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Ryan Catlett
Time In: 1200
Time Out: 1400
So far this was the hardest lesson for me to understand based on the reading material. It was a lot to take in and try to visualize without any prior experience. Going into it I had a very elementary idea of how to record to digital, but I had no idea how the process actually worked starting from the ground level. I think Jesse realize I had some trouble putting a visual to the lesson, so he took it upon himself to draw out how the computer captures and records music to a digital platform. He explained the process of taking a samplling rate, the importance of it, and how the computer turned the rate into binary code. He also explained bit depth and how the more one increases the bit rate, the better overall sound the recording will have.
We switched gears when he saw that I understood the digital recording process, and turned our attention to different format types. I had no idea that when a CD is ripped to MP3, 90% of the file quality is lost! Jesse explained the differences in the compression files and which ones are more accepted to use (MP4, FLAC) and which ones are widely unaccepted in the recording industry (MP3). An exercise he wanted me to try when I got home was if I had the same album on vinyl, CD, and mp3, listen to a track on all 3 with headphones and see if you can hear the differences in the audio quality. There is a big difference that I never heard before. It makes listening to mp3 format difficult now when you know that CD quality is a lot better.
One thing Jesse told me during our sesson that wasn't part of the lesson was when I eventually start to work with artists, how important it is to have two hard drives to save the sessions on. A main and a back up. Always. I really appreciated this tip as I could tell from his tone how important he thought this was and he didn't want me to make the same mistake he did. This is something that I wouldn't have considered as I thought the studio was responsible for file saving. This was a great tip and shows the quality of mentor that Jesse is.
