Fourth week, first real "session"! - Posted on 2016-02-15 by April Edwards

This week I was entrusted by my mentor to work part of a recording session with a local rapper. It was my first "professional" engineering experience and I loved every minute of it! I used the experience I already have with the DAW from working on my own music and recording my own vocals, so it came naturally to me and my mentor was able to pretty much hand over the reins and let me take over for a while. It felt really good to be acknowledged as a (semi) professional and validated for the work I've already put in to becoming an engineer/producer. All I had to do was record his vocals so it wasn't hard in that respect, but the artist himself was pretty difficult to work with. He was in the studio from 6 PM til after Midnight, completing one song and making it halfway through another two before abandoning them because he didn't know his material.  At that point I realized that as an engineer, I'm not always going to be working with great vocalists, good artists and agreeable persons. I realized that it's not unlike other professions where there is a clientele, in that you do what you can to make the client happy whether or not you like what or who you're working with. To me, though, it's totally worth it; I love the whole process. In those few hours of manning the control room I felt like everything was falling into place. The time flew by. Before I left for the night and let my mentor finish the session, the artist thanked me for working with him and was shocked when I told him I was just an Intern. He thought I WAS the engineer! It made my night and that night made my week!