digiengineer
November 7th, 2006, 01:14 AM
At age 14 I learned how to setup and run a P.A. system.
At age 16 I learned Sound Tools and Analog recording on a 1” 24 track.
At age 18 I began working for a regional sound and lighting company, and a 16 track ADAT Hip-Hop/R&B studio in Louisville, KY.
At age 22, after being told I would never work in a major studio unless I attended a recording school, I enrolled at Full Sail where I met two people from Southern California that convinced me that I could find a good job in L.A. One of the Californians had graduated and moved back to L.A. a few months before I did and offered to let me stay with him and his roommate for what was supposed to be a “few weeks” until I found a job. After he made the offer, I stupidly turned down a job offered by a close family friend in Atlanta working in promotions for a major record label conglomerate. After graduation, and months of brainwashing from my California friends, I faxed a ream of resumes, cobbled together enough money for a one way airline ticket and I moved to L.A. in March 1998 with about $100 in my bank account and about $40 dollars in cash.
Things seemed pretty cool in L.A. when I touched down. My friend was a runner at a major studio and upon my arrival I took a SuperShuttle to his studio and hung out while he worked his shift and gave me the tour of the multi-room facility. Things were going along well for the first two days in town. I had multiple job interviews scheduled in North Hollywood/Burbank and I started my 3rd day in town by taking a taxi to Encore Studios in Burbank. After my interview was over, I walked a few miles down Magnolia Blvd to the Enterprise and later Pacifique. After those meetings were over, I called my friend’s roommate and he gave me a ride back to their apartment in Reseda. Two days later, the bombshell was dropped:
“Hey dude, we’re not making as much money as we thought and we really can’t have you staying here like we originally planned. Can you find another place to stay by tomorrow?”
“Uh… no.” I said “I don’t have a job yet, I don’t have much cash left, and I don’t have a car. This is all I got left!”
“Well… sorry dude.”
Ok… so now I’m fucked. No car, no job, very little money… now what?
The next day, I had resigned myself to being homeless for a few days until I could get enough money to make it back to Louisville, KY where I had a place to stay and a job I could go back to. Yeah… right, I was stuck in this shit hole they called L.A. and I wasn’t going to get out fast. I fucked up and I fucked up bad!
In mid-panic I remembered I had family in town, a great uncle my Dad wanted me to call when I got into town; I paged him 911 like a crack fiend hoping he could bail me out of what was surely going to be many nights at a shelter. By the time my friend had returned from work, my great uncle (who had only seen me twice in my lifetime) was pulling up. On the ride to his house he informed me that they stay in shitty neighborhood called Pacoima and that I would be staying with 5 foster children and 2 grandsons… at that moment it didn’t matter, anything was better than a homeless shelter. The following day, my uncle took me to Select Temporary Services so I could get on the job listings, I didn’t care what the job was because I needed the dough.
Two more days went by, and I got the call I was looking for… sort of. A studio in the Los Feliz/Glendale area was looking for an assistant studio manager and had seen I had practical engineering experience in Hip-Hop. After an interview that same day, I started work the next day. Even though my official title was Assistant Studio Manager, I was basically a runner with a business card and that was fine by me, I had a gig… even if it only paid $8.00 per hour. Getting back and forth to work wasn’t too difficult; I was able to take the bus. However, the lines I took stopped running for about 3 hours every night and sometimes I had to sleep at the studio after late-night sessions until my bus arrived. About three weeks into the gig, I was asked by one of the engineers to assist him on a session; it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, patching, documentation, etc. More time went by and the gig started getting old: the owner was crazy… no, I’m just not saying that, the bitch was clinically crazy. The clients were abusive (which you’ll read about in a few moments) and cheap, and having to sleep in a bedroom with 3 foster children, all of whom were crack children of various ages and various levels of mental retardation, was driving me nuts.
