Recording Arts Careers and Programs

Listed below are colleges and universities that offer online degrees, certificates, and diplomas in the major of Recording Arts and a detailed list of the programs offered. Tuition, financial aid, course offerings, online classes, adult education, and distance learning options are available by request.

Sound Good?

You’re sitting in front of a hundred knobs, computer screens, and a gazillion flashing lights. Nope, you don’t work for NASA and you aren’t flying a 747. You are a recording professional.

Recording music and sound is complicated if you want it to be high quality. Not only do you need the right equipment, but everything from acoustics of the building to the appropriate mixing of sounds must be considered. Some people direct and organize audio production, others are the musical talent behind the sounds, and others edit sounds and recordings for final version production.

Where do you work as an audio professional? A recording studio is the obvious answer. But other people, like broadcast news providers, movie makers, and advertisers need audio experts too. Also, any performing arts venue, like an opera house, concert venue, or convention center, will need audio experts. Maybe you’ll even mix music for video games.

Job Outlook for Recording Arts

This is a very difficult industry to enter. Often people who open recording studios already have lots of experience in the music industry and enough money to buy good recording equipment, which can be incredibly expensive. Because being a professional musician is so difficult, those who record these professional can also have trouble making a living.

If you dream is to work in a recording studio, expect to start pretty low on the chain, even with a job that has nothing to do with sound. Eventually, you will hopefully work your way up to being able to assist the recording engineers or studio technicians.

But, many people and organizations besides musicians need to record things. Advertisers need to record, and a large variety of industries need help controlling audio. This field should be easier to enter, though still very competitive.

Things that might help you make more money and get more jobs:

• Offer your service for free.Do jobs on the side to get your name recognized and to get experience. Who is going to hire someone without any experience to record their album or control their audio?
• In college, don’t limit yourself to audio. Expand your skills to many different types of media, and you will have a better chance of being able to use your audio skills.
• Join a professional audio organization. There are many organizations you can join to gain experience and get involved. For example, the Audio Engineering Society.

Salary Forecast

As of 2010, there were over 15,000 sound engineering technicians in the United States. But add in all the radio operators, news station workers, and television audio production workers, and the number is probably over 100,000. Sound technicians earn about $55,000 a year on average. California and New York are home to the majority of people who fit in this category.

California and New York were also among the top paying states for this occupation. Audio engineers in California earn about $68,000 a year on average, as do audio engineers in Washington D.C. Audio professionals in Nevada and New York earn from $60,000 to $65,000 a year on average.

Your salary will also depend on your employment level. For example, you can be a sound master for an entire event, or you can control certain aspects of audio for different things. Usually, the larger the role, the more money you can make.

Education and Skill Requirements

What degree should aspiring recording professionals work towards? That is a great question because not all schools offer the appropriate degrees. Make sure you find a school that offers a degree like audio production, audio technology, audio (general), or audio engineering. Often schools offering these degrees are musical or artistic schools.

Unless you are going to be an independent recording professional, you will most likely need a bachelor’s degree. But, depending on the field you want to enter, you will need certain additional skills.

Recording artists often need help making their music sound clear and with the correct balances between voices and instruments. For this reason, recording specialists often need musical ability with their audio editing talent. They need to know how music is supposed to sound in order to produce the highest quality recording.

There are different computer programs that a recording professional will use to mix and balance music. Some are simpler than others, but you will need to learn the computer side of music recording if you want to be competitive in this field. Furthermore, you should understand how sound works, and how recording equipment works. College is a great place to get the technical background required to make a living as a recording artist.