KVR Audio

Dimensions · Post by **Dimensions** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:09 am

Well I was originally going to go to audio engineering school in Vancouver (Nimbus), but then I thought maybe it's wisest to do a trade so I could pay for it. But maybe not? I was thinking electrical (http://camosun.ca/learn/programs/electr ... index.html), but then I was thinking how many times will I run into a situation where I will have to use these skills? Then I thought what kinds of situations would I run into that a trade in general would be handy to have?

Maybe I am thinking this all wrong. Maybe what I need to do is digital art, where artists are constantly needing logo's and album art done... Or maybe a website designer? Nah maybe not that because most people use social media platforms these days... Or not?

What are your thoughts?

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:40 am

I would go electrical as I think it would help with getting the music you want and having a stable setup. Anything alse you mentioned seems like it would take you away from being a musician.

Dimensions · Post by **Dimensions** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:27 am

What kind of electrical?

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 8:13 am

morelia wrote:I would go electrical as I think it would help with getting the music you want and having a stable setup. Anything else you mentioned seems like it would take you away from being a musician.

TBH I don't really know. I have a friend that works for a TV station as an electrical technician. I annoy the hell out of him every time I need to do some basic wiring task or troubleshoot something out of my league. I wish I had that skill because it is a real pain and interuption to have to get help whenever I need to rewire a pickup, or make a patch cable, fix a broken guitar pedal, amp or whatever.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:36 am

What goes well with music is stable income and some free time. Regular 9 to 5....

Have you ever considered taking a test to look what your actual talents are? In my experience you won't be happy in your profession if you don't utilize your basic talents.

medienhexer · Post by **medienhexer** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:42 am

morelia wrote:
morelia wrote:I would go electrical as I think it would help with getting the music you want and having a stable setup. Anything else you mentioned seems like it would take you away from being a musician.
TBH I don't really know. I have a friend that works for a TV station as an electrical technician. I annoy the hell out of him every time I need to do some basic wiring task or troubleshoot something out of my league. I wish I had that skill because it is a real pain and interuption to have to get help whenever I need to rewire a pickup, or make a patch cable, fix a broken guitar pedal, amp or whatever.

Well, that stuff is mostly just low voltage tech, you can just learn that by reading up on it and learning how to solder. If you intend to meddle with high voltage gear or mains wiring, then you should better know your trade, for safety reasons as well as insurance and legal.

About OP's question: it really depends. If you want to really focus on production or audio engineering, then learn those skills and perhaps add some musical training and an instrument or two.

If you want to learn something that pays the bills, you'll have to become very good in that field first. Which will cost you a lot of time and energy. If it's okay to start music production as a second carreer, right now, you're best off as a software developer. Not sure about CA, but generally speaking, there is a high demand for good developers. Even in the field of music production software development.

Learn C, Java and get to know JUCE so you have a basic understanding of what's possible and you're off to a good start in music software. Or focus on Java and learn React, that will allow you to go into the paid kind of web development.

ATS · Post by **ATS** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:44 am

well if you know how to play an instrument(s), you can teach on the side.

dark water · Post by **dark water** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:49 am

Lap dancing.

Much more difficult without music, trust me.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:59 pm

Music therapist.

Zexila · Post by **Zexila** » Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:07 pm

BertKoor wrote:What goes well with music is stable income and some free time.

Drug dealer, than you can rap about it later on, win win.

stratum · Post by **stratum** » Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:15 am

20 years later the things you want to do will be very different, so following your talents is a better idea. What you can do is more important than what you want to. The second changes, the first does not change much.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Thu Jan 25, 2018 11:10 pm

Truck Driver

goes with both kinds of music, country AND western

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:00 am

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Fri Jan 26, 2018 3:49 am

Electronics and programming seem to be a two great trades that go well with music. i wish i could handle the mental processing required to learn electronics or be a programmer (and i wish i had steady hands to build things). i don't. i get concepts but cannot calculate or track variables. It's neurological and i'm tired of explaining it. If you aren't limited this way, take advantage of your ability to work with these things because these are not jobs that can be filled by average people and therefore tend to remain in demand (depending on the area).

