Hey folks, Matthew Weiss here — weiss-sound.com,
theproaudiofiles.com, and tonight, we're going
to answer the question, “How do I make money
as an audio engineer?”
This is a question I get pretty often, and
I always have the same answer, it's two steps.
Step number 1, get really good at what you
do, step number 2, make sure everybody knows
it.
Now of course, this is much easier said than
done, so I'm going to give you the heads up,
this is not a sprint.
This is a marathon.
When you decide you want to pursue this career,
understand this is a 10 year process before
you start making regular income, but I'm going
to start breaking down these steps in a way
that makes sense.
Okay.
Number one, get really good at what you're
going to do.
The backbone of this industry is being able
to do the job.
It is very, very competitive, and people are
going to put you to the test.
So getting good is definitely paramount here.
The best way to get good is tacit knowledge,
which means hands-on experience, and there's
a few ways you can get hands-on experience.
The number one way is auto-didactically.
So teaching yourself.
So let's say you want to be a mixer for example,
you get yourself a DAW, you get a computer,
you start going online, you download stems,
you go to mix competitions, you download the
stems, and you just mix.
And you mix for 5-7 hours every single day,
because that's what the musicians on the other
side of the glass are doing, they're picking
up their instrument and they're playing 5-7
hours a day to get really good at it, so you
owe it to them to be putting in that same
kind of effort.
Okay, number two is to get yourself in the
right environment for it.
So for example, going to an audio school.
Now, I think there's pros and cons to going
to schools.
There's definitely good reasons not to, but
if you are going to go to an audio school,
the question I would ask the students, the
faculty, the alum, is how much hands on experience
am I going to get?
And if the answer is tons of it, then you
can consider going to that school.
If the answer is anything else, you need to
pack your bags and you need to run, because
it ain't worth the price of admission.
Of course, the other way to get hands on experience
is an internship.
Internships are hard to get, but if you put
your effort in, you just keep being persistent,
you can get in there, you can do it.
And of course, you can do it the way that
I did it, which is to simply bug the living
crap out of every musician in Philadelphia,
and say, “Hey, I will do whatever it takes
to record you.
I'll record you in a garage, I will record
you in a studio, I will help you pay the way
to get into a studio so that I can record
you there in that professional environment,”
and you'll simply learn by doing it.
Which, incidentally, is how I got my first
in-house position, but whether or not that
works out for you, the bottom line is that
you get that experience.
Okay, and the third way is supplementary knowledge.
Supplementary knowledge is what you're doing
right now, watching this tutorial.
Going to give you a shameless product pitch,
if you happen to be in the world of mixing,
if that's something that you need to learn,
I believe that I make the best mix tutorials
on the market.
I've got that link in the description.
I know that that is a totally shameless product
pitch, but I stand by it.
I am very passionate about teaching, and I
believe that I do it in a way that can really
accelerate your learning process.
You know, my goal is to make it so that what
would take you 10 years to learn, you can
cover in three.
Okay, so the fourth component of getting really
good at what you do is understanding that
the whole process of making records is a bunch
of moving parts, and every gear kind of turns
the other one, so even if you're say, focused
on being a mix engineer for example, it's
really important that you at least understand
what happens in the world of mastering, what
happens in the world of recording, and I would
say that it's also really important that you
pick up an instrument and you at least learn
your way around it a little bit.
I myself have picked up maybe seven or eight
different instruments, only to put them back
down again because I've never really taken
to any of them, but at least good enough so
I can get, like, some scales and notes coming
out so that when there's somebody on the other
side of the glass, like say, a guitar player,
and their sound needs to be brighter, instead
of reaching for an EQ, I can say, “Hey,
can you switch over to the bridge pickup?”
Or you know, “Move your playing hand a little
closer to the bridge,” and that's going
to produce a brighter sound.
I know this because I know the instrument
well enough to know that.
That's a really important part of this whole
process, so you know, learning a little bit
of theory, learning a little bit of arrangement,
and learning a little bit of electronics is
also really important.
