Chapter 1 - Posted on 2013-11-26 by Kimberly Mason

Date of Lesson: November 11th 2013

Time in: 12:00 pm

Time out: 2:15 pm

Lesson 1

This was my first official lesson with Adam at White Out Audio. I learned a lot considering it was my first day. We went over the first chapter first and then Adam expanded on some of the concepts by showing me things in his studio. We started talking about the rock in the pond analogy and discussed the idea of sound pressure waves etc. We discussed amplitude and how that is basically loudness and softness. We also discussed frequency and how that is directly related to pitch. Adam played a bunch of tones that helped me understand the frequency range of human hearing. Therefore I was able to put a sound with a number instead of just seeing that we can hear an average between 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Adam played a few different instruments to show me how even if you are playing the same pitch, different instruments do not sound the same. He played a guitar, a piano etc. Plucking a string is way different than a felt hammer hitting a string like in a piano. We also talked about microphones because I often get confused on what sounds come from different microphones. Adam brought out a ribbon mic, a few condensor mics and many more and recorded himself saying the same thing in four separate mics. However, even though he was saying the same thing and rough at the same pitch, all the recordings sounded different. He explained to me which mics captured more of the low tones and which captured more of the higher tones and which had a pretty even response. We then looked at charts showing the frequency response of each mic. This was EXTREMELY interesting for me because no one had even shown this to me in college. Visually seeing the frequency response helped me see what instruments or what voices might go best with each mic. I left feeling like I learned a lot from Adam. Even though I did the reading before hand and understood it all; Adam helped me understand it at another level.