What Did You Work On Today? 1-25-07

[cgarges]

So, let's have it. What did you work on today, Thursday, Jan. 25th, 2007?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[JGriffin]

--mixed 2 or 3 Allstate TV commercials

--re-installed my Glyph hard drive enclosure, which had just come back from being repaired

--sent out some voice tracks to the video editor for a cartoon about Andy Warhol

--worked on music and video editing for a DVD to accompany my mom's book

[Boogdish]

recorded a cover of "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush for fun.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i made a bunch of pithy comments on internet messageboards.

discussed american idol at length with my best friend via email.

hung out with my ex. we made grilled cheese and watched the young ones, which i'm sure you'll all agree is the absolute pinnacle of television comedy.

i'm between records so no worky for me for a couple days. yay laziness.

what'd you do garages? besides not answer my question about mixing with an eq on the buss from the start.

[Jeff White]

Continued gathering samples for my contribution to this project: http://www.artclash.com/ I'm sampling an instrument or dialog or random sounds every day, either with (in order) my Microtrack, recording softsynths in DP on my G5, or grabbing stuff from http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ At the end of the month I have one week to create an original song out of all of these samples. Should be fun!

I also drove my girlfriend to Delaware in a snowy squall so that she could pick up her new MacBook Pro with an education discount and tax-free. She's a video editor/VJ in Philly.

Jeff

[Randy]

Put the finishing touches on a sound sculpture piece. It's a feeback generator built on a skateboard. Blonde tolex covering, homemade battery powered amplifier, Tracker Magnesium trucks, bones mini-cubes, and a 6 in. Jensen speaker with wheat grille cloth. After the show I am going to install a signal splitter so it can feed a larger amp.

It's like a synthesizer, but it has vibrating strings instead of oscillators.

Then I fixed a drip in my bathtub, drank a 2005 Bigfoot Barleywine, massaged our arthritic dog, watched some Buffy with my lady, went to sleep. All in all, a good day.

[cgarges]

what'd you do garages? besides not answer my question about mixing with an eq on the buss from the start.

Hmmm. I've not been getting all the reply notices from the board lately. I'll try to check it out.

I started the day yesterday getting two phone calls. One was from a freelancer who wants to mix a project out at the studio, so he was calling to discuss file formats, etc. The other was from a guy up in Philly who's record I played drums on and he just got discs back from press, so he wanted to let me know so I could get a few copies.

Then, I spent a while on-line trying to find a small, simple, very portable line mixer for monitoring on-location multi-track sessions. I've been getting more and more calls about doing these lately and I've been borrowing a couple of sort of cool 12-channel Roland line mixers (that have been slightly modified) to get the job done, but I need to get something of my own. Roland doesn't make these any more and until yesterday, I couldn't find any that seemed cool. I discovered that SM Pro Audio makes a single-space 8-channel unit that is linkable and very inexpensive. Don Dixon and Jamie Hoover are big fans of those SM preamps and I think the simplicity and price point are perfectly suitable for the conditions in these types of recording situations. I have a live choral concert recording session on Sunday, so I tried to round up one of these bad boys (I'm doing the session to 8 tracks of RADAR at 96k). Front End Audio in SC is a dealer so I called (because they're always super-helpful, reliable, and will ship fast), but they won't have any in until next week. Looks like I may have to borrow one of those Rolands this weekend.

Anyway, I headed out to the studio to work on some tech stuff around lunch time with the owner. Got to the studio, tested four ribbon mics that I believe to have blown up (three of which went almost simultaneously, through no crazy excursion--wierd conincidence). Checked all four through different tie lines and with different preamps. Yep, all four are bad. Damn.

Next, we took the Ghost apart for some maintence. The control room volume pot was threatening to blow up one of the left studio monitors with loud crackle at one point in its travel, so we replaced that (and it ought to be good for about a week) and looked at the possibility of adding an entirely new (and better) pot just above the stock one, tapped off the PCB. This is the third or fouth CR volume pot this console has seen. We also tested a channel that wasn't getting audio to the fader and discovered a bad automation VCA (we have an Optifile automtion system in the console), so we re-wired that fader to bypass the automation for the time being. We also decided that it was time to get some replacement screws for the console's bottom panel. Some of them were close to stripped and difficult to get out.

By the time we finished up with that, I had to head back to home to grab a set of drums, change clothes, and head downtown for two gigs last night. The first was a jazz trio gig for the Arts & Science Council downtown. At that gig, I ran into a girl that I did some recording for a couple years ago. She had gotten divorced, moved to Europe, moved back, and wanted to do another demo soon, so it was good to run into each her.

After that gig, I packed up my drums and drove over to a theatre downtown for the first audience-attended night of a sketch-comedy musical I'm playing this weekend and next weekend. It's basically a roasting of life in Charlotte that blasts local politicians, sports teams, NASCAR, banks, the Arts & Science Council, the school system, the transportation department, the roads, and local media. It's in its fourth year running and it's incredibly funny. Last night was the dress rehearsal with a "by-invitation" audience and it went well.

