"A week or so prior to writing this autobiography as the first assignment in this apprenticeship, my father, once again looking out for my best interests, forwarded me an e-mail with the link to this program.
I read almost all of it over before applying, trying to decide if I really wanted to go several more months without earning any money in this field.A few minutes later, I realized that it isn’t about the money.It never has been about the money, this entire year.I was recording bands for free.Not even free; I was paying the studio to let me record there.
I applied the next day, and here I am about to embark on the first steps to the rest of my life, happy."
BIO
January 25, 2008
I was born in 1985, David Jay “DJ” Pennington, during the height of the personal-computer technological boom.We have photos of me, two years old, sitting at the family’s old Apple II playing some Donald Duck game.
Growing up, I surrounded myself with computer stuff, loved computers, loved to see how they work, what made them tick.I took several computer courses through high school, earned my A+ Certification at 16 years old, and through filtering myself through various courses, I decided on majoring in 3D Modeling and Animation in college.
I spent the last two years of high school plus two years of college focusing on nothing but Digital Animation.And I’ll even brag a bit and say that I got to be really good at it.But in my 4th semester of college, the thought of doing it every day for the rest of my life didn’t satisfy me, and I didn’t understand the feeling at all.I loved it, I spent 18+ hours a day working on projects, but when I envisioned myself 10 years down the road still doing it, it bothered me.I don’t know how to explain it.
After spending four years thinking on nothing but Digital Animation, I had no idea what I actually wanted to do.I talked it over with my folks, and my mother suggested a skills assessment test.I agreed, and after the lengthy test, plus reading through the 60-page booklet with my complete assessment, one of the options was Sound Engineering.Just reading the two words made something click inside me, and my first thought was Why hadn’t I thought of this? Music has been one of the biggest underlying factors of my life, and I had never even really noticed it.I prided myself all through high school and college on my knowledge of music.I’d impress my friends by listening to the radio and naming songs and artists within the first five measures of the songs.One of their favorite games was, “DJ, name this song!”And I never even noticed I was doing it.My life is filled with musical memories.As I remembered them, one by one, it all began to just make sense that sound engineering was what I was built, raised, and all-around meant to do. I remember getting for Christmas one year a plastic instrument set.There were several plastic pieces that you could pull apart and stick together to rearrange them into various musical instruments:saxophone, clarinet, flute, trumpet...I always favored the saxophone.I couldn’t have been but four or five years old.My oldest sister played clarinet, and we have one particular photo of me in a diaper just staring at her play it.
When I was six years old, my mother had me take piano lessons, which I absolutely loved at the start.Several years went by, and I don’t particularly know why, but I got tired of it, and hated having to practice.So it continued with saxophone, for which I dropped piano lessons to learn how to play in middle school band.Again, it happened.I was in high school marching band my freshman year, and having to be forced to practice.It just wasn’t fun anymore. I was thirteen years old with my father going to who-knows-where in his pickup truck, and Led Zeppelin’s forever-classic Stairway to Heaven was playing on the radio.I was having a grand old time rockin’ out to the good stuff, and air-guitaring like a madman.My dad laughed, looked over at me, and said “You want to learn to play guitar, now?”The truth was, I did.Very much so.But not only that, it looked like a window of opportunity to drop the saxophone and get out of marching band.I told him I wanted to, and the next day we were at Guitar Center buying the Yamaha Acoustic Guitar starter pack.
I’ll take a break here to say that I grew up lucky.I had parents that understood what it’s like growing up and not knowing for sure what you want to do, so they allowed me to try out new things, even if past experiences of the like ended fairly unpleasantly (i.e., piano lessons).Needless to say, I’ve stuck with the guitar, and have regretted very, very much that I dropped both piano and saxophone, though I’m slowly trying to re-learn piano at the moment. In the seventh grade, the church my family attended was meeting in a middle-school cafeteria.Every Sunday, someone had to haul in the sound system, set it up, run it for the services, then break it down and haul it all back to the office.At the time, there was one man doing it all, and his son was a very close friend of mine.I wanted to see how it all worked, so I offered my time to see how it all was set up.I’ll admit that I went through the motions, knew how to set it all up, even run it all fairly effectively, and still had no idea on how it all worked even after six years of doing it.
I enjoyed doing it for several years, even though it meant getting up at 4:30 on Sunday mornings, and not being home for lunch until two in the afternoon.In my sophomore year of high school, we had enough people helping out to make two teams, and I was leading one of them.I continued until I left for college. I still laugh at the fact that in a church full of able-bodied adults, there were two men and five high-school kids that set up and ran the sound system. I played with a few jam bands in high school and our youth group worship band, and as much fun as I had, I always felt more at home behind the sound board rather than on stage. After taking the skills assessment, I decided almost immediately on sound engineering.I did some online searching, and found the MediaTech Institute @ Arlyn Studios back home in Austin, Texas.I came home for Christmas break of 2006, checked out the studio, and enrolled in their Recording Arts program starting January, 2007.I completed it the following December with a total of four weeks off interspersed through the year, spending 70+ hours a week in the studio.60 hours if I was having an off week.It was the first time in my life where I’d wake up and say “I can’t wait to get to class.”
Since completing the program, I haven’t been able to get a job in the field.It’s been a month, and I’ve come to realize it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.A week or so prior to writing this autobiography as the first assignment in this apprenticeship, my father, once again looking out for my best interests, forwarded me an e-mail with the link to RecordingMentor.com.
I read almost all of it over before applying, trying to decide if I really wanted to go several more months without earning any money in this field.A few minutes later, I realized that it isn’t about the money.It never has been about the money, this entire year.I was recording bands for free.Not even free; I was paying the studio to let me record there.
I applied the next day, and here I am about to embark on the first steps to the rest of my life, happy.
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