Career as a Sound Engineer

What: If you are interested in music and sound, and you’ve got knowledge of electronics and acoustics, this could be the ideal job for you. As a sound engineer in a recording studio, you would make high quality recordings of music, speech and sound effects for use in different media, from music recordings to commercials.

In this job, you would need good hearing. You would also need a good appreciation of pitch, timing and rhythm there is huge scope for qualified Sound engineers now. With music industry going international, the demand for qualified audio engineers is on the rise. Audio engineers are needed in media production houses, film, Television and Radio stations, Multimedia organizations, for live concerts and many more.

The ever changing and progressing technological world offers a number of minting career options. Several organizations hunt for skilled sound engineers, for their creative and technical knowhow of creating audios.

To start off with, a sound engineer can earn around Rs. 10,000-15,000 per month. On obtaining sufficient knowledge and experience, one can easily grab six-figure salary packages.

How:  You will need a good knowledge of music and recording technology, and you will also find it useful to understand physics and electronics. Many sound engineers start by taking a music technology course at college or university, to develop skills before looking for work in a studio. A science background in school will help you in understanding the dynamics involving physics and electronics. You could also start as an assistant in a recording studio where you will do basic routine jobs.

Your work would involve planning,  recording, sessions with producers and artists setting up microphones and equipment in the studio setting the right sound levels and dynamics operating equipment for recording, mixing, mastering, sequencing and sampling. Recording each instrument or item onto a separate track monitoring and balancing, sound levels mixing tracks, to produce a final ‘master’ track logging tapes and other details of the session in the studio archive.

Where: Many reputed institutions in India conduct courses in sound engineering, or audio engineering. Mostly, the courses are offered at postgraduate degree, diploma, and certificate levels. Technical principles of sound engineering, basic theory, recording, broadcasting, audio wiring, etc. form a major part of the curriculum. Minimum eligibility for these courses is graduation from any recognized institute or university.

Institutions: (see below)