On the job

Today,

I was on the job, whilst being payed, as an audio engineer!
Contact phoned me, if I had time to work the next day? etc etc.

That's a first.


Last week went for some drinks with ex class-collegue who was visiting London. Nice to catch up. Finished the week with a classic English sunday roast (a first as well) at a friend's house.

The days

Ah, the days.


Today the guys from d&b audio came over, talking all day about point-sources, line arrays, speaker horn delay, directionality by coupling, system design.. Very, very interesting (stop rolling those eyes please).

Yesterday did work experience at Proud Camden.
Asked Miss D, our coordinator, if I could do the night on my own, she agreed. Got there, was surprisingly confident and calm, think that's what 3 months of talking about live sound does to you. 4 bands on the bill, an LS9 to get it together, nobody to keep it all running but me. He ho, get going.
I have to say, they didn't give me many opportunities to let my guard down: violas, extremely loud drums, keys, mandolins, resonator guitars, harmonicas, ukuleles, ... they all seemed to come out of nowhere. The event was taking place in the small room, so fitting everything on stage wasn't always easy. No soundchecks were allowed, all I could do before the gig was ring out 1 monitor and copy the settings across to the other wedges. You see, proud camden isn't only a venue, it's a gallery during the day and a restaurant before the bands come on. Not much room for loud system checks.
For the people wondering: the soundcheck is what normally happens before the actual gig, the band and engineer set up the sound, fix any problems (which are always present), create monitor mixes etc. None of that. 4 bands, 15 minutes in between each band, now that's how you learn. I tried to prepare the system as well as I could, as it was all show from the word go.
I'm happy to say all went very well, no real problems except for a couple of glitches. Although the moment when the mandolin player almost physically put her instrument in her wedge, thus creating the mother of all feedback loops, was a scary one.

Monday we went to Shepherds Bush empire to huddle around the MIDAS Pro 6 for a day. I won't go into boring detail but as far as I'm concerned this is the real big daddy of mixing desks out there. Sound, ergonomics, reliability, it's got it all and more. Ho-ray for MIDAS. They are currently doubling there R&D department I've read, that's what I call tempting.



Another three days gone, 2.5 weeks left. Random.

Plastic

Via

If interested (I'd say you should be), also watch:
"The story of electronics"
"The economic injustice of plastic"
One feels like something should be done, consumer pressure. We're very far from achieving anything though at the moment. If you've ever wandered a supermarket with a keen eye on plastic.. Not so many options.


Last week finally picked up on my TED translations, it's been a while. Now lets try to keep it up, too many stories waiting.