Things finally came to a head in early May; In hindsight I can honestly say I was depressed and I wasn’t adjusting to my new surroundings very well. I had just finished filling in for an engineer on a session for a member of a very well known rapper’s posse when it was time to collect the evening funds. We had a very well known clientele at the studio and part of the reason why was our low rates and the reason we had low rates was because we took cash payments at the end of the night. I thought things were cool when the session ended, but when I asked for payment, things changed:
“Fuck you nigga, I ain’t paying that invoice tonight! Can’t I pay it after tomorrow’s session?”
“Come on man, you know how the owner is.” I replied “Look, I’ll knock off the material (CD’s and DAT) cost for the evening, but I need the invoice paid or she’s not going to let you record tomorrow.”
At this point, I was doing what I could to collect, because if I didn’t, I was going to be fired the next day. However, none of that mattered after what happened next… the client pulled a Glock and pointed it at my head. Many things run through a man’s mind when he about to die… fear, sadness, regret, but what frightened me the most is at that moment was none of those feelings were present. The only thing I was feeling was defiance and a certain amount of satisfaction knowing he was going put a bullet in my head and finally end my time in L.A. I don’t know how long we were there staring at each other, or in my case down the barrel of his gun, it seemed forever. I finally and calmly spoke up:
“I live in a house with five foster crack children, the youngest one has to sleep with the lights on or he freaks out for hours thinking someone is trying to kill him, the oldest has a sleep disorder that makes him rock from side to side once he achieves REM sleep. Every morning they wake up crying and screaming at each other and it takes them 2 hours to shut the fuck up and catch the short bus. I don’t sleep unless I sleep here or go home after they leave for school. Right now this is as good as my life is going to get and if you pull that trigger, it’s only going to get better.”
There was more silence as we continued to stare at each other. Finally, he lowers his gun and says:
“Damn… are you fuckin’ crazy nigga?! I could’ve shot you and you didn’t care? That’s fucked up nigga. How much do I owe you tonight?”
He paid his invoice and left for the evening. After he pulled out of the parking lot, I was alone and began uncontrollably shaking and sweating until sunrise. I quit later the same day.
With no other job prospects in the studio business, I called Select the next day and they had a temp job available building and repairing amplifiers in Santa Clarita… many many miles away from where I stayed (remember: no car). It took me 2 hours to get the work everyday, not because it was terribly far away, it was because to get to work I first caught a bus to a train station, then took the train to Santa Clarita, then I took another bus from the train station to work. Things were shaky from the start because I didn’t have a car and I had to leave a half hour before everyone else to catch the last train home. To keep my job, I had to somehow get a loan and buy a vehicle. After many weeks of shopping and being denied loan after loan, I finally found a use for my Full Sail degree: it added $500 to my down payment and guaranteed me a reasonable interest rate on a loan through a college grad program with a particular car company. With my new truck, I was able to stay and work six days a week plus overtime to start making money… until I was laid off and the company moved to Mexico. Jobless again…but not for long.
The studio I worked at months before called and wanted me back… for more pay of course; grudgingly I returned, but this time I was prepared. During my time working at a rap studio in KY, we had what is known as the “Studio Piece” i.e. a S&W 629 .44 Magnum in case things got out of hand. Seeing as one of my great uncle’s grandchildren was a “former” gang member, I was able to get my own studio piece, in the form of a knockoff 1911 .45. All was well for about 3 days until problems showed up in the form of two rival posses. The studio had a standing order to never book rival posses, and in this case, rival gangs. In Studio A, we had one famous rapper’s posse that belonged to the Crips, and in Studio B another famous rapper’s posse that belonged to the Bloods. Surprisingly, nothing happened, but to say it was tense was an understatement.
