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btw, HN'ers, I'm preparing a new Substack post about "music movies you haven't seen" and one of the ones I saw when it came out was about a recording engineer! Imagine that. I think Tom Dowd is the only engineer anyone would make a movie about.
It's Tom Dowd and the Language of Music and now I can't find it anywhere. Can you?
> That’s why few self-respecting engineers will allow themselves to be called “producers.” btw, HN'ers, I'm preparing a new Substack post about "music movies you haven't seen" and one of the ones I saw when it came out was about a recording engineer ! Imagine that. I think Tom Dowd is the only engineer anyone would make a movie about. It's Tom Dowd and the Language of Music and now I can't find it anywhere. Can you?
> That’s why few self-respecting engineers will allow themselves to be called “producers.” btw, HN'ers, I'm preparing a new Substack post about "music movies you haven't seen" and one of the ones I saw when it came out was about a recording engineer ! Imagine that. I think Tom Dowd is the only engineer anyone would make a movie about. It's Tom Dowd and the Language of Music and now I can't find it anywhere. Can you?
Not knowing too much about sound engineering myself, I tried comparing it to software engineering. At the end of the day what matters is your output and learning along the way. It seems the author has a gripe with people calling themselves producers. If someone said I can’t call myself a software engineer until I had interned at XYZ company and understood Kubernetes, Docker, Typescript, AWS, Rust, etc. I would say ok…
The date on the article is actually important here. Music recording is MUCH different then it is today, 20 years later. The best you could do for a home recording was a (comparative to today) shitty 4 track cassette recorder. You really needed some training on the equipment to know what you're doing. The resources just wern't there otherwise. The analogy for the worst cases here is more 'I've turned a computer on, so…
Not knowing too much about sound engineering myself, I tried comparing it to software engineering. At the end of the day what matters is your output and learning along the way. It seems the author has a gripe with people calling themselves producers. If someone said I can’t call myself a software engineer until I had interned at XYZ company and understood Kubernetes, Docker, Typescript, AWS, Rust, etc. I would say ok…
For me, the vast majority of software is not engineering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The date on the article is actually important here. Music recording is MUCH different then it is today, 20 years later. The best you could do for a home recording was a (comparative to today) shitty 4 track cassette recorder. You really needed some training on the equipment to know what you're doing. The resources just wern't there otherwise. The analogy for the worst cases here is more 'I've turned a computer on, so…
30 years later (I started listening to a lot of music as a teenager around that time, including Albini-engineered music, realizing that that is about 30 years ago makes me feel... old?)
I wonder how these calculations changed with the rise of production using computers, especially for electronic music, where even a studio is likely not a hard requirement anymore? I am sure also a lot changed with the rise of various streaming platforms and services allowing to distribute your music to these easily.
I don’t think there’s ever even a case where they _have_ to go through the industry ringer. They can just keep cleaning up using self promotion and Spotify royalties.
Of course if they want to tour, that changes the equation a bit.
> That’s why few self-respecting engineers will allow themselves to be called “producers.” btw, HN'ers, I'm preparing a new Substack post about "music movies you haven't seen" and one of the ones I saw when it came out was about a recording engineer ! Imagine that. I think Tom Dowd is the only engineer anyone would make a movie about. It's Tom Dowd and the Language of Music and now I can't find it anywhere. Can you?
This is the cheapest copy I could find in 30 seconds: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155484714542?epid=30902174