$$$How do you guys make a living?$$$

[outbound]

A mixture of mastering, running the technicals at a comedy club and just started to make money through releases.

[wub]

Office job.

[RmoniK]

Interesting to see how many people are actually working in audio and music production somehow. I never even considered this as a possibility to make a living off when you weren't taught professionally yourself and have no real superiority over anyone else doing this. Maybe i should look into it. How did you guys start doing that anyway?

[p0seur]

9 to 5 office slavery with enough room to read forums and tutorials during the day, production during most nights, weekends go to the band or other random projects. Sleep is overrated.

[Exhilant]

i work minimum wage selling computer services.

[joegrizzly]

Mechanics

[kaiori breathe]

I romantically engage elderly ladies in coffee shops in the more well to do areas of Ireland. They buy me nice things in return. Living the dream, baby. Living the dream.

[Hircine]

Interesting to see how many people are actually working in audio and music production somehow. I never even considered this as a possibility to make a living off when you weren't taught professionally yourself and have no real superiority over anyone else doing this. Maybe i should look into it. How did you guys start doing that anyway?

superior education in audio is bullshit in my opinion, unless it's classical / orchestration or electric engineering. Plus, there's way more to audio than production. Working / experimenting with bands will open more doors than just straight up djing / producing. Just a question of dedication and meeting the right people at the right places.

[Crimsonghost]

I used to work as a lab tech for a construction inspection company. It was a pretty fun job because I basically got paid to break shirt all day.

Now I'm just a house husband while my wife brings home the money.

[Crimsonghost]

Interesting to see how many people are actually working in audio and music production somehow. I never even considered this as a possibility to make a living off when you weren't taught professionally yourself and have no real superiority over anyone else doing this. Maybe i should look into it. How did you guys start doing that anyway?

superior education in audio is bullshit in my opinion, unless it's classical / orchestration or electric engineering. Plus, there's way more to audio than production. Working / experimenting with bands will open more doors than just straight up djing / producing. Just a question of dedication and meeting the right people at the right places.

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I'm just trying to cram as much knowledge into my head while trying to figure out a way to get in. My wife has a friend who's been and audio engineer for like 20 years that she's gonna hook me up with. Hopefully I can get some good info there.

[Sharmaji]

i teach private lessons (drumset and percussion), accompany dance classes at the mark morris dance group, play with a few groups that, thank my lucky stars, are well-managed and play excellent music, pitch tracks for records and ads through my publisher, produce songs for other artists, mix tracks for other artists, produce records in the old-school sense (be an objective ear, work on arrangement, lyrics, ensure it's on-time and on-budget, etc), do sound design for a theater project, do remixes, and play at many (far too many) private events.

basically, you find the locus of things that you do really well, and you create a list of things you will not do, and you go from there. IE-- i'm not playing on a cruise ship. I'm not buying a tux and playing western weddings. i'm not playing jazz gigs for drink tickets. I can objectively look at a piece of music and see what's great, what's good, what's not so good, and know how to use what i've got in my toolbox to make it better and hopefully make more people respond to it.

there's no 1 way to make "music" work, financially, until you hit the jackpot. and even then-- it's usually fleeting. I've met guys on gigs who've played and co-written on gold and platinum records in the 80's-- they're still slanging out the occasional wedding on Long Island. Whatever $ you make beyond your standard needs either needs to be saved, or re-invested into the tools that will keep you at the top of your game. If the difference between you winning a mix and it going to someone else is the extra 3dB you get out of X piece of gear, you need X piece of gear.

[ephyks]

I've been trying to get my foot in as a Sound Designer somewhere in my city. So far no luck. Simply because there aren't many studios or companies around.

Other than that, I'm broke as shit with an income of 0 because I quit my job to run a record label that's still in development.

[Dahneboy]

Prostitution ..lol jk

[Dahneboy]

I dont have a job yet but i will be getting one soon and get my own place and maybe save up for a recording studio along with new drums n stuff

[the m8]

Prostitution ..lol jk

hahahahahahaha ahhhhhh lol

im on the dole. pretty sick tbf dnt do shit n can still afford stella lol

[Dahneboy]

Prostitution ..lol jk

hahahahahahaha ahhhhhh lol

im on the dole. pretty sick tbf dnt do shit n can still afford stella lol

[terminus]

produce songs for other artists

Like, tracks for people to perform over or like "ghost producing"? Because you also said you actually produce in the fullest sense as well so i'm just curious

[Sharmaji]

produce songs for other artists

Like, tracks for people to perform over or like "ghost producing"? Because you also said you actually produce in the fullest sense as well so i'm just curious

takes a couple of different forms. Sometimes it's a partnership-- a songwriter and I get introduced, flesh each other out, decide we'd like to work together and get in a room-- we work on melodies, etc together and then i turn around and rough out a track, he/she develops the lyrics more, we comment on each others work, maybe record a scratch vocal, and volley back and forth until we've got a finished song. Then i send them away and create a mix that sounds like actual music, rather than a demo, send it to the writer for feedback and we go from there. Then it goes off to our publishers to see if/where it can find a home. In general, this is a no-fee situation, as if the song goes somewhere, i'm a co-writer.

Other times, i get contacted by a writer who's got fully fleshed-out demos who needs them produced into songs for them as an artist-- or as something to pitch. For this, unless we make drastic changes or i re-work some words or melodies (melodyne's a godsend for this), i don't expect to be a writer on the song, thus it's fee-based.

There's also "rhythm" producing-- i get a vocal that's usually already tuned, mixed w/ backups, doubles, triples etc, and a piano guide-- and i then create the song around an already-finished vocal product. not unlike remixing, except the artist/writer/manager/label etc has a VERY specific idea of what they want things to sound like.

[terminus]

Ahhh thanks for explaining, it's interesting

[RmoniK]

I'm gonna repeat my question, how do you guys get started in this type of work? Like is it a question of knowing the right people or what?