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| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Interesting posts in this thread.
Yes, you can learn engineering yourself (in fact you can theoretically teach anything to yourself with the right resources, but it's a shitload easier and faster to get relatively better at a given subject if you are taught it first.
I've looked (viewed and toured) at schools in London, Canada the USA, including:
UK - SAE several, Point Blank, university of Midx, Technics Academy.
Canada - Trebas, the Harris Institute, York, Recording Arts canada.
USA - Fullsail, Los Angeles Recording school (LARS), the Guitar Institute, SAE, UCLA.
I actually went to Harris Institute and it was, without doubt, THE GREATEST EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. PERIOD. I could honestly write pages about how good the Producing engineering progrm (PEP) is there, but won't bore you with it. It's also only about $9k (CAD) for a year. it was a minimum of 40 hours per week, covering 14 subjects at any one time, taught by some of the music/sound industry's major players, including seriously respected studio and live sound engineers, Acoustic consultants and even A+R executives and entertainment lawyers. This is especially great as you won;t just get an education in technical ability, but also the basics of how to prepare yourself for the sorts of jobs you're going to go for. They teach you basic electronics and soldering, as well as music theory and history of contemporary music. They make you do things like assist in a club as coursework (they set it up). Basically, when you come out of there you will have a great grounding on the industry as a whole, but also be a superb engineer - the technical aspects of the course are so intense and the learning so full on. Nothing I have seen or heard about from any of the dozen or so schools I seriously researched has come close. Graduates from there go on to very good things, partly because of the contacts made there (through the school, or through tutors or through canadian companies respecting it as a school).
SAE, is generally crap. You get out what you put in, but again there are so many idiots there and my experience is that their tutors really aren't that qualified or experienced. They also, aren't that cheap and their courses are quite limited.
Recording Arts Canada - seemed OK but looked like a copy of the model that Harris set up, so why bother?
LARS - amazing facility, excellent campus and good course but at $24k rather expensive for just 10 months, especially as living in LA is not cheap and there is no parking at the school, meaning at least about another $3k for the year just to park near the school. Their reputation is mixed but at least the have an internship program to place you in job during the course. You better be rich for this one because the class times are such that you won't be able to work and they change each month - at least they're upfront about it.
The others (the universities listed) are more or less the same - they all do courses, but in my experience there is absolutely no need to do a 4 year degree in engineering as you can learn it in a year as long as the tuition is good, and a diploma from a decent audio school will serve you just as well as a degree of you want to work in the industry. All the jobs I've gone for don't care if it's a degree or a diploma, just as long as you have been taught well. Unless you want to get really techy like audio physics for industrial uses/civil engineering etc.
If you want to be serious about audio engineering go to THE HARRIS INSTITUTE. If you want more info, PM me (I'm not affiliated in any way apart from I am incredibly greatful for the education they gave me). Living in Toronto is wicked too. |
Hey man, I was actually planning on going to SAE in January. I spoke to the staff and it sounded cool, but i never talked to anyone who knew first hand how good it "actually" is. So in your honest opinion is it really that bad? I liked SAE because it offered and EMP course (Electronic Music Producer) and also the audio tech (engineering, etc) But if it is acutally that bad and not worth it, you just saved me about 15-20g's  . So about the Harris school. You obviously think that it is the best or at least one of them, and it sounds like it from what you describe and ya living in Toronto would be fucking awesome, but how does it compare to SAE i guess. do they offer also other courses like the EMP course that SAE has? And i was planning on going to SAE in San Fransisco so would it be cheaper for housing in San Fran or Torronto? Plus the exchange rate and all..
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