You know, if you can pop open your preamp
and you can take a volt meter and say, you
know, “Okay, this cap, it looks like it's
maybe not running so great, alright, let's
grab a little wire cutter,” and snip snip,
and pull it up, then you put another cap right
on in there, and you solder, and there you
go, you're good to go.
You've done a little minor gear repair.
Not only does this save you a lot of money,
and not only does it really help if you're
going for an internship and that's one of
your skills, but also it gives you an understanding
of how the actual electronics work, and that's
a really valuable part of this whole process
as well.
Okay, now the getting everybody to know it
part, this is a process where the getting
good leads the charge, and the getting other
people to know it follows in suit.
So a lot of people I think make the mistake
of trying to go online and say, “Hey, here
I am!
I have a DAW and I can mix records!”
Or, “I have Ozone and I can master records!”
And it's like, that's all well and good, but
at the end of the day, it's a very, very,
competitive, saturated market, with a very
low ceiling, particularly online, and so you're
going to find that model will fizzle out fairly
quickly.
The cream will rise to the top, and the online
world is not really the best place to develop
that.
The best place to develop that is real life,
in your location.
Chances are, wherever you are, there is a
community of musicians, and it is your job
to know all of them, and make sure all of
them know you, so go to the gigs.
Talk to them.
When you're doing this, you start learning
about their experiences.
You know, if you play an instrument, join
a band.
You want to know what it's like for the musicians
that you're going to be recording and mixing,
because that's going to not only inform your
musical sensibilities by asking questions
like, “Hey, what do you look for in a record?
What is good to you?
What do you think makes a song work once the
microphones are put in front of it?”
You know, that's supplementary experience
you're getting right there.
On top of that, you're going to sort of understand
what they go through.
You're going to know their life when it comes
to how they get paid, how they get treated,
and being able to respect what bands and artists
go through to get into the studio gives you
an appreciation for what you need to be doing
on your end.
And that's really important, and as you develop
that, you start to develop a rapport with
all of these people.
The people that you meet on day one, they're
not the ones that pay off on day two, they
pay off on year four, but if you start accumulating
that reputation early on, as things build,
as you start getting better, then you start
getting the confidence and knowing that when
the musicians say, “Hey, I need to trust
somebody with my hard earned money and my
precious art, who's that person going to be?
Oh, I know that person because they've been
around the scene and they listen to me, and
I can have confidence that they're going to
take what I've put so much effort into very
seriously.”
So I would start there, and I do think the
online world is part of it, but I would just
say that it's not the heart of it.
I get good gigs from online.
I'd say for like, every one good gig, there's
probably about maybe 50 that are just not
worth the time and effort and probably don't
get past the negotiation stage, but for that
one that is an awesome client, it's totally
worth it for sure.
It's just not the beating heart of the business,
from my experience.
Okay, so a couple of other things that have
just personally helped me, this is going to
sound a little bit ridiculous, but I'm going
to put it out there because I think it's worth
knowing, one of the things that really helped
me was watching Shark Tank. [laughs] I know
how stupid that sounds, but you know, watching
that show, it was like, I'm a musician.
I'm in the world of music, I think emotionally,
I see the best, and I'm very optimistic, and
you know, I function the way artists function.
Those guys are business guys.
They are straight to the point, they talk
money, they think money, and watching people
talk that way has opened my eyes to how business
people think, and has allowed me to incorporate
that thought process into the business side
of it, which is very important.
So I started learning about things like equity,
and royalties, and interest, and loans, and
that kind of stuff.
And it's paid off!
And I'll give you an example.
There's a woman named Afrodile Trane, and
she makes really, really fantastic R&B music
that's got like, Soul, and Hip Hop kind of
tucked into it with some Jazz kind of vibes
tucked into it, it's just some really cool
stuff.
She came to me and she said, “How much do
you charge?”
And I gave her my quote, and she said, “Okay,
well I can't pay that,” and I said, “Okay,
let's find a number that you're comfortable
with.”