The next day salvation arrived in the form of a Sony C-800G. Somebody rented that microphone from a L.A. audio rental company called Design FX; as I signed the rental agreement, I asked the driver if they were hiring; days later I had a job interview and soon after that I left the studio and became a driver for DFX. During my 11 months there I learned about nearly every major piece of outboard gear, microphone, and recorder. I worked on their remote truck on a gig or two and visited every major studio in city. During this time, I moved out of my uncle’s house and moved into an apartment with a roommate, who months later turned out to be crack addict, thankfully she found help, but she had to go. Meanwhile, I built up my contacts which led to me to be employed at Andora Studios near Universal City as an assistant engineer/technician… life was good… until Andora was sold five months later. Unemployed yet again, but this time it lasted 2 weeks… of course, that was because I was on vacation. :d
The New Year brought new professional opportunities. For the first month I was working as a freelance tech at the Village and in February, I joined the staff at Tim Jordan Rentals where we rented mainly analog and digital tape machines, and Pro Tools. While things were going reasonably well with work, things were not looking too good at home. After my former roommate went to rehab, I found another roommate and things were working out fine until he mysteriously disappeared 3 months after moving in. His family called me a week or so later to pick up his belongings… he was going to prison and I didn’t want to know why. After another change of locks, a Full Sail alum moved in, he was the person that replaced me at Design FX. Unfortunately, he wasn’t digging the neighborhood. I can’t blame him, I lived in a pretty rough area of Van Nuys and the apartment was broken into while he was living there, and thankfully they didn’t take his PT system. Finally, I got tired of getting fucked over by my roommates and tried to find another place to live by myself, luck smiled upon once again when one of my co-workers at TJR moved out of his pad, and I moved in. My living situation had finally reached a level of satisfaction.
With my home life in order, it was time refocus on why I came here in the first place: to be an audio engineer. My working in rentals led to a quite a few freelance AE gigs, my favorites involving movie scoring. Still unable to sustain work freelance, I moved away from rental companies that dealt mostly in records and moved on to a more movie-centric rental company which led me to be involved in some really big movies as a Pro Tools Operator/Editor and Tech. As my contacts grew, so did my ability go freelance…I went independent over a year ago and now I work on mostly movies and Anime.
I’d say I’m fairly happy with how things are going. I’m still paying off nearly $30,000+ in college loans (Community College, University, and Full Sail combined), however, my truck is paid off and I have my own place to live. All in all, I’m doing a hell of a lot better than when I first moved here… fuck, it only took 6 ½ years.
At age 16 I learned Sound Tools and Analog recording on a 1” 24 track.
At age 18 I began working for a regional sound and lighting company, and a 16 track ADAT Hip-Hop/R&B studio in Louisville, KY.
At age 22, after being told I would never work in a major studio unless I attended a recording school, I enrolled at Full Sail where I met two people from Southern California that convinced me that I could find a good job in L.A. One of the Californians had graduated and moved back to L.A. a few months before I did and offered to let me stay with him and his roommate for what was supposed to be a “few weeks” until I found a job. After he made the offer, I stupidly turned down a job offered by a close family friend in Atlanta working in promotions for a major record label conglomerate. After graduation, and months of brainwashing from my California friends, I faxed a ream of resumes, cobbled together enough money for a one way airline ticket and I moved to L.A. in March 1998 with about $100 in my bank account and about $40 dollars in cash.
Things seemed pretty cool in L.A. when I touched down. My friend was a runner at a major studio and upon my arrival I took a SuperShuttle to his studio and hung out while he worked his shift and gave me the tour of the multi-room facility. Things were going along well for the first two days in town. I had multiple job interviews scheduled in North Hollywood/Burbank and I started my 3rd day in town by taking a taxi to Encore Studios in Burbank. After my interview was over, I walked a few miles down Magnolia Blvd to the Enterprise and later Pacifique. After those meetings were over, I called my friend’s roommate and he gave me a ride back to their apartment in Reseda. Two days later, the bombshell was dropped:
“Hey dude, we’re not making as much money as we thought and we really can’t have you staying here like we originally planned. Can you find another place to stay by tomorrow?”
“Uh… no.” I said “I don’t have a job yet, I don’t have much cash left, and I don’t have a car. This is all I got left!”
“Well… sorry dude.”
Ok… so now I’m fucked. No car, no job, very little money… now what?
