Recording industry lessons resonate

This guest blog post is by Jack Smith, managing editor of Plant Engineering magazine. His experience in the record biz taught him lessons he’s still using today.

Control room at Shade Tree Recording Studio with Jerry Milam, the studio designer, at the controls of the MCI console.The music business is what I call the “glory side” of the recording industry — big-name stars, glitz, paparazzi. But when you hear a song, you are experiencing the results of professionals in the recording industry providing high-quality sound reproduction via highly sensitive equipment. If the equipment doesn’t work properly, the recording quality suffers. That’s what I did; I maintained the equipment.

Industry experience
My first job in the recording industry was at Shade Tree Recording Studio in 1979, where I maintained everything from the console and 24-track tape machine to the guitar amplifiers. After that, my journey took me south to Nashville working for Valley Audio, maintaining equipment for many studios. After Valley, I then worked at MCI, and finally at Devonshire Recording Studio in North Hollywood.

While at Valley Audio, I spent quite a bit of time in Muscle Shoals, Ala., doing freelance maintenance in several studios, including Fame Studios, known for artists like Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Paul Anka and The Osmonds.

Working in the recording industry expanded my technical knowledge, and one example is my understanding of power quality. When you have poor power quality in the recording industry, most of the time, you can literally hear it. Ground loops and hum fields have a way of making themselves known – through the speakers. Another important lesson I learned then is the value of maintenance. If the equipment doesn’t work, production can’t move forward.

What I learned
Perhaps the biggest part of what I learned then that helps me now is how to communicate effectively. When a producer would say, “Can you hear that buzzing?” or, “It sounds gluey,” I had to learn quickly how to translate those subjective references into identifiable symptoms, and then turn them into effective solutions. While in Nashville, I also accepted an invitation to teach a “Recording Studio Maintenance” class at Belmont College, which is now Belmont University.

Finally, there are life lessons to be learned — whether from the recording industry or others.
These lessons follow in no particular order:

• Not everything is as it appears
• No one is indispensable — no one
• Good customer service is crucial
• You can learn much more by listening rather than talking

There have been a few professions and even more jobs on the path to where I am now. But none of them have quite the jazz (again, pun intended) that I got from working in the recording industry.