Because that's important to me, I don't try
and get as much out of somebody as possible,
I try to get a number that people are comfortable
with, and that ended up being half my rate,
and I said, “Okay, well, since I'm doing
half rate, what I would like is 2% equity
in your songs,” and that means that net
receipts, 2% when she makes any money off
of her music, I get 2% of whatever that is,
and that's the way of balancing out the money
that I didn't get up front, and by negotiating
that way, that allowed me to get paid in a
way where I could pay my bills, and also get
paid in back end later down the line, which
seems like a small and insignificant thing,
but imagine if I did that 500 times.
That's going to start to add up.
So this gave her the opportunity to work with
me in a way she was comfortable with, me to
work with her in a way that I was comfortable
with, and a means in which I was able to get
what I was worth.
And this is now a year and a half later, where
she's starting to get some sync placements,
so I'm seeing, okay, this is something that
does pay off down the line for this particular
project, not every time you negotiate for
back end will work, but at the time, when
I was making this decision, I said, “Okay,
well, she's taking it very seriously, her
music is awesome, I love it, and she's got
some connections, and she's got some established
producers that she's working with, so is this
something that could make some money on the
back end?
Absolutely, it can!”
So you know, you think that way, and then
the other thing to think about is, you know,
your strategy in terms of a negotiation.
I used to give out a card rate, when people
said, “What do you cost?”
I said, “Here's what I cost,” but I started
realizing that model doesn't actually make
sense.
It's actually slightly disingenuous, because
there's a spectrum of the way projects go
down.
You've got your Pop projects where it's like,
chances are if I'm mixing a Pop project, I'm
going to be working on it for one, two, maybe
as many as three days, because the revisions
can add up since there's so many different
cooks that are in the kitchen, and there's
huge track counts, you know, 50 vocals, 100
instruments, there's pitch correction involved,
editing involved, I mean, it's really a process.
It can take a long time.
In that same span of time, I can mix an entire
Jazz album, because the players are taking
care of their tone, the players are taking
care of their dynamics, the recordist probably
recorded it in a very similar setup from song
one to song ten, and so once I get that first
song right, everything else just dominos really
easily, and so it doesn't make the same sense
to charge in the same structure for a Pop
song as it would to work in a Jazz song, so
it's like, you know, when I charge for one
Jazz song, maybe that makes a bit more sense
to have a similar pricing structure, but if
it's a full project, no, definitely not.
So thinking this way has allowed me to get
more gigs in the door.
Realistically, how long does it take me to
work on an EDM song?
Well, if I'm counting revisions, probably
10 hours.
Something like that.
The clients just tend to be really micro-managerial,
they're super tuned into their sound, it is
a very sonically competitive genre where everything
has to sound like everything else and be the
biggest, brightest, boomiest, kickiest, most
dynamic, most loud that it can be.
It's really, it's a taxing process.
A Rap song?
I can do that in three or four hours, and
I can do that without cutting corners.
It will sound like a full day mix, so do I
need to charge the same for both projects?
Absolutely not.
Different pricing structure for different
projects.
So I hope that this little talk tutorial thing
has given you some food for thought, and means
in which you can conduct your business.
You know, just understand that you're going
to be driving that Uber for a little while
at first.
That's okay.
That's a transitional stage for you where
you're going to be getting better at the same
time you're going to be building clientele
and letting people know, and you're segueing
into being full time.
That's going to take you 5 to 10 years, and
just brace yourself for that.
Be focused, be patient, you'll get there.
It's just not going to happen overnight.
Anyway, I'll leave it at that, and if you
like this video, please hit that like button.
If you dig what I'm doing on this channel,
definitely hit that subscribe button, and
I pitched the product before, but I'm just
going to pitch it again.
If you want to strengthen your game when it
comes to mixing, I think I've got the best
supplementary stuff online, it's going to
accelerate your learning process.
What would take you five years, you're going
to get down under your belt in two after watching
these tutorials, and the link to that is going
to be in the description below.
Alright guys, until next time.
