My name is Daniel Larrotta and I am colombian student living in England. I recently finished a two-year-diploma course at The Recording Workshop (http://recordingworkshopuk.com) , a private studio school in West London. I enrolled in the course hoping to have some quality studio time to develop my skills as a music producer so I could arrange, record and mix my own songs, and I am pleased to say that I did get the training and the practice I wanted to have.
What I found great while studying at The Recording Workshop was that, as I went along with the process of learning the basic theory of how the studio worked, I was allowed to follow my own path and use the facilities according to what suited my purposes the best; I am a songwriter so in my case it was very clear that I wanted to record my material and thats exactly what I was able to do.
The course works in a flexible way depending on who you are and what you do and even though I am more creative than technical, I was surprised to find out how the use of devices such as compressors, noise gates and effect units would affect the mixes of my songs; so if someone is more interested in the technical side of it, they won't be disappointed since one gets to learn the science behind every device the studio has.
All the elements are there for the students to take advantage of; a 24 channel analog desk, a 16 track reel to reel tape machine, acoustic and electric guitar, amplifier, bass guitar, drums and other percussion instruments, synthesizers, samplers, a wide selection of dynamic and condenser microphones you can experiment with, and computers with updated versions of programs such as Pro-tools, Logic, Cubase and Kontak, containing large libraries of software instruments which you can program. The studio has two main recording rooms; the vocal booth (a completely sound proof room which is great for vocals and practically any acoustic instrument) and the live room in which the drums are set up along with the electric guitar amplifier.
Apart from all the physical possibilities the Recording Workshop offered me, its worthwhile mentioning that the whole experience for me was very interactive and cooperative since I had the chance to engineer sessions for other students in the same way I always had someone else to engineer my sessions as well, and I even got to collaborate with my classmates in some pieces of music. When it came to mixing, not only did I mix my songs but I was also faced with the task of mixing other people's music, which helped me train my ears in order to be effective when dealing with various music styles.
I highly recommend this course for anybody who thinks of studio time as precious and golden. It will allow musicians, singers, producers, DJs or anyone interested in the field of sound recording and production, to develop skills and put them into practice for the sake of their own work.
Daniel Larrotta.
London, England. 2011 read more
