Hi there, everyone. I'm a new-join in this thread. Just a backgrounder on myself. I'm a Fil-Am who came back to the Phil last 2001 for a vacation and never went back, after a 23 year absence. (Having a local wife and 2 kids kinda makes it hard to leave and move them to the land of nothing's for free, although that backdoor will always remain open). I have operated a project studio in my house in Chicago for 15 of those 23 years, starting with a Yamaha, MT100 4 track cassette to record my own demos, moving up to a Fostex R8 1/4 inch tape to Tascam TSR8 1/2 inch to 3 Adat XT 20s to MOTU 2408 to MOTU 828, and a good pair of speaker monitors like the KRK 7000B that I trust.
First thing I noticed in this Manila recording market - why post production houses charge upwards of PhP2,000 per hour for only up to 2 tracks of recording. They have the least number of equipment to buy and maintain and yet with their business client base, can get away with charging that much. Whereas, music studios, who purchase and maintain at least 24x of everything, with starving musicians as their client base, can only charge up to PhP 1,000 if they're a big studio with 2 inch tape a massive board and an ample mic closet and a good set of monitor speakers, less if you're a home set up. After 6 years of paying my dues, again, in this Manila market, I have deduced why that is. It doesn't help that the good audio engineers are employed by such Post Production houses which leaves the "mga dating taga-timpla ng kape" type audio engineers to man this all important field (to say nothing of the live sound field). Then there's the home recordist type, who, as much as their budget would allow and poor availability of study materials still persevere to hone the craft. Reading the posts in this thread, the burning question of why Philippine recordings can't measure up to US/UK recordings, only leads to this answer - there is a serious lack of knowledge in the part of sound engineers in terms of tracking, gain-staging, mixing, using compression and EQ, etc. Don't get me wrong, there's a few out there who deserve to get paid more than they're getting. I do free-lance mixing here in Manila and I think my clients know that they're getting the quality associated with US mixes, whether they be local bands or major label, regardless of what they pay me. I have remixed other people's mixes and judging by those botched jobs I know where and how they failed. My advice to budding young recordists is to keep plugging away, practice your craft, know how to use a compressor (compressors are our friends) and EQ. Learn how they affect the sound. Know the rules and break them. And while you're doing all that, let the pros do what they do best, instead of dragging everybody else down with your cut-rate, half-assed mixing jobs, you'll be serving yourself better by not accepting that album deal and let the pros do it. When you grow up to a healthy music industry that pays more, you'll be doubly thankful. Heed to what thread contributors like "abyssinianson" (he's in the States fighting in the trenches of audio recording and has a lot of good wisdom to share, in his own words, "music engineering classes here(in US) put on the theoretical knowledge of frequencies, arranging, and tweaking. at least at Berklee") and others as well. Be serious about your recording business. Practice, if you have no clients, it only leads to more knowledge. Be familiar with your equipment, it's limitations and strengths. It's not enough to have the best and the latest equipment. Remember, a good engineer can make bad equipment sound good because of his knowledge of the basics, while good equipment can't make a mediocre engineer sound better.
Let's improve our industry. Let's learn our craft well. Let's research, read books on the subject and most of all, let's listen to the music, there's a lot to be learned from listening. Let's not just do commercials at Post houses. Let's make music and enjoy it. I picked this industry in the States because I enjoy music and not for the monetary rewards it brings later and in this Manila market, money is not even part of that equation. Let's do it for the love of our work. Thank you. (that's my 2 cents),
Joe Tweakhead