I was born in Poland, and from a young age, music was in my blood; my father was a drummer, so the sense of rhythm was very natural to me. I lived in a small town, and to change something in my life, I decided to move. Like any other kid, I had a dream. It was going to America and become a successful musician. In 1990, I made it to America without money and without speaking a single word of English, just with my aunt, who let me stay with her, and my big dream. I quickly realized that drummers and musicians at my level were about ten a dime in New York City. I reckoned that being a musician would be very tough, but I still believed I would find a way to use my musical talent. Furthermore, I spent my first twelve years in America working six days a week in a grocery store, cleaning office buildings in the afternoon and playing in a wedding band on weekends. After all, I invested every single dollar I earned in musical recording gear and eventually, I bought my first computer.

I spent a lot of time learning the basics; the possibility of watching YouTube tutorials didn’t exist. I had to learn everything by reading manual books, holding my little Polish- English dictionary book in the other hand, trying to figure it out. I studied everything, from the basics to the top. After having read a couple of manuals, everything started to make sense and seemed very logical. It is critical to know the basics, and understanding the roots of anything I do always helps me to achieve whatever I‘m working on.

The way I organize my sounds is a little different from what you‘re probably used to. All sounds I’ve ever recorded have been sorted into different categories, including location and time of the year – all of these categories being stored in their own subfolders. For example, if I record car sounds, each session would have a separate folder complemented by a special folder including photos (and sometimes videos) of the location the sound had been recorded at and details of what I was recording. The picture shows if the object was inside or outside and also captures the weather conditions. All this information helps me when working on following projects and trying to match my sounds as much as possible. In the same folder, I would file notes describing detailed information of the location and the sounds I was recording. I always keep my original recording session files in this folder in the original format – untouched. For example, today‘s technology for repairing audio is good compared to ten years ago, but years from now, an entirely new set of tools will be in use, and all the original recordings will sound just like they were recorded yesterday. When it comes to editing these files, I categorize them into 3 categories: Small, Medium, and Large. If I use additional pitch shifting going an octave down, these files are being stored in the folder XL. This saves me a lot of time searching for a specific sound.

If you‘re asking whether you would need to go to a special school to be a sound designer: in my opinion, you don‘t. It certainly is beneficial to see someone in action to get an idea how other people work. You could also watch videos and try to copy them as close as you can get. By doing this, you will be forced to learn and experiment a lot with your tools and recording gear, the editing and the mixing of sounds. You will have to try what reverb to add or not, how much compression you need or whether it is necessary at all. All these factors will give you a lot of experience and eventually, you will figure out what works best for you and, most importantly, what works for your client – in case you‘re considering turning your fun sound design into your career, just like I did.