One small step for Rick, one giant leap for Leland - Posted on 2015-06-10 by Leland Kracher

Going into my first lesson with my (awesome) mentor, Rick Rooney, I knew that I would be taking merely a baby step in the big picture of my education. Yet, I felt I still might be overwhelmed sitting down at the spaceship control panel looking machinery we call the mixing board.  After sitting down to get a basic idea for the day over some coffee, we headed into the studio to start tracing down the signal flow.

This starting with running cable from the wall output, to the mic, and into the control room we went. Rick walked me through starting up all the equipment (lights, amps, Protools, etc) and sat me down at the mixing board. And although I thought it might be overwhelming, with guidance from Rick, this quickly went from the most complicated looking thing I'd seen, to one of the most intuitive I've ever used. Starting with finding the send track, bussing it where it needs to go to the return, and make sure they have levels up to talk to one another, and out to the speakers. Albeit a very basic summary, if you're able to really "walk" along the path the current has to take to get where you want it (playing through your speakers and/or the headphones of a musician) the board really speaks for itself. Well, at least after you have a mentor there to teach you a few words of the language!

All in all this was a great first lesson and experience in the studio and I can't wait to get my hands on more equipment!

Leland