MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE RECORDING CONNECTION

It all started with a phone call…. "Hello? Is this Eric Kilgore?"

"Yes it is, may I help you?"

"Yeah, I’m calling from the Recording and Radio Connection. Have you heard of us?"

"No."

After some small talk with the used car salesman-like voice on the other end of the phone. I found myself promising to teach someone audio engineering that I never met. It didn’t seem all bad, after all, I would be getting paid for something I love to do…teaching recording. Then I started to think about it. I was agreeing to offer services to someone across the country based on just a "promise" to pay me. I knew it wouldn’t be my first "spec" job, but something didn’t seem right. The Recording Connection owner didn’t even know that I had previously taught recording for the only licensed audio recording school in Michigan until I told him. (He stumbled upon me by a referral from a former student which he had randomly called off of a list of subscribers to an audio magazine.)

I interviewed the prospective student. He seemed ambitious enough. All there was left to do was to get the materials and start teaching. I would mail in the student quizzes and get paid $50 for each one that I returned after I graded it. I would also receive a larger sum (I think it was $500) for sending in the student’s final exam. He would receive a piece of paper saying that he was an audio engineer, and I would get a plaque saying that I was an "approved facility."

When the educational package arrived I was dumbstruck. It was an off the shelf audio recording book that I had already owned (It was a good book for reference, but a little too general and basic for my tastes in educational material), and a copy of a book that was written for the Recording Connection in a very illogical (almost random) manner. I also received a copy of all the quizzes to give my student and answer keys for myself. I’m not being an elitist, but this was the worst form of testing that I can imagine giving someone who needs to really know their information…It was fill in the blank style quizzes that consisted of filling in the information that was given in the book The answers were actually in the text as italicized words within sentences that were repeated on the quiz word for word. On top of that I was told to give the student the quiz as an open-book test if it seemed too difficult. There was also a fairly poor lesson plan. It was obvious to me (and my student) from the text and techniques that the Recording Connection had done absolutely no investigation into the facilities that they solicited. I worked in a studio with a small voice-over booth that specialized in commercials and other "white collar recording". The book was written to be taught in a large music studio with a wide array of microphones and instrument at the teacher and pupil’s disposal.

I managed to salvage the educational relationship between my student and myself only because of my previous learning, teaching, and working experience at the Recording Institute of Detroit (RID). I was taught at RID how equipment worked in theory and in practice. I was instructed with enough theory that I could work any similar equipment without much added thought, because I knew the basic theory of how the equipment functioned, and what was happening to the audio signal internally within the chain of signal flow. I was not thrown a bunch of irrelevant materials in a haphazard fashion and told to learn. I was able to learn by getting my hands on the equipment, and comparing my abilities with other students that worked with me as a team.

I was further instructed on how to instruct others when I became a teacher at RID. This was probably the only thing that saved the Recording Connection experience for my poor unsuspecting student. I was able to make the materials make sense so that he could understand.

I’M NOT DONE YET….HERE’S THE PUNCH LINE!

I had to quit the training for my student for several weeks because of lack of payment by the Recording Connection, then when I finally DID get a check, it bounced!! Most of us working engineers don’t have a big bankroll to fall back on, and I was no exception. The only way I ever was able to collect the money and the charges from the bank, was to have my student call the Recording Connection and threaten them with legal action for non-delivery of services. It was then that I had found out that the student had paid about $3000 up front to the Recording Connection and then they agreed to pay me about $1200 over the course of several months (when the checks showed up on time). They made $1800 for "making the connection". The result was that when we did resume our educational endeavor, the books were basically discarded and I looked at the lesson plan only to evaluate what information the student was expected to receive for his money. I delivered on my agreement, the student got his certificate, I got my plaque to hang on the wall. I told the student on the last day of instruction that his money would be better spent, he would get his hands on REAL equipment, and he would retain his education much longer if he only would call the Recording Institute of Detroit. I gave him a catalog for the school, and sent him off like a lamb to the wolves.