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AJ Delmonico
Woot! Woot!
The proverbial horn toots as our distinguished hero enters the studio for the first time announcing his arrival and heralding his presence to the farthest reaches of space. The first step in the journey is to equip oneself with the basic knowledge that will be necessary to move forward and be successful. So we begin with the basics of Sound.
Of course it is important for one studying Audio Engineering to be familiar with the basic definitions and properties of sound, for sound is the sword that the Engineer wields. It is the lightsaber with which he plunges into battle to defeat the evil Sith Forces (in this case the Sith Lord would represent the masses of people who are uneducated about the recording process and “defeat” is a loose term that would more or less translate as “providing a well mixed and beautifully sounding piece of audio that is pleasing to the ears.” Not sure if this makes much sense metaphorically speaking but this is my blog and I pity the fool who tries to argue otherwise). The human ear (almost as impressive as the cyborg ear but much more aesthetically pleasing) is another tool that the Engineer wields in his dynamic tool belt and thus it is not surprising that this too was covered in Chapter 1 section of the curriculum along with things like frequency, and timbre. Without giving away too much of the course material (for fear of legal action taken against me by RRF, who so kindly provided the coding for in which this word vomit rests) I just want to stress the function of Chapter 1 “What is Sound” is to begin laying the foundation for which the rest of the course will be built upon.
Which brings us to ... (Tra La La Laaaaaa!) our first studio session. In keeping with the demographic of my generation and building upon mine own experiences in the music industry, the great sage and my wonderful mentor Hollis Greathouse deemed me worthy to sit in on a mix master session with a local rap group. The group is more of a duo in the vein of Run The Jewels or OutKast, which is comprised of two wordsmiths going by the names of WiFi and KP respectively. Together they call themselves The D.I.G.’s and were in studio mixing the vocals for their latest project “Checklist” which they plan to release online in the near future. The session afforded me opportunity to not only connect with local talent but also to see the way a record is professionally mixed and mastered. Jay Dudt, the studio co-owner ran the ProTools session and effectively EQ’d the bejeesus (this is layman’s terms of course) out of all the audio tracks until every little beat and nuance of each track could effectively be heard in all it’s crispy high-definition glory. Over the course of a couple hours I got to witness the professional relationship between Engineer and Artist and one small piece of the record making process.
I want to thank Jay and Hollis at Audible Images and The D.I.G.’s for affording me this opportunity, *raises glass for toast* and moving forward, may we all be successful in our individual pursuits of audio dopeness.
