Engineering Jobs

Did you know that… if your work and passion are the same, you’ll never work - but have fun everyday doing what you love and get paid for it.

If you have a love for all things audio, read on…

A lot of people I know choose careers without much thought about what their passions, interest and natural abilities are.

They plunge in, some targeting financial rewards as their sole aim, some based on what their buddies are doing, some from suggestions from well meaning friends and relatives.

I am writing this to persons who have an interest in audio and want to investigate the possibilities of having a career as a sound engineer.

The biggest piece of advice I can give to you is that you have to ask yourself if you have the PASSION deep down in you?

Ask yourself - in your teens, did you show any natural interest in things related to sound? Did you take things apart, especially radios, amplifiers, cassette recorders?

Did you always tweak the knobs of amplifiers to get that “perfect” sound?

Have friends always told you that you have technical ability that is beyond them?

If you have a few “yeses”, then you have a chance. In fact, I would encourage you to seriously consider digging deeper for more information about being a sound engineer.

But that’s not all….

Being highly technical alone is not enough to get you far in your career.

Sure, it’s fun to mess around with buttons and knobs all day long. But if you can’t interact properly with clients, they’ll probably not come back for more.

Unless perhaps you have such great technical and musical skills that make up for your lack of personality.

You must realize that being a sound engineer requires you to have great patience and tolerance from sometimes utter rubbish from your clients.

You need to know how to say “no” graciously, or to voice your opinion about a mix tactfully so that nobody’s feelings are hurt.

So, check yourself to see how good you are in this department.

If you plan on starting on your own someday, you need to know about how to market your services.

Almost all businesses don’t make it through the third year in business because they don’t have enough business.

Many of us think that because we’re so good, customers will beat a path to our doors.

In my city, I know of long established recording studios that have folded because of competition from smaller but more marketing savvy studios.

You’re fighting for the same clients in your area - and the one that makes the most “noise” in the market, gets the lion share of the business.

So, remember that you need to ALWAYS focus on how to get clients CONTINUOUSLY through your doors if you want to setup a studio of your own.

Not everyone gets the opportunity to work in the big studios you see in the audio school brochures.

The market is small, but growing because of online content. There will be many opportunities - if you keep up to date with the relevant technologies that people are looking for.

Customers want speed, quality and competitive pricing.

And you can only deliver on those if you work fast and accurately. You will also need to know online technologies as your productions will be broadcast to the world in so many forms, both offline and online.

Continuous study is a must.

And if you want to be able to work in a large recording studio or broadcast facility, you need to be really competent in all these areas.

And that is where you passion comes in. With passion, learning all this will be second nature to you. It will not be a drag, not a chore, but something you WANT to know - and you can’t beat that in any job.

So how do you start?

If you believe deep down in your heart that being a sound engineer is what you want to be, then you have to be strategic in all that you do.

Here’s what I mean.

Get involved in audio anyway you can.

At church, doing recordings for friends, converting audio from one format to another. Messing around for hours on audio software, tweaking software equalizers to see how various frequencies affect the sound.

You have to immerse yourself with sound.

Work for free in a recording studio while studying. That will teach you valuable lessons and you’ll be way ahead of your class. And when you’re ready, a job will probably be waiting for you!

Read pro audio magazines, attend exhibitions and audio talks. Join the AES (Audio Engineering Society), get involved in audio newsgroups. Start a blog on your audio interest, you’ll be surprised how the “word” gets around, and you’ll be documenting your own growth in the industry.

Get your hands dirty!

Perhaps, now would be a great time for me to tel you a bit about myself.

When I was a young teenager, I inherited an old but still working reel to reel tape deck from my uncle. I was fascinated that it could record Jimi Hendricks off the radio without much loss in quality.

I play guitar, so the next logical thing I did was to record songs that I played. I was thrilled.

Fast forward a few years, and I bought my first multi track recorder - a Tascam Portastudio that recorded 4 tracks on high speed cassette, allowed me to bounce tracks, punch in sounds, etc. It was my most precious possession!

One thing led to another and I got involved with video, multimedia and of course, audio.

In 1994, I stated a company that provided video and audio production services. My passion was still in audio and that kinda led to jobs where I provided a fair number of voice over recording services. I loved doing he recordings, sweetening them, taking away unwanted noises, etc.

We later progressed to doing radio ads and that kinda opened a new challenge for me - with sound effects, background music, and even writing the script.

You can say I was fortunate.

And the message here is that if you have the PASSION for it - just go for it while time is still on your side. There are now many fine sound engineering schools, not just in the US, but across the globe as well.

With the internet, getting the necessary info on the latest equipment, trends, techniques, is a no brainer. But that of course also opens up the competitiveness of the marketplace.

But do not worry. If you have the drive, interest and perhaps the natural talent for audio, you will soar and build yourself one of the most satisfying careers possible.

It allows you to be creative, adventurous - and when you here your mix on the radio, it’s euphoric!