The next day, I had resigned myself to being homeless for a few days until I could get enough money to make it back to Louisville, KY where I had a place to stay and a job I could go back to. Yeah… right, I was stuck in this shit hole they called L.A. and I wasn’t going to get out fast. I fucked up and I fucked up bad!
In mid-panic I remembered I had family in town, a great uncle my Dad wanted me to call when I got into town; I paged him 911 like a crack fiend hoping he could bail me out of what was surely going to be many nights at a shelter. By the time my friend had returned from work, my great uncle (who had only seen me twice in my lifetime) was pulling up. On the ride to his house he informed me that they stay in shitty neighborhood called Pacoima and that I would be staying with 5 foster children and 2 grandsons… at that moment it didn’t matter, anything was better than a homeless shelter. The following day, my uncle took me to Select Temporary Services so I could get on the job listings, I didn’t care what the job was because I needed the dough.
Two more days went by, and I got the call I was looking for… sort of. A studio in the Los Feliz/Glendale area was looking for an assistant studio manager and had seen I had practical engineering experience in Hip-Hop. After an interview that same day, I started work the next day. Even though my official title was Assistant Studio Manager, I was basically a runner with a business card and that was fine by me, I had a gig… even if it only paid $8.00 per hour. Getting back and forth to work wasn’t too difficult; I was able to take the bus. However, the lines I took stopped running for about 3 hours every night and sometimes I had to sleep at the studio after late-night sessions until my bus arrived. About three weeks into the gig, I was asked by one of the engineers to assist him on a session; it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, patching, documentation, etc. More time went by and the gig started getting old: the owner was crazy… no, I’m just not saying that, the bitch was clinically crazy. The clients were abusive (which you’ll read about in a few moments) and cheap, and having to sleep in a bedroom with 3 foster children, all of whom were crack children of various ages and various levels of mental retardation, was driving me nuts.
Things finally came to a head in early May; In hindsight I can honestly say I was depressed and I wasn’t adjusting to my new surroundings very well. I had just finished filling in for an engineer on a session for a member of a very well known rapper’s posse when it was time to collect the evening funds. We had a very well known clientele at the studio and part of the reason why was our low rates and the reason we had low rates was because we took cash payments at the end of the night. I thought things were cool when the session ended, but when I asked for payment, things changed:
“Fuck you nigga, I ain’t paying that invoice tonight! Can’t I pay it after tomorrow’s session?”
“Come on man, you know how the owner is.” I replied “Look, I’ll knock off the material (CD’s and DAT) cost for the evening, but I need the invoice paid or she’s not going to let you record tomorrow.”
At this point, I was doing what I could to collect, because if I didn’t, I was going to be fired the next day. However, none of that mattered after what happened next… the client pulled a Glock and pointed it at my head. Many things run through a man’s mind when he about to die… fear, sadness, regret, but what frightened me the most is at that moment was none of those feelings were present. The only thing I was feeling was defiance and a certain amount of satisfaction knowing he was going put a bullet in my head and finally end my time in L.A. I don’t know how long we were there staring at each other, or in my case down the barrel of his gun, it seemed forever. I finally and calmly spoke up:
“I live in a house with five foster crack children, the youngest one has to sleep with the lights on or he freaks out for hours thinking someone is trying to kill him, the oldest has a sleep disorder that makes him rock from side to side once he achieves REM sleep. Every morning they wake up crying and screaming at each other and it takes them 2 hours to shut the fuck up and catch the short bus. I don’t sleep unless I sleep here or go home after they leave for school. Right now this is as good as my life is going to get and if you pull that trigger, it’s only going to get better.”
There was more silence as we continued to stare at each other. Finally, he lowers his gun and says:
“Damn… are you fuckin’ crazy nigga?! I could’ve shot you and you didn’t care? That’s fucked up nigga. How much do I owe you tonight?”
He paid his invoice and left for the evening. After he pulled out of the parking lot, I was alone and began uncontrollably shaking and sweating until sunrise. I quit later the same day.
