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Chaz Feitel
Monday, September 9th, 2013.
Time In: 10:00 AM
Time Out: 1:00 PM
Lesson #1: Sound & Hearing
Walking into The House Studio D.C. today helped me remember that there's only so much you can learn from a textbook. After sitting in traffic for an hour contemplating what my first session would be like, it was great to walk through the front door and be greeted by a friendly staff while at the same time feeling the vibrations of a tracking session in progress somewhere deep within the studio. Jake came out to greet me and walked me back through a maze of hallways to the control room where he had been working on a new album for a hip/hop artist all morning. I sat down on one of the four leather chairs they had behind the panel and listened to a beat that Miles had created on his own harddrive and brought to the studio for editing. After listening to a couple of loops, the MC headed into the recording room to track the first verse. I went in to adjust the mic height, but conveniently enough it was perfect for him, so I hopped right back into the control room in relief of not screwing everything up. When he started rapping I couldn't help but think "this is how the big time studios work". Sure, maybe add marble floors in the lobby and a mixing board three times the size, but the basics (the talent) was there. Jake was always on his toes with the tracking and the MC was extremely efficient. Not having to sit there and do take after take was refreshing compared to my prior experiences with my amatuer band in the studio. They knew what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it, and having that guide helped smooth out the kinks.
Somewhere between walking through the door and sitting behind the mixing board I underwent a transition from hearing sound to listening to music. The vibrations turned into the sustain of a bass line. The muffled melodies turned into the timbre of a saxophone. The simple beats ended up being not so simple, and having complex waveforms. Everything was coming together. Not only the MC's song, but my understanding of sound and the reinforcement of my love in music.
