My Review on Recording Connection (Audio Engineering course) + My experience

KidsOfThe90s

New member
Ok so I'm not 100% this is the right place to post this, I'm only posting this here because this is the first place I've ever read a Recording Connection thread, and I feel after they updated their services, we need to keep the reviews up to date lol.

So the main reason I'm making this is because I had just finished the Audio Engineering course (three weeks ago), and I just got off of the phone with a worker there, and I just got the greatest news possible! :D

Ok so we'll start this wonderful story of where it all began back in January. I had heard about the program through a family member who wanted to help me out in searching for colleges, and programs that would help me get certified to be an audio engineer. I had called them early January, and honestly that first month I called them was the most interested they've ever been in me throughout the whole time I've been with them, even when I was enrolled. I remember them telling me I would get a bachelors degree equivalent at the end, and a lot of other things he told me, but more specifically throughout the whole 30 minute long conversation of the guy telling me information I had already heard from another worker, or looked up, and me only replying mhmm, and waiting for him to finish, the one thing that basically made me sign up was what he had sad about what we would be doing for the final exam. I REMEMBER exactly him telling me that for the final exam I would get to record a project, either I can record it, or I could bring in a band, and they would teach me how to pitch it to labels, and basically promote it. They basically said they would give me connections, and make promoting the project easy.
I was extremely excited by this, and like a fool I decided I was in! He had set up, and coached me for an interview with a studio owner who had ran a studio an hour away from me.

The Next Week I had went to the interview, and I honestly think I nailed it! I told the studio owner, soon to be my mentor, my ambitions, what I had knew about mixing etc, and my experience. He showed me around the studio, and told me about his previous students, and how he stays in contact with them, and has even given some of his good students equipment. At the end we set a date to start the course.

Ok so I was in the 5 month program for a total for 3 months, and I'll get to why I finished 2 months earlier in a minute. The first day basically was me cleaning up the studio, sweeping the floors, and taking out the trash. Being a sheep, and new to actually being in a professional studio, I was actually happy to be there cleaning lol, and I didn't think it was going to last long. Boooooy was I wrong! :)
I pretty much cleaned up the studio for 8/10 of the course, and actually learned for about a total of 2 days, and then my mentor had basically stopped, and let another guy who rarely ever showed up mentor me. Anyhow the first day of learning with my mentor was the day I actually learned the most pretty much, because that was the only day were my mentor had bought out his book that he had made to teach the students since he said the RRF program is "shit", and doesn't really teach you anything. That was the last day I ever saw that book, I guess he gave up after that. For the rest of the time I was learning under him he basically always showed up late, and spent most of his time going to the store to get food, and eating it while I waited. Like I said after the first day he basically stopped teaching me, and even though I feel like his method for the other 4 days was great, at the same time I feel like it wasn't a good way of helping. For the other 4 days he just sat and ate, and pretended to be a student, and made me teach him what the text book had taught me. Like I said I sort of feel like this is kind of a good way, because it makes you realize how little you actually know, but it's also a horrible way because I could actually be learning instead of realizing I'm not the most knowledgable for a whole class. As soon as I got to the lesson about mic placement, he decided to not mentor me anymore, and let another one of his workers handle it from there. I don't really have much bad to say about the second guy, it was just at least the first mentor helped me learn whilst the second guy just read word from word what it says in the text book, I felt there was no need in driving an hour long drive just to read the textbook which I could have read at home. Eventually contact with the first mentor had stopped for a while, and he just sent me to the studio of another one of his students where I had to teach the student basic things like EQing etc.
Anyway I finished the course two months early because everything were teaching was either basic or common sense, the text book didn't teach me anything, and if I learned anything from the course it was because I googled it, honestly compression was the only thing I slightly learned from the course, and I learned that because of an image i found, not anything a mentor told me (I wasn't to sure about compression, but I saw an image that basically described it, and it all came to me.) After I stopped meeting with the second guy meetings in the studio pretty much became meaningless. The day I was scheduled to record a session for them my mentor, and another worker spent the whole day talking about transexuals, instead of teaching me how I would setup their equipment to record the session.

