Gripe session - Posted on 2013-12-26 by Nathan Baker

I'm not sure if the Recording Connection has any sort of feedback/evaluation type of setup for the mentors, but you should. So far any gripes or complaints I've had with Abel I've just talked to him directly about them. Results usually come of it. But this time I take to the passive/aggressive route and vent on here to see if anyone over in LA is listening. Overall my main complaint with Abel is simply that he just isn't a teacher. He just doesn't know how to convey his knowledge very well. It's always a struggle to get him to expand on ideas and just talk. He's self taught and not booksmart or schooled, so he only knows what he knows by experience, which I value, but there is a definite limit on what you can teach someone from that perspective. He's also not very active in the process of my learning. Being a minimalist in every regard he takes the same approach to this situation. He never knows what chapter I'm on, never has any suggestions of what we should or could do, never goes above and beyond. Barely just par, so it's like I am on my own to craft the structure of my learning. Its a good thing I'm doing a lot of outside reading and I'm not brand new to the music and recording world. So i know more or less what i need to learn. If I was totally new to this stuff, or not as assertive and confident, I would be getting next to nothing out of him. I also feel like I'm getting a bare minimum of studio time. It's basically just once a week with the occasional actual session, maybe once every few weeks. I've talked to him about all this and it sort of changes, but not very much. I've also thought about calling someone at the Recording Connection, but usually it's best to just approach the issues directly. If I called you, you would call him, so i just skip that and talk to him myself. its the more realistic and mature approach i suppose, but now im taking the most roundabout approach there is to making change; blogging.    I just dont know what kind of change you guys could affect by talking to him because he is just not set up for this teaching thing. I guess I am your guinea pig for him as a mentor. I wouldn't recommend him. He is a cool guy, enjoyable to be around, and he most definitely knows what he is doing and does a great job as an engineer, he's just not proactive as a teacher at all. Today he canceled the session just because the rehab kids weren't coming in. That's pretty lame. There is plenty we could have done. I won't bring this up to him on Saturday when we have another overdub session, but I will next Thursday. It'll be the same thing I've said to him before: I want to do more. He has hinted at keeping me on as an intern after this is all over but I kind of doubt that will come to pass. He's not that busy, and I have full time job as of last week so now my time is limited, which it wasn't at all up until now. I guess that's it. No, one more thing. When signing up for this program I read, and was told numerous times that it was a six month course. I questioned the fact that there were only 20 lessons and was told that it gets stretched into 6 months. Cool. Except Abel says that he was told that its a twenty week (4.5 months)program. So since he is only in it for the money, to stretch it to 6  months would not be in his best interest. I think it would be good if you guys made sure it was consistent in the minds of both parties, rather than playing both sides and hoping for the best. So anyway, if anyone actually reads this, then perhaps give me a call and we can talk about it, or perhaps I might call soon. We'll see.