… to introduce by a textual crossfade, if such a thing even exists ;) Going straight, though this isn’t really a field of academic learning but one of job-related and life experience, I would like to be hired by bands and artists which already have their own reputation among the music scene they are a part of and perhaps already have released an EP or album.
Although this topic may seem to be kind of advanced considering I’ve just started studying at SAE, it is to be taken into consideration that I already hold a bachelor’s degree in music and have already worked in studios for years which has lead me to be lucky enough to already having established a small-scale base of clients. In addition, it can never be too early to get involved in real life productions providing real life experience, credits and money which then doesn’t have to be earned at subway. I also got to know several students at conservatory who had their nose up high whilst walking through the aisles of the institute but wouldn’t get a single job after their graduation because of not having networked and starting to play gigs aside university.
In order to not being confronted with a comparable situation when having left SAE with a degree in my pocket (hopefully), I’ve considered the following approach: The genres I would like to get more experienced in as a producer/ mixer/ mastering engineer are EDM and hip-hop aswell as metal - which I haven’t stated in the previous blog, but I haven’t worked with extreme metal bands so far although I really like the archaic manner of expression of Metalcore, Death Metal and all the subgenres of that sort, and a collab in that field would be a nice counterpoint against my more worship-related work in 2017 to prevent me from getting enclosed in a box. The trimester-orientated timetable at SAE provides me with more or less three times three weeks of free time which I can use to record and produce for clients in my studio at home. The mixing and mastering of these productions can be done during my days in London on my MacBook which by the way will be a completely new experience for me being used to work on a tower computer with a mixing board and outboard gear. I can also offer my work as a mixing and mastering engineer whilst being in the UK. I would also like to start working for artists from the UK, especially London, proposing recording sessions in their rehearsal rooms or inviting them to SAE’s studios.
The last time I intensively scouted for possible new artists to worked with was just before I opened up my own studio in Germany. I simply sat down in front of my laptop for a few days using google, facebook and local newspapers to find every unsigned band or solo artist within a radius of some 50 kilometres. Then, I tried to find live performances of all of them to estimate their actual musical skills (without studio editing involved ;) ) and basically contacted all of them who could play or perform properly proposing to produce one song for them for free from start to finish with the option of starting a more in depth and paid (!) collaboration afterwards if I could persuade them of my skills. This approach actually was very successful as it provided me with work until the day I left Germany for the UK and as I have several regular clients who I firstly got in touch with in that manner.
So, I’ll definitely want to try this kind of approach again, this time targeting more experienced artists with more reputation coming both from London and Germany/ the Netherlands. I have the confidence to convince them of at least trying me out due to the experience I gained since having started my own studio, due to my status as a graduate of conservatory and student of audio production as well as my severely extended portfolio containing work samples of all genres except classical music and … some seriously extreme metal ;)
