CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 14, 2017

Don’t Forget The Basics

ProSoundWeb: One of the cool things I get to do is travel around to a lot of churches and conferences each year.

Most of the time, I’m just hanging out and talking to people, which I really enjoy. But when the session or service starts, I typically migrate towards front of house to see what’s going on.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

It is important for us to remember going forwards to never forget the foundation of what we learn. This applies to any skill set, not just sound. We need to start from the ground and build up. Before you can paint a set, you must design and build it. With today’s technology it is easy to forget this simple but crucial rule. We often want to skip to the “fun and fancy” portion of working which in the long run results in ineffective or non-cohesive work. This is not something that the professionals need to remember and live by; this is something that everyone needs to remember and live by. Time management also comes into play here: many people lose track of time and end up having to “throw something together”. This is when the importance of order gets mixed up and you see the “cool stuff” coming before the basics. There is a reason technique is taught with the basics and then built upon and this needs to be remembered in used in careers.

Vanessa Ramon said...

It is only been recently that I have started to learn that often times, mixers don't get a lot of time to practice mixing the show and often times the mixing happens on the fly. More interestingly, the fact that this problem is also found in churches is something that I would have never guessed to think of but makes perfect sense. The article itself has a simple message that I think was delivered adequately. The mixer had some great tips that all mostly revolved around the idea that you should plan ahead and stay simple. The article is mostly about setting your parameters for the choir that might be obvious and give the sound system the room it needs to effectively pick up the choir and its range. I like how he mentioned that he likes to teach mixers on a simple board and then move to a more difficult board, that way they don't get distracted by all the options.

wnlowe said...

I really hope it doesn’t get lost how important learning on an analog console is. I completely agree with the article that it is extremely important to ensure there is a strong foundation in one’s mix before putting the sprinkles on. I would also agree that gain structure is the most important thing to do first. It is funny to think of it that way because of how crazy I think not doing gain first would be. If one doesn’t get a good gain first then you are trying to adjust something which is just wrong. Finding a proper gain structure can be difficult at times; however, finding a combination of gains which can be heard, don’t peak, and don’t have much noise isn’t hard to start with. So much so that I would say that no matter what one’s experience, if the mixer cares about how it sounds then that will be their first reaction.