GROSSMONT COLLEGE — There are many reasons for becoming an audio engineer.  Some students want to record  music, others movies and so forth. As for me, I personally do it to record all sound and to learn the business of my love, music.

This semester has been very different for me. I actually went out into the field to get into the business of audio entertainment. As of last January, I started my own entertainment company, OneManDown. By opening my own music production company, I got to see aspects of the industry many students don’t get to see.  I got to see the entire business side.

I dealt with three different recording situations: an open air live band, a vocal sound studio, and of course Grossmont College’s studio. That enabled me to experience completely different feels, engineering styles and qualities of sound.

I learned in these situations that you do not have to do everything by the book. Improvising is very essential and being able to get good sound must be the focus.  I personally can’t name every component on the Mackie board or the Digital HD pro tools system, but I am personally mixing my own CD and getting it to sound the way I like.

That is perhaps the biggest thing I learned while working with Prof. Brian Cantarini on Wednesdays for over a month for about three to four hours at a time.

Meanwhile in my own business, we hosted our first show on June 3, and since then thus have had a half dozen additional shows.  I am experiencing all the ins and outs of the music business which I so love. In the near future I will be setting up the sound for two additional shows.

 I have the websites www.NotApologetic.com  and www.SadRobotEnt.com and the business is progressing. We have done four shows at Riley’s and others are in prospect.

All of this comes from my enrolling into Grossmont’s Media Communication Department.

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Ellis is a student in Media Comm 132