People, like myself, who love performing, producing and recording music will inevitably ask themselves this question: How can I get paid to do this? To start, you should answer these questions three:
- What do you want to do?
- What positions exist that fit with your dreams?
- How can you get there?
Let’s say your dream is to engineer and produce. You’re passionate about alternative rock music and you want to work with it in some capacity. What positions are out there? If you want to make albums, then you could work at a studio or build your own (the latter having become much more common). If you want to do live sound, you can work for a specific venue or travel with artists when they tour. Interested in all the above? Perhaps a job in broadcasting might suit your fancy.
Working in radio is how Grammy Award winning producer, mixer and engineer Jim Anderson began his long and successful audio career. Since his graduation from Duquesne University School of Music in 1973, he has literally done it all: TV credits include “The Muppets”, and “In Performance at the White House”, in addition to my childhood favorite “Dog City”. He has mixed and engineered tracks for the likes Patricia Barber, Bebo Valdés, and Ron Carter, to barely scratch the surface of his more than thirty-plus years in the industry.
Rather than try to squeeze everything he’s done into this one blog, I decided to speak with Mr. Anderson about how he got his start.
Jim graduated from Duquesne University with a major in music
education. He applied for an open position at his college radio
station, WDUQ, when he saw they needed a summer engineer. “Any time
I’m given an opportunity,” Mr. Anderson said, “the first question I ask
myself is ‘What’s wrong here?’” The station, he noted, had no
production facilities, and the quality of the programs was sometimes
lacking. So, he used the resources made available to him by the music
department to help improve quality, and he pitched what would become
WDUQ’s first ever morning show. The station also served as an
affiliate to NPR, with whom Jim made some extremely valuable
connections.
JA: “I remember sitting on a bus and thinking to myself that
music education was not for me. I had made some important connections
at NPR and met a lot of people. At the time, TV wasn’t flexible
enough, so it was radio that interested me.”
When Mr. Anderson went to work at NPR in 1974, there were only 5
engineers on staff. He was put in charge of running the station’s
recording studio, something he had little experience with. “I was
trained in music,” he told me, “So I taught myself to play the console
like it was an instrument.” While there, he continued to network and
educate himself. He pitched and helped to create the critically
acclaimed thirteen-part series on Andrés Segovia that is still
referenced today.
JA: “I eventually left NPR and went freelance. I had made a
reputation for myself as someone who knew about working with various
genres of music and as someone who could speak a musician’s language.”
When I asked Jim for the advice he’d give to any start up, he first
stressed the importance of networking and education – be it in a
lecture hall or in the real world. He added, “Find what you love to do
and do it, because that’s what you’ll be the best at.”
To learn more about Jim Anderson, check out his (somewhat out of date) website at www.jimandersonsound.com, or click here to view his full discography at All Music.
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