lesson 6 - Posted on 2013-04-19 by Matthew Lutchman

this week's lesson was about signal flow and an introduction to the console.  this was an easy lesson for me as i have been a part of the recording process countless times (an an artist as well as recording and mixing).  it was a good refresher, though, as well as getting to learn some techinal terms for operations and functions i already had a basic understanding of.  My favorite part of the lesson was getting to stand behind and examine joey's analog live soundboard.  while i am familiar with doing live sound, i have never gotten to study such a large and professional soundboard as this one.  the ones i usually get to deal with have maybe 5 or 6 channels.  more often than not, when i do live sound, none of the instruments are mic'd so im just dealing with vocals and perhaps a direct box for a laptop or keyboard.  it was very interesting to see all the aux out's to different monitors around the stage so that the drummer, keyboard player, guitar player, bass player, and singers can potentially all have different mixes coming through their monitors. 

the second meeting this week was a purely studio day.  joey had me sit with an old session he had recorded and let me go through the hour or so of takes, just getting a feel for the mixing console.  a lot of the songs featured different instruments so it was fun to create a rough mix of one song, and then have to make a completely different mix for the next song.  i am anxious to get my mbox so i can start playing around with it and get more protools practice!