Here's some random advice from a bitter creative person

in his early 40s who was never encouraged to pursue his creative interests (actually, i was pushed away from them by family):

They say if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life". This is bullshit.

It's the most privileged and/or lucky people who say things like this, not grasping the reality of their privilege/good luck. Survivorship bias and so many more logical fallacies. Ignore that shit.

What is more likely for most people is to struggle to get attention in their field of interest, even if they're pretty good at it or have interesting ideas (it's a lot better to be able to execute on ideas than to talk about them; privilege and networking are very important here, so some people get lucky and many people don't).

As markets fall apart and society crumbles toward fascism and ignorance, the arts and humanities are losing value to society and the authoritarians trying to rule over it. This even further compounds the pre-existing difficulty of getting noticed for arts and humanities skills.

What's likely to happen if you get a job doing something you love is that the job will burn out your love.

The motivation to do creative things has to be intrinsic, not extrinsic. Extrinsic motivations kill intrinsic motivations. If you pursue an arts career, be emotionally and mentally prepared for this likely conflict and find some way to divide the field into two complimentary branches (your personal interest from your work). For example: focus on studio repairs at work, and then focus on making music in your home studio. This could backfire. When i was an IT person, it just made me HATE having to be my own IT person at home. Maybe some other way of breaking up the field into complementary tasks is a better idea...

PICK ONE specialty (and one backup field) and OBSESS over that one specialty, almost to the exclusion of other interests (other than the backup field, but don't let it distract much from your primary field). Focus on this one speciality until you know as close to EVERYTHING about the subject as possible and you KNOW HOW TO DO almost everything in that field that needs to be done. i stress "KNOW HOW TO DO" because practical experience outweighs theory you might think you grasp. This counts for technical fields and creative fields. The more you can stand out in one field, the better. Make your skill stand out in one field by being committed to it so much that you can work circles around people like me (those who know enough about many things to impress lay persons, but not enough about one thing to match an actual practically-experienced pro at that specific task in a competitive job market).

i don't mean that you should become a hermit or lose sight of human relationships. Don't do that.

You need to keep in touch with the world to make sure your field of study is not somehow vanishing into obscurity. i mean that you should pick one interest and not let yourself be distracted by all kinds of curiosities and interests that take time away from getting enough familiarity with one thing to stand out in that field. Become as close to the best at one skill as you can stand to before you hate doing it. This isn't for competition. While measuring your skill against the skill of others, don't become jealous or someone better skilled and do not let arrogance take hold of you. Never be anything but generous and kind to those who are in that field with you. They might sometimes be your direct competition for jobs, but, more often, you will need those people as social connections and peers. Alienating them will alienate you.

Don't be afraid to say "that's not my focus" or "I need someone's help with that" to things outside your specialty field. It seems cool to know a lot about many things, but it takes time away from knowing as much as possible about one field, and that one field could keep you employed much more easily than if you were a jack of all trades and a master of none.

That's sort of what i am: jack of all trades; master of none.

After the job market in the early 2000s killed off the option of working my way up in a business as an IT person (without paying for bullshit certifications and collecting college debt on schooling that is 65% useless for most every profession), i had no way to start over in a new career when i was bullied out of my last job. i don't have the bullshit documentation to fake my way through the application and interview process (like the people who got hired instead of me, who's messes i had to clean up) to get into the workplace again and start working my way upward.

If you get screwed around by an employer, you might be better off walking away before they really hurt you, rather than fighting for your rights.

Walk away and start again somewhere else, hopefully using the experience to weed out future asshole employers. i wish i hadn't fought for my rights. It's disgusting, but the system will not protect employees from employers (not in the USA at least).

If you get driven out of one place, don't stay out of the workforce long. Employer-caused health and PTSD issues resulted in me being unemployed for the last 11 years. Prospective employers don't like periods of unemployment.

