The First Week - Posted on 2017-05-19 by Connor Brummett

At one of the busiest moments in my life, I started here at Recording Connection and I seemed to have put myself into the best schooling situation possible. I not only moved for the first time living out on my own, but I also started a career as a life insurance producer; unfortunately training has been occupying a lot of my time and energy, but soon enough I'll be an independent agent with full control of my schedule and will be able to afford my bills. 

While work-talk is all fine and dandy, the exciting portion is what I'm getting experiencing here in Portland at Black Diamond Recording Studio. Scheduling with my mentor, Matt Jefferson, was quite easy; given that he's very kind and easy-going. My first day was scheduled for noon (the best time for any first event of the day, in my opinion) and we were set to: have a drummer come in, mic his kit all up, and record the drums tracks for a few songs. I ended up leaving at about 4:30, which was just about long enough to see them record drums for one song. It started off with as I put it "my very first in-studio lesson," which was properly coiling a cable. Little did I know, I've been doing it wrong for so long! Matt had a few helping hands to set up all the mics, and I was astonished! There were 16 microphones recording, in several different manufacturers and types--and all on purpose! I figured there was a lot of thought, but I didn't expect such an intriquite set-up of "ears". I got to watch the cables get patched into the mixboard, and then Matt went through a sound check and got all the EQ knobs adjusted and tweaked. Certainly a bit of acitivty, and a lot to see!

My second day was in Matt's home studio. It was really cool to see what was more obtainable for myself, it's a bit unrealistic to imagine myself with my own "Black Diamond" recording studio anytime soon. Regardless of how much I may want that, it's obviously not something that just happens. Matt had a couple of artists over that he's worked with over the years, and they were just editting some vocal tracks they just recorded in his DIY sound booth. I've never seen vocal work done, but I was impressed at the process! Matt had recorded the same vocal track 3 different time and then would go through and clip out the best moments from each clip and then splice them together. After that night, I see Pro Tools as the Adobe Photoshop of sound. They also did some drum tracking with Matt's MIDI drum kit (which I didn't even know existed), and that was a bit more pertainable since my music background is mostly in drums. After the artists left, Matt and I had some one-on-one time to just solidfy everything--make sure the material is sitting well, and that I'm not lost. There wasn't a lot to go over considering the first chapter of the textbook was essentially just review for me...but we did talk about some of Matt's old music, and he showed me what kind of work he's done.

To say the least, I'm very excited for what comes next! This blog post was a bit late, but I'll try and be more on time in the future.