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Stephanie Gilbertson
The first day of the week came into the studio at approximately 2:30pm, me and another student in the program were both in that day. The first thing we did that day was finish working on one of the client’s last tracks. Once Len was finished the work that needed to be done, we were left to find and enhance all of the toms in the track. Once that was complete we opened a copy of a track that had been recorded and mixed in Bedside that we both had been going through to learn more about Pro Tools.
In the first section of Digital Audio it is titled “How It Works” and it shows just that, the main definitions of Digital Audio. It explains stuff like Sample Rate, which is the how many “images” of the audio sample is taken per second, normally in the range of thousands. It also tells us what a sample and hold circuit is, it is a circuit that captures the analog signal voltage and holds it until the next sample is taken, this is done at regular intervals. Another thing that was explained in this section was the Nyquist Theorem which states that digital audio cannot represent and frequency greater than half of the sampling rate.
An exercise that Len had us do was that each of us chose a different instrument in the track, I had chosen the bass guitar. Each of us would, using the audio cables, plug in the ins and outs to one of the compressors in the studio in and out of Pro Tools. Once the I/O’s had been plugged in and everything in Pro Tools had been taken care of, we would listen to what the compressor was doing to the track and “play” with the compressor to see the capabilities and how it made the track sound. The rest of the evening at the studio had been spent doing this, and discussing how the I/O’s work at Bedside.
The second section explains the different types of Digital Recorders and Multi Track Recorders. Some of the more popular Digital Recorders used in the studio today are the Compact Disc Recorder for the regular Digital Recorders and for the Multi Track recorders there is RADAR, which was originally created for PC and is similar but not as advanced as Pro Tool which is the current studio standard for recording. Pro Tools is able to replace the functions of an entire studio on a computer.
The second day I came to Bedside working one on one with Len, we finished mixing one of the artist’s tracks and I was left to working with the add on’s in Pro Tools in the track that had been copied for the students currently in the studio, figuring out how each of them make the song sound. I also continued with the exercise that I had been working on the last time in the studio. I continued on with this until about an hour into my time there a band came in to fix some things on a few songs that Len was working on. I sat and observed as Len worked to do the things that the band members wanted fixed and incorporated into the songs. Later into the evening another artist came in, we did some recording for the bass track’s on the songs that were being worked on at the studio.