Anyhow skip a few, three weeks ago I was on the final exam, and I had went to the studio so the mentor can help me with it as stated by the textbook. However when I got there I basically spent the whole day putting up wires, and figuring out how to work a vst for the mentor... Yes you heard that right, we spent NEARLY 5 HOURS FIGURING OUT HOW TO WORK A VST WHEN I HAD A FINAL EXAM TO TAKE. At the end of the day I just left, and took the exam at home, and passed it. After the figured out I passed it, the mentor asked me to send it, and I lost contact with him that point after. I tried to call to see if I needed to go in anymore, and another worker told me that my mentor would call back, but never did of course. So much for keeping contact with students,.

Boring right? Now here's where it gets interesting.

So as soon as I was done with the course it was time to look for jobs, and I remember also when I signed up for the course they mentioned job placement. I looked on their site, and the job board didn't work at all, so I called them to ask about it. I called, and they had told me the website hasn't been updated since about 2012, and I would need to speak to my career councilor if I needed to find jobs. It literally took me a whole week to contact him. I contact him the day I finished, and waited. I had only left two voicemails, until calling again that saturday. The person who picked up the phone told me that he wasn't in on saturdays, and I could leave another voice mail if I wanted. I replied "No thanks I already left one" and he replied "when today?" Which is when I told him that I had called at the beginning of the week, and no one ever called back. He sounded surprised to hear this, and told me I should leave another voicemail just to bug him, and make sure he calls back. I decided he was right, and if I wanted to speak to them I would have to be persistent, I planned on leaving a ton of voicemails next week so I could finally get a call lol.
So I started on Monday, and to my surprise the counselor actually was there, and picked up. We had talked for a little bit, and he said to get started I would have to make a resume, so using the template he supplied I made a resume. on THE SAME DAY, three days later after finally getting in contact with him, he had told me the one I made was great, but I just needed to take off the skills part, and somehow add those to my experience. I FINISHED THAT WEDNESDAY. It took me until Friday to get in contact with him again, and he talked to me about the resume I made, which basically was the same one as the first one, except the skills were transferred to the experience section. He basically told me to redo the whole resume, since it seemed like something he wrote on the example resume, it wasn't but I was ok from starting on scratch, my only problem was now I'd have to wait until monday to continue.


WHICH BRINGS US TOOOOO TODAY! :D

Today I called him about the resume he made me redo because it seemed like something he made, simply because I used the same format. I had a new resume, new words this time, and I honestly felt like my resume was me 100%. Long story short, he just told me to redo the whole resume over again from scratch because I'm still using words he used. He gave me an explanation on how people looking at my resume are going to see familiar words, and throw it away. I tried my hardest to explain to him, that I put in my experience, and everything that's on that resume may have used similar words, but that's because some of the words in the example resume, are words that would have came out of my mouth. After that I pretty much left him speechless when I told him that I don't feel like people searching for workers wouldn't discredit me just because they see similar words, and would look towards the experience more, after I said that he tried to throw me down saying I didn't know anything about the mics I had posted, and I basically copy and pasted the same mics he had. He then proceeded to question me on the AKG 414, and I feel like I owned him I told him more than even he knew about the AKG 414, I told him all about the multi-polar pattern capabilities, and everything which left him speechless. I'm really sorry that I also happen to know the mics you wrote on the example. Anyhow I just gave in, and decided to re-write the resume. Like I said earlier, it didn't make me angry that I had to re-write the resume, it just aggravated me knowing after I finish it I'm going to have to wait three more days to move to the next step, this time I kind of called him out for that and asked if he could just send out or do something with the resume I had sent him so I wouldn't have to wait another week before moving on to the next step, and he told me no, and said as soon as I'm done with this one I can call him instantly... Lets see if that'll happen...

So lastly the great news I had heard was at the end of the phone call where I had remembered about the first guy I had spoken to telling me about the final project, and how I would have to record a full project, and they would help pitch it to labels. The guy on the phone replied that that's for the masters program that I wasn't even eligible to take, and that no one should have ever told me about that.... So basically I just realized this whole experience was a waste of my life, they lied to me, I didn't learn anything, and the job placement is doing nothing for me, and I don't know I think I screwed myself by telling the guy on the phone about it. He asked me a ton of questions about when I was told that, and by who, and I think he tried to go into the system, and delete the recorded call, since they record all calls.

Is there anyway I can sue them for fraud since they did lie to me on every aspect even down to the degree which I'm realizing isn't a degree or even equal to one, it's just a certificate of completing their course.

