Years upon years ago, I was a 7 year old that had a cassette recorder. I also had a Fisher Price record player, and had the luxury of the millions of rock records that my parents had. Naturally, I had to have my own countdown show. I’ve got some cassettes hiding somewhere with me counting down to #1 spinning records.
It was addicting from the start.
I always had some sort of audio recording, whether it was making top ten shows, recording friends, or, like everyone else did in that time, recording songs off of the radio.
The fun of it was using the equipment. from the aforementioned Fisher Price record player, various tape recorders, moving on up to boomboxes, then an actual stereo (complete with massive speakers, and if that wasn’t enough, my dad gave me used car speakers to use as EXTRA speakers). If I didn’t have a microphone, I could use one of the cheap headphone speakers as a makeshift mic. It actually worked!
I learned if you hit pause lightly while recording, it’d distort your voice. The result was hilarious. Wasn’t great on either the cassette or the stereo, but it was funny.
Once I started working at an actual radio station, it was fun to play with the gear there; actual RECORDING mics, headphones, professional recording equipment, sound effects…I was like a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately, there was only so much time an 18 year old kid working part time could work in the studio, and, well, there were actually people WORKING, so my time having fun was limited.
Flash ahead to today. I’ve got just about all the gear I could ever want, all sorts of funky software to make me sound like I’m an old time radio guy to a demented robot, and it amazes me. There’s so much experimentation I can do with this stuff, and I love it. And after spending all these years working with the technology, it’s made me a better audio producer.
Moral of the story: That one thing that you did as a kid might end up becoming a full time career.