Get the bullshit certifications employers expect if you can afford them, but don't go too far: don't put any faith into the notion that college degrees (and debt) will insure a lifetime of gainful employment. Countless graduates are struggling to pay their debts in jobs that have nothing to do with their schooling.

The job market is largely bullshit and almost no one cares about quality work, so you have to be prepared for employers who want the cheapest, fastest job possible, and who will expect you to do more than your job description (notice they usually sneak "and other tasks as assigned" into your job description). You need to get into a place before your actual skills can speak for your value to your employer (and most employers will not see it anyway), so some playing of lip service seems to be necessary. If you're sick of the half-assed quality they expect, find ways to exemplify excellence elsewhere in your life, because trying to change a corporate culture is probably not going to work out well for you.

But back to focus: My creative skills are all self-taught, and i never focused on ONE area long enough to become an expert. At least, not in a room of other actual experts; i'm an expert in a room full of people who aren't experts on that subject. Sometimes i'm challenging to actual experts (especially in areas i had to struggle to protect my health against mindless authorities on subjects they didn't really pay attention to but had authority over me in), but i don't have their authority, so it's still of no employment value to me. i do many things better than many people, but i don't do any one thing better than almost ALL people. i can't compete with the people who DID obsess over every tiny detail of, say electronics, or illustration, or performing on an instrument, etc. If i had life to repeat from a young age, i would pick one of my interests and work myself at that task long enough to actually excel at it, rather than be above average. i might pick one that my brain sucks at (electronics) and one that i find easier for myself (writing? music? ranting??

). But i'm not going to get that chance.

i regret not jumping in deeply to any one of my interests. i followed too many because no one ever taught me to do otherwise. No one inspired me to keep at anything i did. There was no encouragement and no reward. My family was constantly trying to make me conform to their limited comprehension of the world, employment, human nature, etc., while dealing with the chips on their shoulders about how their lives were going. No one looked out for my emotional well-being in accomplishments (and no one taught me how to look out for me). They guided me toward "practical" jobs, mostly because of a rogue and antisocial uncle who symbolized "failure" and "musician" in one package, to their eyes, and a mother who was driven from the arts by a sexist society that demanded she just marry and breed to conform. i was guided into the soul-crushing office environment in computer support (i managed to get up to a design specialist job, but then was laid off back to computer support). It was a totally inappropriate life for a person like me. i resist meaningless social politics, arbitrary authority (offices have a lot of middle-managers of the "Peter Principal" variety, and a lot of sociopaths). i ask the tough questions and challenge bad ideas (this is especially hated by the sociopaths expecting to use and dispose of employees as is convenient). i expect things to be done right and reject the "do more with less, faster" insanity.

Don't wander from interest to interest like i did, for lack of any guidance. If your family is not supportive and nurturing, try to find a master of some trade that interests you and ask to become that person's apprentice.

Also: Don't work harder than you have to for an ungrateful employer. If they have an HR department, they likely don't see their employees as people. Put your time in, do the work, treat people fairly, don't abuse anyone, and leave when the work day is over. Don't stay late, and don't suffer for someone else. Leave work at work as much as possible. Don't try to exceed expectations unless the employer has a track record of truly and sincerely rewarding it. I worked myself stupid for a sociopathic asshole who never credited me for extra work but was quick to complain when he didn't like something about me

(he's a sociopath; they hate everything about anyone that inadvertently challenges their illusion of superiority). Never work for a sociopath directly!

[Looks at all the text above]

Holy shit. Sorry for the (very self-focused) rant of "advise". Obviously i have been triggered by your thread...

I'll leave it hear in case any of it is remotely useful. Maybe as an example of what happens when a person doesn't get good enough at any ONE task to stand out, is misguided, and becomes bitter...

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:10 pm

you know, I'm as able to become an electrician as you are to become a concert guitarist, Jace.

I'm actually pretty useless in practical terms, so I kid.

What is a good trade that goes with music?