4 ms·

Not knowing too much about sound engineering myself, I tried comparing it to software engineering. At the end of the day what matters is your output and learnin

by 650 4y ago

Not knowing too much about sound engineering myself, I tried comparing it to software engineering. At the end of the day what matters is your output and learning along the way. It seems the author has a gripe with people calling themselves producers. If someone said I can’t call myself a software engineer until I had interned at XYZ company and understood Kubernetes, Docker, Typescript, AWS, Rust, etc. I would say ok and? I know there are thousands and thousands of producers and artists making content that isn’t of the highest quality, but at the end of the day they are creating. Setting an unreasonable bar of skill is not the way forward.

throwaway1777 4y ago
The bar will only get lower with ai assists. Gatekeeping is either essential or futile depending on your perspective.
bryzaguy 4y ago
I do understand sound engineering. I think their gripe is people claiming they understand how to make something sound good with no actual knowledge of how to do it then making up words along the way. Imagine you have a manager tell you to make the site more “zazzy” with a straight face. Imagine all managers start doing this.
boomskats 4y ago
"The author" in this case is Steve Albini[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography#As_an_audio_engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography#As_an...
ehutch79 4y ago
The date on the article is actually important here. Music recording is MUCH different then it is today, 20 years later. The best you could do for a home recording was a (comparative to today) shitty 4 track cassette recorder. You really needed some training on the equipment to know what you're doing. The resources just wern't there otherwise. The analogy for the worst cases here is more 'I've turned a computer on, so, Mr Torvalds, heres how a kernel is written'. Of course there were a few brilliant producers. There mostly mediocre producers who just got the job done, that you'll never hear about. Only the outliers, the best and worst get remembered.
- microtonal 4y ago
  30 years later (I started listening to a lot of music as a teenager around that time, including Albini-engineered music, realizing that that is about 30 years ago makes me feel... old?)
  - ehutch79 4y ago
    Oh.... yeah... now i feel even older
    - olddustytrail 4y ago
      I had one of those last week when I was watching "Back To The Future" and realised that in a current remake, Marty McFly would be going back in time to the Olden Days of 1993.
jeffreygoesto 4y ago
Sorry, but creating and engineering are on two different axes IMHO. Engineering is about using math and science to achieve things, kind of "the way". Creating is about "the goal". You can create beautiful things by just trying random stuff... For me, the vast majority of software is not engineering.
- livelielife 4y ago
  I agree with software not being engineering. but I disagree that engineering is just execution. I disagree even harder that you can create something by throwing random stuff,, you may well find something cool like that but I think creation does require more of a clear intent than random throwing and finding as if by chance.
dahart 4y ago
The issue is that producers have no bar at all for the role, and the role is not well defined, unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree, or at the very least a code camp, before being hired. Would you hire someone for software engineering who had no engineering training or experience just because they can talk lucidly and in detail about what software they like? Maybe a better software analogy here would be to compare producers to product managers. Great PMs are truly gold, but the PM role’s technical requirements are nebulous, and there are plenty of PMs who don’t know how to write code, and don’t know how to craft a good product, and don’t know how to communicate with customers effectively, essentially having no skills required for the job, but able to talk convincingly to enough of the right people to get hired and keep their jobs.
- livelielife 4y ago
  > unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree... they do NOW. Back when a lot of us started getting involved with this, most 'engineers' had physics, engineering, mathematics, and other various backgrounds because software engineering degrees were too freaking new. In the near-future (10 5? years? possibly sooner?) kids are gonna graduate with specialized PM degrees having gone to highschool thinking about being "product manager" when they grow up. When I was in highscool i wanted to be a Webmaster! now a webmaster is 15 people between desiginers, PMs, backend, frontend, QA, testers, blah blah blha
  - dahart 4y ago
    It’s a good point that things have changed a bit, but in 1993 when this article was written you couldn’t get a web job based on code camps, neither really existed. There was no role called webmaster yet. Webmaster today is a team only if you’re managing a large site, but not for small sites, and it doesn’t require many specific skills for small sites. Like you said, most engineers had degrees of some sort. For the purposes of comparing to a producer job (which has existed in film, tv, radio, and music for ~100 years) engineering has always had higher skill & technical requirements.
  - wyclif 4y ago
somesortofsystm 4y ago
>people calling themselves producers The music industry has just as big a headache with imposter syndrome, the Flynn factor, and the Peter principle, as any other industry. The issue is that the music industry is extremely exploitative, while being undeniably competitive. You don't get coders going to the extremes that members do, for their art. (Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, personally.) >producers and artists making content that isn’t of the highest quality, but at the end of the day they are creating. Setting an unreasonable bar of skill is not the way forward. Its not skill. Its sell-ability. It doesn't matter if you threw lemons at a piezo and called it done, if someone is willing to pay to listen to it - because it interests them - then you've got a hit. The ability to sell music is a very, very difficult thing to attain. Music is immediately free upon creation. We, of course, have imposed a great deal of arbitrary limits on its production and reproduction and broadcast and distribution over the years - but the fact we still have musicians out there, mind-blowingly great ones in fact, who will never get discovered in their lifetimes is a clue: music is language. It therefore cannot and should not, ever, be limited by government - or its adherents - in ways which prevent the use of this language.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  If you're going to apply that argument you should apply it to everything - music, art, software, money, property of all kinds. But you won't, because the argument always comes to down to "Stuff I want should be free because I want it. Stuff that profits me personally should have legal and moral protections unless I personally have the luxury of choosing otherwise." That aside - it's skill too. Of a specific kind. Producers have - actually have always had - two jobs. One is the admin side of delivering the project on time and on budget - which is not as easy as it sounds when band members may be drunk, high, unreliable, on the verge of a personal or professional breakdown, or at war with each other. The other is having the taste and instinct to hit the market just where it wants to be hit. Taste and instinct are incredibly nebulous and hard to define, but music buyers know them when they hear them. They're the difference between a record that sounds polished and a record that somehow has a life of its own. With respect to Albini, having an EE degree has absolutely no relevance to this. If anything it will get in the way, because EE degrees teach you nothing about taste and musicality. Nor - unfortunately - does talent in the abstract. Some musicians are just too talented for the mainstream. In a saner culture we'd subsidise them - somehow - without relying on the middle-of-the-bell-curve markets to do something they're fundamentally unable to do.

