Pro Tools Ed in NYC

[stevegries]

Hello,
I'm looking to take a class in Pro Tools in New York City. NYU offers two classes that run 10 sessions each for three hours per class and cost $1700 each. $3400 for 60 hours of instruction.
New School offers two levels of Pro Tools training in 6 3-hour classes for $530.00. 36 hours of instruction for $1060.00
So clearly, the New School is better from a simple economic standpoint. But sometimes you get what you pay for.... Does anyone in this group have any experience with either of these programs, and if so, could I trouble you for your thoughts on your experience?
Though NYU's reputation is generally better than New School's, these "Extension and Continuing Education" divisions usually have very little to do with the actual institutions with which they share a name.
Thanks a million,
Steve

[ModaRecords]

Whats the goal... if you don't need a certificate there are better ways...

[JC925602]

Whats the goal... if you don't need a certificate there are better ways...

Yup, but if you need to learn... and you don't want to be refused for a job just because you went to "that" school ... I do remember a place I worked for, every time we received a résumé from a student of a particular school, we just throw it to the garbage because that school was so ***. only 1 on 90 student got a job in that field (they didn't knew what post-prod was). The cost of the training was 18 000$Can, + 6K$ in gov loan.

jc

[stevegries]

The goal is to get learning Pro Tools quickly in an environment that offers me access to people who can give clear guidence on the system, answer questions, and help me stay focused on the goal. I realize that I should be able to learn the system with manuals and a couple $40 books, but the reality is often not like that for me. If three hours of instruction can save me 10 hours of searching through manuals for the answers to simple questions, then spending the money might be worth it to me. It's always nice to have gone to the "right" school, but I'm not in need of immediate emloyment in the field, so the certification or resume issue is less important. What's important is that I develop the skills to produce my music as well as engineer sessions for friends producing demos. After I have a solid preliminary knowledge of Pro Tools, I can decide how much more intensively I want to study Pro Tools and audio engineering in general.
Thanks,
Steve

[jeremyroberts]

>> After I have a solid preliminary knowledge of Pro Tools, I can decide how much more intensively I want to study Pro Tools and audio engineering in general

Steve,

May I suggest you invert your training goals:

1. study audio engineering first. get a good foundation of skills.
2. then learn protools (PT training can be part of #1, but without #1, no amount of PT training will mean much)

My reasons:

Protools is "simply" a tool that does what you want it to do. You need to know WHAT you want it to do, and WHY...

The analogy: I own Photoshop, and use it for some tasks... but I don't know much of anything about color, lighting, balance, compositing, and forget about me ever trying to compete with a pro... BUT - I know how to do 4 things in it. My limitations are I simply don't know the basics of photography or photo manipulation. I can use the tool, but I have no idea what things will look like,

When a skilled engineer uses protools, the concept of what to do and why is not in question -- all of us have an RTFM question here and there, but we know what we want to do (workflow) and we have an expectation "if we do this procedure, it will sound like that..."

Your learning curve into protools will be reduced dramatically if you have the skills of an engineer.

If you need to learn it all at once, I feel you will be biting off too much, and you will never excel at either engineering or protools without a solid engineering foundation.

Just my opinion.

[rockridge]

I'm looking to take a class in Pro Tools in New York City. NYU offers two classes that run 10 sessions each for three hours per class and cost $1700 each. $3400 for 60 hours of instruction.

That's a lot of money to learn a program. Why not buy an LE system, record for 60 hours... whatever you want... you might learn more than you think.

If it sound too good to be true...

[Shawn Simpson]

I actually disagree with Rockridge. The fact is that I've trained people from all over the world who have "learned by the seat of their pants" and invariably, the simplest of operations that can make things so much easier in the long run has eluded them to the point that they went seeking training. Obviously that's not true for every person, but it is for the vast majority.

I COMPLETELY agree with Jeremy's assessment. Pro Tools is a tool originally designed around an engineer's toolbox. Now it has more features that make it helpful in the creative side, but the basics of the system can still be more easily understood with a good engineering foundation. It does work the other way too, ie. Pro Tools to help learn engineering, but it's not the best way...in my opinion, of course.

Also, Digidesign just released The Pro Tools 101, Official Courseware book. That's a pretty good place to start!