Sorry this is such a long read, if you can just skip to the end, I really need help on this one haha. Thank you!
 
What's even worse is before I finished the course I told a friend he should sign up for it to, and strangely enough he didn't have to go through an interview process or anything, and he automatically got in..
 
Really wanted to know if I could get my money back, and make sure that no one else falls for this scam, 9/10 of the students go through the same thing, and the 1/10 is usually associated with Recording Connection.
 
After taking a foot forward, we took a huge step backwards, and probably a step backwards that will end this war. :(

They told me that they deleted the phone call, which was basically all evidence that they lied to me that I had... I guess there's not much I can do now?
 
Do not even think about paying these guys money. They are currently not even supposed to be enrolling students and have been issued a citation by the State Of California ordering them to stop advertising their programs and to refund all tuition to all students who started after 2010! You can read the citation by searching "Recording Connection Citation" in Google. Click on the one dated April 16th, 2016 which was when it was issued.

I was interested in this "school" and did a bit of research (thankfully) which is when I found this citation. I called to ask them about it and they hung up the phone on me! I then posted a question about it to their facebook page and they immediately deleted it. I then wrote a review about them on their facebook page which described my experience with them and they deleted ALL OF THEIR REVIEWS just to hide mine! They had over 100 reviews on their facebook page, so why would they delete all of them just to hide my post? They obviously have something to hide..

Stay away from these people, they are a fraud!!
 
Last edited:
My Experience Recording Connection Audio Engineering Course

:angel: KidsOfThe90s makes some valid points and NO, they're not a diploma program, as in the kind of diploma you'd get if you went to a college or junior college but the truth of the matter is that that don't matter one iota for anyone working in music. If you know your stuff, you know your stuff. If you don't, you don't. What gets you hired is knowing your stuff and having a good personality and being presentable is a big one too. But that's just not something a lot of people expect I guess. The major complaint people have about millennials is that we expect stuff to be handed to us and I'd say that's true 90% of the time. That's cool, people can keep on wanting hands outs. In the meantime I'm gonna be bustin my ass making music. If you want to succeed in Recording Connection or any audio educational program or training period you got to BE THE EXECUTIVE OF YOUR OWN EDUCATION. If there are problems, you got to get on the phone, you got to have emails for everyone you talk with too, and reach out via phone, text, email and do it again. I had some minor scheduling problems and I reached out several times to my counselor over there and he got it handled. Basically if you show you give a damn and tell them you'll keep calling until it's handled, they'll get it handled. Yes stuff can fall through the cracks so again, you got to be on your game. You have to do the job of making sure you get your hours in the studio, got to tell the guy or guys you do your mentorship with that you are prepared to go the distance and then show it, by busting your ass in the studio. **And here's what helped me lots, ask questions in a positive way. I wrote the stuff down. I had no shame, Everything I do is about me doing good and passing it on when I can, like Drake. Bring your tracks in if you can bear to show your better ones.

Yes I cleaned. Yes I learned how to solder a patchbay. I even stayed late one night to help my mentor detail his 48 input SSL 4000G but who wouldn't? My mentor got a feel for my personality and by the end of it we were joking back and forth. I followed my dad's advice to make myself memorable in a good way to everyone I met. that's just how it works. The studio is a professional environment and they make their money getting artists in and recording them and making them happy, and most importantly, making great sounding music. So if you're not memorable and if you don't seem enthused, they won't be chasing you. That's just the way the world works. If you want to make the most of Recording Connection it's up to you to make sure you get what you paid for. I got quick on Pro Tools and learned a lot about miks, recording techniques, working and especially communicating with artists, and even how to get my own artists in the studio and I learned a lot about selling myself as a professional. I'm still making it happen for myself but can say I wouldn't have learned more at the junior college sitting with people who talk game but don't do the work. Also, if you don't like the mentor you interview with, interview with someone else. I did. I interviewed until I got the mentor that felt right for me. He was more old school and I'm more new school but I got a better feel from him and liked how he explained stuff so he was the guy for me. Again, manage your experience.
 
I dunno.

You get out what you put in..

I know some people who work for majors coming out of recording connection and some who still work at Walmart. Ultimately it depends on you and where you do you internship
 
Back
Top