by 650 4y ago

throwaway1777 4y ago

The bar will only get lower with ai assists. Gatekeeping is either essential or futile depending on your perspective.

bryzaguy 4y ago

I do understand sound engineering. I think their gripe is people claiming they understand how to make something sound good with no actual knowledge of how to do it then making up words along the way. Imagine you have a manager tell you to make the site more “zazzy” with a straight face. Imagine all managers start doing this.

boomskats 4y ago

"The author" in this case is Steve Albini[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography#As_an_audio_engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography#As_an...

ehutch79 4y ago

The date on the article is actually important here. Music recording is MUCH different then it is today, 20 years later. The best you could do for a home recording was a (comparative to today) shitty 4 track cassette recorder. You really needed some training on the equipment to know what you're doing. The resources just wern't there otherwise. The analogy for the worst cases here is more 'I've turned a computer on, so, Mr Torvalds, heres how a kernel is written'. Of course there were a few brilliant producers. There mostly mediocre producers who just got the job done, that you'll never hear about. Only the outliers, the best and worst get remembered.

microtonal 4y ago
30 years later (I started listening to a lot of music as a teenager around that time, including Albini-engineered music, realizing that that is about 30 years ago makes me feel... old?)
- ehutch79 4y ago
  Oh.... yeah... now i feel even older
  - olddustytrail 4y ago
    I had one of those last week when I was watching "Back To The Future" and realised that in a current remake, Marty McFly would be going back in time to the Olden Days of 1993.

jeffreygoesto 4y ago

Sorry, but creating and engineering are on two different axes IMHO. Engineering is about using math and science to achieve things, kind of "the way". Creating is about "the goal". You can create beautiful things by just trying random stuff... For me, the vast majority of software is not engineering.

