Name: Jessica Cook
Date: Oct/26/2012
Time In: 7pm
Time Out: 11pm
Lesson: #1

We Discussed lesson 1's answers from my question sheet. We questioned if VJ and DJ should be using such a large mixing board. Came to the conclusion that live music could be considered to use such a large board. 
We chatted about the job difference between a side stage sound engineer and a front end engineer. We went over the four qualities of Envelope: The Attack(The Initial Sound), The Decay(The taper of the first note), Sustain(How long between the attack and decay), and Release(end of decay).

We talked about the difference between Mono and Stereo, and how it sounds different. True stereo is 2 speakers, 1 channel for each speaker. Mono is the sound of 2 channels coming out of both speakers on one channel. I learnt that we always record in 44.1 kHz and 16 Bit. I also learnt that when sound is played back via DVD/CD player, it is played back at 44.1 kHz. When recording we use one channel/strip for one instrument, each microphone will have it's own track. When we record we always leave a standing 8 count at the beginning, also always record with a metronome.

We started in the studio with learning about the sounds that the drums make and what the name of each drum is. I'm told drums are one of the hardest instruments to properly record and if we can get me doing them, the other instruments will come easily. For this we used the program called BFD2. Brad is able to create any kind of drum set with any sound the artist requires. We were able to listen to the different sounds and he was able to show me the different types of set ups. The sound check for drums goes as the following:
		Kick Drum or Floor Tom
		Snar Drums
			High Tom 
			Mid Tom 
			Low Tom
		Symbols
			High Hat
			O/H Crash 1
			Crash 2
			Ride Symbol.

We discussed litepipe cables and how fiber-optics increase the quality of sound travelling through the cables. We looked at the difference between balanced (stereo) and unbalanced (mono) cables.
We went over the signal train and I have learnt the path of a sound is the following:
		Microphone->Pre-Amp->Mixer->Soundcard->Computer->Soundcard->Mixer.
A pre-amp for a microphone is like an ultimate strip.

My strength of this session is I am a quick learner, I already understand the concept of signal train and am comfortable with the layout of the workstation.
My weakness of this session is that I am not aware of the sounds each instrument makes. I need to know the drums, their names, and the sounds they make in order to know what type of drum I would use. This is important to know the sounds of all instruments in order to know what would be used to accomplish the sound an artist is looking for.