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as a monitor engineer or front of house engineer. Mixing on the fly for a live band is excellent practice that hones your ear, as well as your technical skills, at the console.

studio setup worker, assistant recording engineer, or assistant mix engineer.

Like writers, composers labor over single stanzas through dozens of iterations until the notation on the page reflects the symphony in their head. When this person is commissioned, he or she may be given some basis of inspiration to draw from ahead of time—a script, film or video footage, or storyboards—but often the composer is the last on board and works to a finished, edited film. From this material and collaboration with the director and producer, the composer cultivates a sense of time, place, action, and emotion, which must be reflected and translated through the score.

The program director is responsible for selecting the format, shows, and schedule for a radio station. This person also has final approval over the station’s music playlist. He or she hires disc jockeys and supervises the on-air talent. The station’s listening area demographics and ratings drive the program director’s decisions on format, the ultimate goal being to find the most profitable and popular formula that attracts a high volume of listeners, thereby driving up advertising revenue. Higher-rated programs command higher ad rates.

tation engineer, or radio promotions manager can lead to a program director gig. Those who attain the position will typically seek to move up into larger markets and more prestigious stations.  

the musical director begins work by attending creative meetings with the director and choreographer to develop the overall vision of the show and determine the mood and theme to be portrayed. This person studies the script and music, then participates in auditions to evaluate the vocal abilities of each potential cast member and offer suggestions on which individuals might be best suited for a particular role, based on the vocal performance required.

the owner of the company, partial owner, or an employee hired to manage the staff and day-to-day operations of business. This individual cooperates with all clients renting space and equipment at the studio, including producers, recording artists, and band managers.

the promotion associate is to secure radio airplay for new singles and to get the artist’s latest music video on MTV and VH1. Service to Internet radio, satellite radio, new-music blogs, and other new formats may fall to the promotion department or to a dedicated new media department. Promotion staffers may specialize by genre (pop, hip-hop, rock & roll) and typically are assigned to cover a particular region.

A rack jobber orders inventory from a distributor and then negotiates space to display and sell the merchandise in third-party retail outlets.

. Deals may include leasing space for a price paid to the store owner and/or paying the owner a percentage of the sales. Because there is limited space to display and stock merchandise, this person carefully selects albums or games to purchase and resell based on popularity and the client demographics of the areas he or she services. In other words, you won’t see a rack jobber pushing country records in a Hot Topic or BioShock at a truck stop. This person also assumes all of the risk of the venture by agreeing to take back any items that are not purchased.

This person will organize each session based on the preferences of the engineer with dividers, Pro Tools options, and input samples. The recording assistant will also bounce down backgrounds or backup instruments to keep the console clean of clutter. Next he or she will strip silence the tracks to streamline the arrangement profile, clean up tracks to eliminate bleed and draw out clicks and pops. Cleaning vocals may also be required.

The production coordinator works within a record label and contributes to the creation of art and written copy assets for packaging, promotional materials, and other consumer-targeted products. This person is the chief point of contact in monitoring the completion of these assets and assists senior-level managers within multiple departments.

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