livelielife 4y ago
I agree with software not being engineering. but I disagree that engineering is just execution. I disagree even harder that you can create something by throwing random stuff,, you may well find something cool like that but I think creation does require more of a clear intent than random throwing and finding as if by chance.

dahart 4y ago

The issue is that producers have no bar at all for the role, and the role is not well defined, unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree, or at the very least a code camp, before being hired. Would you hire someone for software engineering who had no engineering training or experience just because they can talk lucidly and in detail about what software they like? Maybe a better software analogy here would be to compare producers to product managers. Great PMs are truly gold, but the PM role’s technical requirements are nebulous, and there are plenty of PMs who don’t know how to write code, and don’t know how to craft a good product, and don’t know how to communicate with customers effectively, essentially having no skills required for the job, but able to talk convincingly to enough of the right people to get hired and keep their jobs.

livelielife 4y ago
> unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree... they do NOW. Back when a lot of us started getting involved with this, most 'engineers' had physics, engineering, mathematics, and other various backgrounds because software engineering degrees were too freaking new. In the near-future (10 5? years? possibly sooner?) kids are gonna graduate with specialized PM degrees having gone to highschool thinking about being "product manager" when they grow up. When I was in highscool i wanted to be a Webmaster! now a webmaster is 15 people between desiginers, PMs, backend, frontend, QA, testers, blah blah blha
- dahart 4y ago
  It’s a good point that things have changed a bit, but in 1993 when this article was written you couldn’t get a web job based on code camps, neither really existed. There was no role called webmaster yet. Webmaster today is a team only if you’re managing a large site, but not for small sites, and it doesn’t require many specific skills for small sites. Like you said, most engineers had degrees of some sort. For the purposes of comparing to a producer job (which has existed in film, tv, radio, and music for ~100 years) engineering has always had higher skill & technical requirements.
- wyclif 4y ago

somesortofsystm 4y ago

>people calling themselves producers The music industry has just as big a headache with imposter syndrome, the Flynn factor, and the Peter principle, as any other industry. The issue is that the music industry is extremely exploitative, while being undeniably competitive. You don't get coders going to the extremes that members do, for their art. (Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, personally.) >producers and artists making content that isn’t of the highest quality, but at the end of the day they are creating. Setting an unreasonable bar of skill is not the way forward. Its not skill. Its sell-ability. It doesn't matter if you threw lemons at a piezo and called it done, if someone is willing to pay to listen to it - because it interests them - then you've got a hit. The ability to sell music is a very, very difficult thing to attain. Music is immediately free upon creation. We, of course, have imposed a great deal of arbitrary limits on its production and reproduction and broadcast and distribution over the years - but the fact we still have musicians out there, mind-blowingly great ones in fact, who will never get discovered in their lifetimes is a clue: music is language. It therefore cannot and should not, ever, be limited by government - or its adherents - in ways which prevent the use of this language.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
If you're going to apply that argument you should apply it to everything - music, art, software, money, property of all kinds. But you won't, because the argument always comes to down to "Stuff I want should be free because I want it. Stuff that profits me personally should have legal and moral protections unless I personally have the luxury of choosing otherwise." That aside - it's skill too. Of a specific kind. Producers have - actually have always had - two jobs. One is the admin side of delivering the project on time and on budget - which is not as easy as it sounds when band members may be drunk, high, unreliable, on the verge of a personal or professional breakdown, or at war with each other. The other is having the taste and instinct to hit the market just where it wants to be hit. Taste and instinct are incredibly nebulous and hard to define, but music buyers know them when they hear them. They're the difference between a record that sounds polished and a record that somehow has a life of its own. With respect to Albini, having an EE degree has absolutely no relevance to this. If anything it will get in the way, because EE degrees teach you nothing about taste and musicality. Nor - unfortunately - does talent in the abstract. Some musicians are just too talented for the mainstream. In a saner culture we'd subsidise them - somehow - without relying on the middle-of-the-bell-curve markets to do something they're fundamentally unable to do.