Freelance audio engineer: How I got my job and where I'm going

So I went to school for Business and I was a vocal minor I had to take an elective for my vocal classes and it was called music technology. And it was all about microphones and speakers and music and I was like what, this is something I can do. I don't know why my whole life in music I had no idea that audio engineering was a thing. Once I took that music technology class I changed my major to multi disciplinary studies which is when three minors make up your major, we didn't have a music tech major program so that's how I kind of finagled it. And then I studied theater advertising so the theater side of things I did theater sound design which audio engineering in theater is huge, so that's a whole other avenue that you can study. And then advertising because I knew I was probably gonna have to be a freelance person so I wanted to be able to market myself. I graduated from West Virginia with my Bachelor of Science in Multidisciplinary Studies three years ago. And then I immediately moved out to Denver, I didn't have a job lined up I knew there were studios in Denver, I contacted a bunch of them and no one wanted anything to do with me. Which I think now is because it's such a tight knit community, if you know someone that's how you get a job here. So for about two years out here, for the first year I did nothing but bartend so I was a bartender all through college and I was bartending out here as well. And then I found the Masters program and I was like you know what if no one wants to hire me right, maybe I need to hone in some more skills and so I decided to apply for graduate school, you don't need to go to school but it definitely gives you a leg up on the competition depending on their experience obviously. I'm introduced in college to post production, production for film, I'm introduced to live sound, studio, room acoustics all of these different things that it would take a very long time for someone to be able to learn all of those things. And to practice those things on their own, just because the equipment is like really expensive to get into, so once I started interning, I was interning at this studio in this past summer. And the way that I got that was just networking those engineer meet up groups where I go to every studio always talk to the owners, we had a meet up at this studio and I came to it and I was talking to my boss and I was just asking him do you guys take interns, do you guys look for anybody in particular when you're hiring. Just had a really great time talking shop and he said to call him and so I called him and sent him my resume and he hired me as an intern. So I interned here for awhile and over the summer and then at the end of the summer he hired me on as a freelance audio engineer. So I guess contracted basically and so the summer I was still working as a bartender and I was just focusing on it too much, when I'm in a job I focus on it a lot 'cause I wanna do the best that I can. And I was managing, bartending, cooking, I was doing a lot of different things at this restaurant and I just needed to focus on audio. So I quit my bartending job. In one week I quit my bartending job and I started my own company to be a freelance engineer. So I made a website, I made business cards so I could start handing them out to people and I paid my $50 became a company and then I just started looking for other jobs. I saw a production company needed a stage hand and I was like okay that's paid, that's exciting, that's new so I took that stage hand position for just one night. And I talked to the engineer that day and I said some other people that I knew in the community and he told his boss that I seemed really cool. And they hired me as a monitor engineer that week so that was really exciting and normally in live sound you don't get to touch things for awhile you're a stage hand and then eventually they'll let you play with things. But I got thrown right into it, I'd never been a monitor engineer and they put me on a festival with 15 minute changeovers, my first time working on a live board and I killed it, I did great. And so that helped me in that position they own a venue in the area and so I have my festival gigs and then I have work in the venue's as well. And then through the meetup group again I had a connection with another live sound engineer in Denver who hires me to work at a church. On that meetup group there was a posting for a recording assistant for classical orchestra recordings. I contacted the guy and went up to Longmont and met with him and he hired me as his recording assistant. And again it's just like taking opportunities that you see immediately. The production side with film I worked on a pro bono film with some friends this past summer and the director of that film actually just started handing my name out like candy to people. Randomly I got a call from a producer in L.A., I got a call from a producer in New York all asking me if I could do production audio for their gigs. And I was like yeah, that's awesome and I'm wondering how they got my name and I find out it's just from one connection where I did a good job. And so they give my name out to people. One other way I guess is that I've been getting jobs is production houses in Denver don't have audio people on staff and I noticed that when I was researching different production houses on their websites they didn't have audio people. So I just started sending them emails with my rates, if you ever need an audio person let me know and I've gotten a couple of calls from people that way as well. So just being super proactive and saying yes to everything is how I've gotten where I am right now. Typical growth opportunities in audio engineering obviously, you'll start as like a stage hand in live production or an intern at a studio and then once you kinda pay your dues and work for a while maybe you get hired on as an engineer. In my case since I bring in studio clients my boss will supplement that also with the leads that he gets. The better that I do at my job the more leads that he'll give me so that's obviously more money in that situation. Growth opportunities in live, in basically everything in studio again is like if you catch an artist that's on their way to being famous. If you can ride that with them and continue to grow with them then you can make a lot of money in that sense. Denver is not a huge place but there's a good music industry here and film, it's small but it's mighty. So you know if you do a good job people are gonna hear your name, if you know a lot of people, even if you don't do a good job and no one knows your work at all. If they know your name that's so huge 'cause people are talking about you, I had before I even worked anywhere and I was just in school hanging out at studios. People knew my name and they thought I was great and they never heard any of my work and just from being a nice person and talking to people and going out there. So that's a huge part of it as well, I'm still figuring out exactly what I wanna do in audio which is why I do so many things. I've really liked doing everything, I love working in live and then bringing someone back to the studio that's super cool and to make it even more full circle it would be awesome to then maybe they wanna make a music video and I can help on that side since I know all these film people. I think it would be awesome to work on like a feature film one day that would be like probably the crazy goal that I have. I'd like to get a Grammy maybe an Oscar one day, you know those are the typical things that people in this industry work towards but a platinum record being an engineer on a platinum record would be awesome. I really wanna go on tour at some point while I'm young just because it's so physical and mentally it's really rough. People on large tours they work for like 23 hours a day drive for a day on a bus and then work for another 23 hours and they do that every other day for like three months. So it's rough but you make a lot of money, you meet all of these people, you form a family with your touring crew and I just think that would be really cool. If you're interested in becoming an audio engineer just starting out, just do everything that you can, say yes to every opportunity, get involved in the audio engineering society. There's conferences every year on each coast, they switch every other year and that was like, it lights a fire in me every time I go to those conferences you're around like minded people. It's kind of tough if you're in a small town and you don't have someone to talk shop with you know. That's kind of what's keeps you going and getting excited about it all the time but there's tons of online forums and again just never say no unless you have a reason to because you're doing something better. That was the advice that I got like two years ago when I was starting out getting into this for real. I was just like what else are you doing, really what else are you doing, is it furthering your career, if not then take the other opportunity because you're gonna learn something. At least you're gonna make a connection and that's what this industry is about.