Paul Totman 21/12/03

I started the full time sound engineering course at the Recording Workshop in May 2003 with no prior recording experience. My motivations for undertaking a course of this nature stemmed from a desire to lean about the techniques involved in sound recording, particularly with regard to music, for the purpose of recording my own music and also in the hope that it would provide a good grounding for a potential career in the recording industry. I immediately found the course to be both interesting and enjoyable with involved practical sessions commencing at an early stage to complement the initial theory. With just 3 students in total in these sessions a great deal of hands-on involvement was possible for each of us. I found this hugely advantageous in terms of quickly establishing familiarity with the technology and becoming well accustomed to its usage. The small class sizes also facilitated an intimate and personal learning environment and close collaborative working with fellow students proved helpful and enjoyable.

As the course progressed our practical learning became increasingly involved and I found that I was learning more and more as my understanding of the mutual compatibility of different areas of the studio began to fall into place.

One aspect which I particularly valued was the opportunity to undertake 2 personal projects, one using Logic and one using Cubase, which gave us the independence to create our own work from scratch through to the final mix.

This enabled us to become very comfortable using both sequencers.

Towards the end of the course I was glad of the way in which we were encouraged to become increasingly autonomous and felt this was beneficial in helping me to consolidate much that I had learnt.

Overall I would say that I found the course to be very comprehensive, relevant and enjoyable and feel that it has given me a good broad understanding of the major aspects of studio recording.