lesson 13 - Posted on 2013-07-24 by Matthew Lutchman

dynamics based signal processors.  so much reading!  a ton of terms and definitions thrown at me! however, unlike last weeks lesson on eq, this lesson was much easier to comprehend.  i felt like i was understanding what i was being told as i read through and didnt have to keep on rereading to struggle to understand a concept.  even still, the example that joey gave me for compression made it that much easier.  he told me to imagine a tv commercial that starts out with the narrator whispering.  then as the commercial goes on he keeps raising his voice until at the end he is screaming at you! although the audience percieves that he goes from whispering to talking normally to shouting, the relative volume of the announcer stays the same.  this is done through compression.  bump up the lows and pull down the highs.  joey also went to give examples of a heavy noise gate (to prevent bleedthrough on drum mics) a medium (guitar amp buzz) and a light (to silence the page turning of someone recording voiceovers). 

for my sit in session this week, joey and i recorded the band of one of his other students.  they were a three piece prog rock band.  his other student played drums, there was a bass and then the third guy had a stack of 4 keyboards (one was a mellotron, so cool!)  joey specifically wanted to walk through a drum mic setup with me.  i was very comfortable keeping track of which xlr went to which input in the snake and thusly setting up a corresponding track in pro tools.  it was the actual mic placement that i was curious about.  while ive set up mics for drums countless times, it was nice to be able to see how far from the skin each mic should go, and how to configure overheards.  i was amazed at how talented they were considering the oldest guy was 18.  they were doing one song. but it was an 8 minute song and since we were recording live, even if they made it 7.5 minutes through and then made a mistake, we would have to scratch that take and start over.  i mentioned that last week joey let me control the daw while sitting next to me.  this time, he set the prelim input levels, and then handed control totally over to me! as the band practiced the song a few times, i watched all the levels and pulled back anything that was clipping.  i adjusted monitor output to the three guys headphones so they could hear what they needed to.  i recorded take after take, saving what sounded good and deleting the ones that they messed up. joey would come back into the room every now and then to make sure i wasnt having any problems, but it was pretty much my session.  i can't put into the words the sense of accomplishment i felt.  i felt like a real engineer. i worked with the band for almost 4 hours before joey exclaimed that he needed to get home before his wife yelled at him! i had a great time and i can't wait until i get to man the controls.