Get involved in sound everytime you can. If you go to church, join in the sound ministry. Churches are some of the biggest customers of sound reinforcement companies - just because there are so many churches.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in a large church, you probably have an opportunity to build up you live mixing chops - which is quite different from studio work.

So I’ll say it again - if you have the fire… go for it.

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So there you have it - I hope you have the same fortune I have in having a business and career which is also my passion.

I never work. Everyday, I am engaged in my hobby.

Don’t you want to do that too?

So take the first step if you know deep down that this is for you. You’ll never regret it.

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Jim runs his own small recording studio and gives advice and recommendations to persons who are interested in an audio career. More information at http://www.recording-studio-info.com.

Tags: audio courses, audio engineering, sound engineer, sound engineer careeraudio courses, audio engineering, sound engineer, sound engineer career

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In Man and His Symbols, Jung shows us the same archetypes in the untutored dreams of contemporary children, in medieval alchemy, in Hindu mythology, and in Persian folk tales. Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts have continued and extended this study of a vast and strange inner world, little appreciated until quite recently. How does Jung account for the universality of symbolic themes? He sees it as evidence for the collective unconscious, which could be called the collective Soul of humanity. Jung was not the first person in Freud’s school who took from the Mystery Schools set up by St. Germain de Medicis in Freud’s Vienna. But few authors talk about Silberer and fewer still know about how great an adept Hitler learned to be in these arts. Hitler and his father before him had studied long and hard in this bastion of Rothschild involvement. They received money in a legacy from their Rothschild family according to the OSS in a book by Langer called The Mind of Adolph Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was another personal coven of the Rothschilds in London as Crowley weaved his magic. Joseph Campbell did a forward to Marija Gimbutas’ Language of the Goddess and there is a lot in her archaeological work that he knew would have altered much of what he had previously written. Jung did an excellent forward to the Evans-Wentz version of The Tibetan Book of The Dead and I heartily recommend it to any person seeking to know what connects the likes of Krishnamurti and Jung beyond the mere scholarship of Eranos Conference scholars.

In fact the Set and Gematria of all alphabets can be traced to adept Keltic or Phoenician scholars who the Father of Biblical Archaeology knows gave us the Bible. I think it is important for us to know who these ‘gods’ calling themselves Anunnaki or Elohim and alien Dragons were. So I have done a whole new history of man’s cultural evolution that uses forensic and modern artifacts that I am sure Joseph Campbell would have loved to have access to.

Author of many books available at http://www.lulu.com/gaianinstituteofarcaneknowledge and World-Mysteries.com

Tags: alchemy, Jung, social engineeringalchemy, Jung, social engineering

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A bachelor degree in engineering is not something that is all that easy to get. The sciences are some of the most demanding disciplines of college. So if you’re thinking of getting a bachelor degree in engineering, you better be prepared for what’s ahead. Hopefully, this article will give you a decent idea of what is required to get that very demanding degree.

In many college curriculums, there is a lot of room for what they call “light” electives. In the case of engineering, or for that matter, any science, this is not so. The course outline for a degree in engineering is quite intense. Your electives are not going to be much easier than your required engineering courses.

Your first year will usually start off with basic introductory engineering courses for the first two semesters. These are not too intensive to begin with, which is a good thing, because it’s the rest of your curriculum that is going to kill you. A degree in engineering is a BS degree, which has tougher requirements that a BA degree. The supporting courses are much tougher. In addition to taking your introductory engineering courses in your first two semesters, most colleges will also require you to take two semesters of Calculus or a math equivalent and two semesters of physics. Some colleges will allow you to substitute chemistry for physics. Right there, between just those three courses, is half of your first year in college. You will also be required to take geometry courses as well.

The second year is almost a carbon copy of your first year. You’ll be expected to continue with your engineering courses and take the last two semesters of Calculus and physics or chemistry in order to get your core requirements for your science courses. The remainder of the year is dedicated to your electives. Some colleges however, require that you take some kind of mechanical drawing. Engineering requires a lot of drawing so expect to take a lot of these courses throughout your four years.

Now is when it gets a little complicated. See, there are many different types of engineers, such as civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. By your third year, most colleges require you to declare which engineering degree you are going for. After you declare this, that’s when you get the remainder of your schedule for the last two years. And yes, this schedule will be drastically different based on what type of engineer you want to become because the skill requirements for each type of engineer are quite different. Because of this, to outline exactly what the last two years would be like would be literally impossible as there are just too many choices.

One thing that most people are surprised to hear is that a major requirement of any engineering degree is a basic course in English. Why? Very simple. Engineers do a lot of writing. Not all of it is numbers. Many things need to be communicated in basic English. Because of the advanced nature of this information, or what people call “tech-speak” it is critical that an engineer has a good command of the English language.

Getting a bachelor degree in engineering is not an easy thing to do. But the rewards of getting one are certainly worth the effort it will take to get that piece of paper handed to you at the end of your four years.

Michael Russell
Your Independent Bachelor Degree guide.

Tag: Bachelor degreeBachelor degree

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