engineers are versed in the acoustics of a recording space and how it severely affects the sound of a track. They spend time learning about building materials and how they bend sound waves. Hours are spent looking at architectural drawings of “accurate” space design. Meanwhile, the DO-IT-YOURSELF-GUY adds a layer of drywall to his bedroom and thinks he has achieved a “studio”. Audio wise this will be the equivalent of driving a 12 year old Dihatsu to the prom and wondering why everyone who rolled up in a BMW is laughing at you.

The amateur always thinks that doing his tracks at home is “just fine for a demo”. Forgetting for a moment that a demo is the only thing that represents your music to a professional person looking to hire you. Should you risk your only shot at a job by asking the potential client to imagine it somehow better? The prudent writers/composers spend the money to have a true professional mix the sound because it is the best investment in their career that they can make.


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