With no other job prospects in the studio business, I called Select the next day and they had a temp job available building and repairing amplifiers in Santa Clarita… many many miles away from where I stayed (remember: no car). It took me 2 hours to get the work everyday, not because it was terribly far away, it was because to get to work I first caught a bus to a train station, then took the train to Santa Clarita, then I took another bus from the train station to work. Things were shaky from the start because I didn’t have a car and I had to leave a half hour before everyone else to catch the last train home. To keep my job, I had to somehow get a loan and buy a vehicle. After many weeks of shopping and being denied loan after loan, I finally found a use for my Full Sail degree: it added $500 to my down payment and guaranteed me a reasonable interest rate on a loan through a college grad program with a particular car company. With my new truck, I was able to stay and work six days a week plus overtime to start making money… until I was laid off and the company moved to Mexico. Jobless again…but not for long.
The studio I worked at months before called and wanted me back… for more pay of course; grudgingly I returned, but this time I was prepared. During my time working at a rap studio in KY, we had what is known as the “Studio Piece” i.e. a S&W 629 .44 Magnum in case things got out of hand. Seeing as one of my great uncle’s grandchildren was a “former” gang member, I was able to get my own studio piece, in the form of a knockoff 1911 .45. All was well for about 3 days until problems showed up in the form of two rival posses. The studio had a standing order to never book rival posses, and in this case, rival gangs. In Studio A, we had one famous rapper’s posse that belonged to the Crips, and in Studio B another famous rapper’s posse that belonged to the Bloods. Surprisingly, nothing happened, but to say it was tense was an understatement.
The next day salvation arrived in the form of a Sony C-800G. Somebody rented that microphone from a L.A. audio rental company called Design FX; as I signed the rental agreement, I asked the driver if they were hiring; days later I had a job interview and soon after that I left the studio and became a driver for DFX. During my 11 months there I learned about nearly every major piece of outboard gear, microphone, and recorder. I worked on their remote truck on a gig or two and visited every major studio in city. During this time, I moved out of my uncle’s house and moved into an apartment with a roommate, who months later turned out to be crack addict, thankfully she found help, but she had to go. Meanwhile, I built up my contacts which led to me to be employed at Andora Studios near Universal City as an assistant engineer/technician… life was good… until Andora was sold five months later. Unemployed yet again, but this time it lasted 2 weeks… of course, that was because I was on vacation. :d
The New Year brought new professional opportunities. For the first month I was working as a freelance tech at the Village and in February, I joined the staff at Tim Jordan Rentals where we rented mainly analog and digital tape machines, and Pro Tools. While things were going reasonably well with work, things were not looking too good at home. After my former roommate went to rehab, I found another roommate and things were working out fine until he mysteriously disappeared 3 months after moving in. His family called me a week or so later to pick up his belongings… he was going to prison and I didn’t want to know why. After another change of locks, a Full Sail alum moved in, he was the person that replaced me at Design FX. Unfortunately, he wasn’t digging the neighborhood. I can’t blame him, I lived in a pretty rough area of Van Nuys and the apartment was broken into while he was living there, and thankfully they didn’t take his PT system. Finally, I got tired of getting fucked over by my roommates and tried to find another place to live by myself, luck smiled upon once again when one of my co-workers at TJR moved out of his pad, and I moved in. My living situation had finally reached a level of satisfaction.
With my home life in order, it was time refocus on why I came here in the first place: to be an audio engineer. My working in rentals led to a quite a few freelance AE gigs, my favorites involving movie scoring. Still unable to sustain work freelance, I moved away from rental companies that dealt mostly in records and moved on to a more movie-centric rental company which led me to be involved in some really big movies as a Pro Tools Operator/Editor and Tech. As my contacts grew, so did my ability go freelance…I went independent over a year ago and now I work on mostly movies and Anime.
I’d say I’m fairly happy with how things are going. I’m still paying off nearly $30,000+ in college loans (Community College, University, and Full Sail combined), however, my truck is paid off and I have my own place to live. All in all, I’m doing a hell of a lot better than when I first moved here… fuck, it only took 6 ½ years.