Week 1 - Posted on 2016-11-01 by Gino Benedetti

This week at the studio first my mentor, Joey Heier, and I started going over the first chapter. He explained to me what amplitude is and gave me example of different things on the decibel scale such as a whisper which is about 30 decibels. He then showed me how frequency relates to pitch on protools. Also on protools he demonstrated what the Fletcher-Munson Curve means which is basically that if we have two different frequencies playing at the same amplitude then the higher frequency could sound louder to us than the lower frequency. He then explained to me the importance of the speed of sound giving me the example of a rock concert. Now we have technology that fixes this problem but before if you were at a rock concert you would see the singer sing something on the big screen but the sound wouldn't actually catch up to your ears until a second or two later because you were sitting in the back and the sound is delayed. Using protools I learned about the difference in attack, delay, sustain and release and how we can emulate a violin sound by playing with attack. I learned that masking is important because for example a kick drum may be masked by a bass and the treble and or bass may need to be adjusted so that both can be heard together. 

On the second day I learned about chapter 2. I learned about resistance, voltage and current using the water hose analogy. He explained Ohm's law and the importance of matching 8 ohm speakers with 8 ohm heads or the speaker can be blown. He explained to me that analog circuits are things like record players, and that digital circuits are things like cd players which use binary code. He explained the difference between AC and DC. AC is and outlet and DC is a battery. AC is shared power and DC cannot be interrupted. For example if there is a brown out it is important to have a DC backup because if you don't your equipment can be fried. The first week with Joey was great I learned alot and am ready to keep learning.