After that, I went down to the bar where I usually play on Thursday nights to watch the last set of my jazz trio with my sub. They sounded good. One guy in the audience was obviously hopped-up on something (or most likely tripping). He was REALLY into the band and enjoying watching his hands move to the music. After a while, he got up and left. A few minutes later (when the band finished and started packing up) a fire truck and ambulance showed up outside the door of the club. Apparently, the guy had walked out the door, taken a few steps and collapsed. I have no idea what happened, but it's a bad thing when your night finishes with an unconcious trip to the hospital.

My night finished with a couple of beers and a pepperoni pizza Lean Pockets. I live near the hospital, but bypssed the ambulatory entrance.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[apropos of nothing]

Did a tech rehearsal for a show I'm doing sound for tonight (Friday, 26Jan2007). Show is a local arts council production with two banjos, fiddle, accordion, piano, drummer, two vocalists plus some speakers, and tuba. It focuses on music in New Orleans from the late 1800s to present. It will be held in a Masonic Lodge. I intend to record the room sound on my mp3 recorder with the giant squid. Learned the board -- Yamaha powered mixer, not terrible. Didn't get feedback the whole night, but we'll see how it goes tomorrow in a larger room, with monitors and a higher SPL (the drummer didn't show up for the rehearsal).

Also worked at my job.

Got three (3) hours of sleep.

[apropos of nothing]

Put the finishing touches on a sound sculpture piece. It's a feeback generator built on a skateboard. Blonde tolex covering, homemade battery powered amplifier, Tracker Magnesium trucks, bones mini-cubes, and a 6 in. Jensen speaker with wheat grille cloth. After the show I am going to install a signal splitter so it can feed a larger amp.

It's like a synthesizer, but it has vibrating strings instead of oscillators.

Then I fixed a drip in my bathtub, drank a 2005 Bigfoot Barleywine, massaged our arthritic dog, watched some Buffy with my lady, went to sleep. All in all, a good day.

Sorry for the double-post, but dang. F-in sweet. Post some mp3s.

I'd like to hear a sample of the sound-sculpture -- not just the dog-massaging.

[NoClass]

Yesterday was the first day in a while that I didn't do any real audio work. I absolutely bombed a Greek & Roman Society test at university because rather than study the night before, I stayed up late listening to Damaged and talking to my buddy about how much Black Flag rules. That and reading stuff on here! OOPS!

Then I spent the rest of the day listening to Damaged. Somewhere in there I started looking into mastering options for a client who is putting out a 7 inch. I really enjoyed the project and I wanna make sure they get the best they can afford (which unfortunately isn't much). My evening was spent trying to woo one of my all-time best friends. That is going to be a long-term project.

Today I start dubbing 100 cassette tapes for another client, which I volunteered to do because this way I can do it in real-time directly from the 24bit/96kHz files and can just generally do a better job of it than if they did. While I'm doing this I'm going to be fixing two guitars. My main one has a VERY intermittent jack which I'm going to replace, and my other one has been a longer-term project. It's a crappy old El Degas that I'm fixing up to keep permanently in a slide tuning. I might even repair a few cables today if I'm feeling particularly industrious!

[rydberg]

lesse....

At teh day job, I cut 2 radio spots for Stainmaster, did some sound design, mixed 'em. Did some music searches and sound design for another client's pitch.

After that, went straight to my studio and cut a guitar solo on a cover of Whole Lotta Rosie that my band is doing for a comp CD. Drank more than several beers.

Went home, had a couple glasses of wine, saw the gf off to bed, read a bit of Laurel Canyon:

(http://www.amazon.com/Laurel-Canyon-Roc ... F8&s=books)

and went to bed meself.


P.

[xonlocust]

more vocal overdubs on the record i'm working on.

figured out wtf was wrong w/getting DP to sync to the tape machine - i was an idiot in the clock source while generating time code striping the reel. turns out motu smpte console allows you to stripe clocking off smpte instead of internally. (sort of a dog-chasing-it's-tail scenario i suppose) it'll appear to work for about the first 5 min of the reel if you generate it the "wrong" way before it goes to shit. stupid mistake on my part i know - i was jumping the gun collapsing steps.

[Jeff White]

lesse....

After that, went straight to my studio and cut a guitar solo on a cover of Whole Lotta Rosie that my band is doing for a comp CD. Drank more than several beers.

P.

Would that be the "About A Girl" compilation, though the FDR Label ( www.facedown.net )??? I recorded a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "April Come She Will" for a friends' band. It was also submitted to that comp. Just curious.

Us Philly folk should get together for a beer night, soon.

Jeff

[JASIII]

Hooked up a new headphone amp.

[rydberg]

Would that be the "About A Girl" compilation, though the FDR Label ( www.facedown.net )??? I recorded a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "April Come She Will" for a friends' band. It was also submitted to that comp. Just curious.

Us Philly folk should get together for a beer night, soon.

Jeff

As a matter of fact, it was. Who did you record doing that song?

My drinking problem is always flaring up, so I'm down with a beer night. Missed the one over at Bob and Barbara's a while back. (Nate Wiley R.I.P)

P.