[stevegries]

Thanks for the input from all of you. I should say that I have bachelors and masters degrees from two good music schools and am not looking for a complete change in career. My situation is that I have the opportunity to take a long term lease on a Pro Tool HD2 recording studio near my home in Brooklyn. I will be using it as a personal project studio, and may go so far as to record work for friends, but I am not seeking to develop an income generating commercial recording studio out of the endeavour. Those of you who live in New York likely know the extent to which simple lack of square footage can get in the way of realizing musical goals. I've come to a point where I have to get out of the "bedroon studio" and found that I can get an acoustically tuned Pro Tools room in my neighborhood for not much more than I would pay for the same amount of raw space out in the sticks.
I fully appreciate the suggestion to get comprehensive audio engineering training prior to or in tandem with Pro Tools training. But again, I have limited time, money, and I do have specific musical goals. I think this is wise advice, but also see it being somewhat akin to telling a teenager who wants rock guitar lessons that he'll be a better musician if he studies Bach chorals first. Also, I'd hoped that when studying Pro Tools at a reputable institution, we'd talk not only about *how* to mix in Pro Tools, but also cover general ideas about what makes for a dynamic and interesting mix. What I want to avoid is spending a three hour class taking about conductance in speaker cables - totally valid and important information, but outside the scope of my interest right now.
Any info about your experiences with either of these schools would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve

[froyo]

Hello. I think it depends completely on what the audio you record in this facility will be used for.

Let me put it this way. Say you do in fact just strictly get a Pro Tools course and you learn how to record and mix with the software. Invariably you will come across issues with the audio. Maybe it's overcompressed, distorting, input levels are way too hot or not hot enough, there is noise in your hardware, etc. Any number of issues that deal with audio in general and not specifically in Pro Tools. What then?

Let's go with your rock guitar example. Say you just teach the kid two or three simple chord progressions, and you show him a few AC/DC tunes. Great, he's rocking. But unless he wants to be Malcolm Young (rhythm guitar) at some point in playing that guitar he will need to know more than just a couple of simple chords. Even Angus Young in AC/DC as a lead guitar player will employ a lot of the techniques and concepts of Bach, even if he doesn't know he's using them. And if the kid wants to play like Blackmore, Page, Van Halen, Lifeson, Clapton, etc., those Bach lessons will be infinitely more valuable.

With all due respect to you and I really want to underline that, it seems you want someone to tell you that taking a simple Pro Tools course will be all you need. You can do that, but it will not teach you the basics you will need to know to operate and trouleshoot any DAW software.

Do you plan to record by yourself or is someone else going to record while you play? Are you planning on editing the audio yourself? Mix? What will you do with the audio that comes from this facility? Sell it commercially?

If you plan to use the audio in a commercial or professional capacity, it seems to me that unless you are willing to spend the money and most importantly the time needed to learn how to record, edit, mix and troublehsoot audio in a professional manner, your best bet is to pass that part of it to someone better suited to that task, ie a trained audio engineer.

If all you really need is some way to record audio that no one else will hear or is strictly for your ears only, and/or it has no commercial or professional aspirations then by all means get a Pro Tools course. Even in that case you will end up with more questions than answers eventually but it may suffice for what you need.

By the way, if all you want to learn is how to operate Pro Tools download the Pro Tools Reference Guide and read it. That is free.

Good luck.

[stevegries]

Thanks, Froyo.

No, I'm not interested in people telling me, "take a Pro Tools course and you'll be the engineering master of the universe." People on pro audio users groups ask questions like "what's better the Avalon 737 or the UA 6176" all the time. Invariably, people respond with, "go to Guitar Center and use your ears." Perfectly valid advice. Unfortunately, there's no way to A/B these classes as the tuition is non-refundable after the classes have begun.

So again, I am not asking "what should I do?"....rather I'm saying, I'm pretty committed to getting instruction on Pro Tools during the next two months (which does not presuppose that I'll never take a general audio engineering class), does anyone have experience with the extension classes in Pro Tools at the New School or NYU in New York City, and if so, did you feel that the experience was worth the time and money?

For the record, I recently took a class in Max/MSP/Jitter at Harvestworks in New York. Having previously spent many hours with the Cycling 74 tutorials, I'll say that the class was worth every penny because the instructor was clear, comprehensive, and well versed in his subject matter. There's always more than one way to skin a cat - some are just more efficient than others.

Steve