Mike, these are good questions, and it is good to see some serious intern-related questions on this board.
Andrew, it is cool to hear about your experiences at EA, and how yours are, in a broad sense, similar to my overall experience last summer. That being said, I will try to eliminate redundancy in this post. Unfortunately my post will not be as well worded as yours since Im pretty bad at...wording. At least mine is longer. Much longer.
Publius_Maro wrote:What steps did anyone take to become an intern?
I initiated the process by trying to call Steve and talk to him about a possible internship. He quickly forwarded me to Rob Bochnik. Rob was an engineer, and also in charge of internships at EA at that time (that was redundant). Rob was rather short (this is referring to the length of the phone discussion, although I did eventually find out that he really is kind of short) but told me to send in a resume and letters of recommendation. I immediately sent them and waited two weeks. I called back to make sure he got the stuff, and he told me he still had to go through it and I should call back in a week. I called back in a week and he said I should call back in 3 weeks because the entire studio was getting ready to close for a staff trip to Europe (Shellac-curated ATP). I was starting to get nervous since my internship (according to my school) would have to start in 4 weeks. Three weeks later I called again and Rob told me to come in for an interview. I jumped in my car with my girlfriend Colleen that weekend and traveled to Chicago for my interview. The interview was very informal. We basically talked about music and recording for a while, and Rob said I was welcome to come in and help out as an intern. After the interview (which was held in the Studio B control room), I stepped out into the lounge to find Novotny with his arm around Colleen, who was trying to take a nap after our trip. Man, what a shithead. I was like, "What the fuck, motherfucker?!" And then he punched me in the stomach. I was so excited about my internship that it didn’t matter.
The crazy part about this story is that I had no place to stay, and I was supposed to start three days after my interview. Well, on that same day Colleen and I went for a walk down Damen Ave. and stopped in a clothing resale shop. I ended up mentioning to the cashier that I needed a place to stay for a month and a half, starting in three days. She told me her friend next door to the shop was moving to NY and needed someone to sublet for exactly a month and a half starting in three days. No shit. So I moved from Bloomington, IN to Chicago two days later and made it to my first day on time.
So if you are getting ready to pursue an internship:
a) Be persistent. Let them know that you are serious and interested. Don't call everyday, but make sure they know who you are.
b) Plan ahead. Don't wait until the last minute to find a place to stay if you are from out of town. Don't ask if you can stay at the studio either, cause then you probably won't have an internship, let alone a place to stay.
c) Don't bring your girlfriend to an interview at EA, unless it's on the weekend.
In what way did the initial idea of the work at hand change as the internship progressed?
I was ready to get there at 9:00am and stay until four in the morning, everyday of the week if they needed me to, and on many occasions I did. However, the first thing Rob told me when I got there was, "Everybody here likes to do things on their own, and nobody’s ever going to tell you what to do". Then he showed me how to take out the trash, where the dirty dishes were and where the vacuum was. During the first week I felt awkward because I would run out of things to do, yet I refused to look like I wasn't working. I just kept asking anyone I saw if there was something that needed to be done, and eventually I had a shitload of stuff to do.
Actually, the first day that Steve was back from Europe (he came back later than everyone else), which was maybe my third or fourth day, I decided to see if Steve needed me to do anything. I had just met him an hour earlier. I found him in the Studio B control room talking to one of the engineers that worked there at the time. I waited patiently at the entrance to the control room while he spoke with Lionel. After a couple minutes it felt a little uncomfortable just standing there, so a started to turn away when suddenly Steve turned his head towards me and said, “Hey, can you do me a favor and fuck off?”. That was the first thing Steve said to me besides “hi”. He followed up with, “No really, I mean that in the nicest way”. And I’m sure he did mean in the nicest way, but I did still learn an important lesson that day: don’t uselessly stand around within proximity of two people that you don’t really know while they are obviously trying to have a discrete one-on-one conversation in isolation from other people in the vicinity. This is a general rule not just for interns, but also for anyone with a shortage of common sense.
Once I got used to being there and got to know everyone at the studio a little better, I found myself to always be busy. During my second week there, Zwan came in for a lockout in Studio A. I was constantly busy cleaning up every morning before their workday started, running to get them food, picking up drum accessories and guitar strings, and trying to find fragrance-free sea bath salts. Some other projects included building microphone cables for Studio B (Zwan held most of the cables hostage in A), making a plastic cover for the 4 track MCI machine, helping Lionel sound proof the new sand filled doors in the basement with weather stripping, making an inventory of all the old master reels in the basement (Rod Stewart...?), putting together alphabetized, easy access menu binders for both of the control rooms. This was in addition to the other regular tasks such as vacuuming, taking out the trash, doing the dishes, cleaning the stove, mopping the kitchen, wet-ragging the console and outboard gear, shelving boxes of videos, cleaning cat terds, cleaning cat hair off the couch and re-ribboning all the Coles mics.
Although Zwan had Studio A locked out for %90 of the time I was there, I had the opportunity to sit in on three sessions with Steve in Studio B, and also one with Rob and one briefly with Greg as well (unfortunately I never really got to see a session in A, since I never sat in on the Zwan stuff). As Andrew mentioned earlier, the most interesting aspect of the session is setup. Although I will agree that tracking can get boring if you are just sitting and watching, I found that it was actually a good learning experience none the less. It was interesting for me to see how different engineers conduct their sessions, how they interact with the musicians and what kind of contributions they make to the session. It's also pretty entertaining to watch Steve do 2" edits and spot erasing. He's pretty good at it. I also found it helpful to repeatedly watch analog punch-ins to get a feel for the timing involved.
I would usually do a bunch of internesque work in the morning until I felt that I had “earned” some sit-in time. After a couple of hours of watching I would start feeling like my sit-in-dollars had run out, so I would leave and do some more work. I sometimes would sit in at night until the band was done for the day.
Back to Mike’s original question, I don’t think that the initial idea of the work at hand really changed too much. My initial idea was that I was going to do whatever they needed me to do, no matter what it was that they needed. However, if you show the people you are working for that you are not a complete idiot and you are a relatively competent worker who can get things done, they will start to give you more responsibility and more gratifying projects. I wish I knew what the felt like. Just kidding! I was awesome.
Where and what did you end up with upon and after completion?
I apologize for the redundant redundancy, but I would have to agree with Andrew in that the most important thing that I took away from my internship was inspiration (I’m sorry, that sounds so fucking lame). All kidding aside though, EA is so great because its sole purpose is to document original, independent music. They do everything they can to make first-class recording available to bands that don’t have million dollar budgets, or 7 months to lay down drum parts.
Strictly from an audio perspective, I didn’t realize how much I had learned until I started recording again myself. Although I saw some cool micing techniques, learned a lot about processing to tape and witnessed the proper use of some great gear, the most important thing that I learned was that as an engineer, it is your responsibility to intimately know the equipment you are working with, including the instruments being played. I also learned that great sounding instruments and a great sounding room will make all the difference in the world. I also learned to listen to what I was recording before I stared recording it.
I basically left Electrical extremely excited to pursue a career in audio documentation. Going to audio school and hearing horror stories about the demise of professional record studios around the world and listening to the rapidly decreasing level of sound quality in the majority of recordings made today can depressing, but being able to witness first hand a successful operation than records great music the way it is supposed to sound, on a regular basis, is inevitably inspiring. I can’t thank Electrical enough for letting me hang around there for a bit.
Holy shit, this is officially the longest post ever. If you have made this far, then you are probably not very busy. I hope this was helpful to any audio enthusiasts ready to pursue an internship in the near future. I spent a lot of time this.
Mike, thanks for the help this weekend.
mike