Yesterday, my roommate and I revamped our music room. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Before:
We had some equipment. We even had a big stack of acoustic foam panels (40 square feet of it) in the upstairs bedroom waiting to go up. But the room was a logistical nightmare, a deathtrap zone, a catastrophic natural disaster waiting to happen. We didn't have a proper desk but were just using a couple TV trays (which roommate number 3 wanted to be put back on the rack in the living room). So we gutted the room, planned a new layout, cleaned up, and affixed the foam to cardboard panels which were hung on the walls (so that they can come down later when I move out, since they're actually mine). Then, we acquired an old retail display platform from our landlord (which we set on top of a pair of Peavey PV115 PA mains) to serve as our work station. Found a psychedelic blue cloth and put it over the window, and we were done!
The result:
As for now, the space functions and sounds much better than before. There is less acoustic reflection off the walls. I may order a little more foam to attach to the ceiling at certain points, and also so we can make a mic isolation shield for vocals, and we need to affix the corner foam to, well, the corners, but as for now I'm remarkably pleased with how well it turned out.
So what's the next step (after the few things I mentioned)? Well, some rack equipment that I want to acquire include a 2-channel tube mic preamp, noisegate, and EQ. Unfortunately, that means another $1000-1200, which I simply don't have at the moment. But, when I do purchase said items, it will probably be in the order of gate, preamp, and then EQ. I also want to upgrade my free Pro Tools Express to Pro Tools 11. That will be another $200, but it's worth it for beat detective and auto tune. I also got the new SoundToys Little Alter Boy plugin. Luckily, I found the website during a light traffic period and was able to download it during the "free before April 1st" window. As for now, I'm only going to record things for school (because academics, and because the semester is winding down and I'm running out of time).
Anyway, speaking of academics, I should get back to some homework. Peace out.
Oh, and if you want a cool 360 panorama of the room, click here. Maybe I need to put a link to my Flikr in my new social media launch page, epitome of toast?
This is just a very quick update to let you know that Epitome of Toast is now live! Yes, it's pretty basic. However,the purpose of it is to simply serve as a portal to my social media. I'm hoping to keep it that way (though, I do need to continue working on it).
It may not seem like much to y'all, but I have some super-cool-to-me news to share. Today, I purchased the domain "epitomeoftoast.com" from Google. For now, it's just set up to forward to my blog. However, I will (hopefully soon) be setting up a homepage on the domain that will contain social media links to my pages (Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc.) Anyway, this is simply an experiment, to see if this is something I want to do long-term.
Also, unrelated, more vlogs are coming... maybe.
I know it's only Thursday, but my weekend stars in approximately 2 1/2 hours. Plans for tonight and for Saturday morning have been confirmed and I'm leaving immediately after my exam (which should be relatively simple) at 3:20. My main question is: what of the tentative plans for tomorrow night? It's what I'm looking forward to the most in the next couple days, so I'm hoping it happens, but I'm entirely uncertain at this point. Hopefully I'll find a place to stay tonight because tomorrow I'd like to take my car in for an alignment, and I'd like to shower in the morning since I'm planning to get a haircut.
Anyway, I feel pretty accomplished today because I managed to start a load of laundry this morning, dry it over lunch, put it all away, and pack for the trip. I wasn't sure if I wanted to take recording equipment with me or not, as I may have much of the weekend with nothing going on, but I think that leaving the recording equipment here will be a perfect (and maybe necessary) excuse to focus on academic work while I'm away. And speaking of academic work, I knocked out one assignment this morning in class (to be fair, I forgot that it was due), and managed to knock out study notes for my exam this afternoon. All of that with maybe just a couple small sips of coffee. I honestly think it was the pressure of the "oh crap I'm leaving this afternoon" deadline.
Anyway, I've got 25 minutes until my exam, so I'm going to make sure I've got this stuff down. I'm sure I'll be updating throughout the weekend. Maybe.
The rest of my stuff came on Saturday, and I'm pretty excited about to start working with it all. Though, I must admit, I'm a little nervous about the learning curve there will be with adapting to a new recording software. But, I know Pro Tools is said to be better than Audacity in every way (and of course I already agree), but it's still a little nerve-wracking nonetheless. Perhaps I should consider playing with it some today so that I can at least have an idea of what it will be life using it tomorrow night to record the live sound at open mic night (and how to work it in the first place). Alas, I'm on a schedule. But then again, my schedule has been skewed already this semester. I have an indefinite extension on a paper in one class and a project in another; perhaps the only academic thing I need to concern myself with today is studying for a test that I have tomorrow morning. That could allow me time to learn at least a few basics with Pro Tools before I go to use it tomorrow night.
Anyway, what's remarkable is that for what all you see here (and what you don't see here yet) I only spent $735. That's right... $735. Here's the breakdown of the cost:
M-Audio M-Track Quad (w/ Pro Tools Express): $199 (on sale)
Rode NT1a vocal mic (w/ shock mount, pop shield, and cable): $229
Audio Technica Pro 37 instrument mic: $108
Mogami Silver 25ft XLR cable: $30 (x2, so $60, plus shipping)
On Stage Stands mic boom stand: $25 (x2, so $50)
40ft sq of acoustic treatment foam: $85 shipped
Okay, so $735 is a lot of money. It was painful to spend, but for a starter setup it really was a pretty great deal. I'm journaling up a "gear wish list" of items I'd like to see in my future studio setup, but for now I'm more than pleased with this.
Today I must confess something.
I have found myself, for the longest time, bitterly jealous of "cradle Christians"; people who grew up in Christian families, Christian homes, going to church, learning about scripture and Jesus, and having a beautiful, almost naive faith that seems unencumbered by things that so easily weigh me down. I scoffed at many of my bible college peers simply because I would give up my whole life to have what they seemed to take for granted: whole families, Christian parents, solid spiritual support networks, a church to call home, and a deeply rooted faith. I hated them.
If that's you reading this, I'm sorry.
And then I get jealous; oh, do I get jealous. Not that I would ever wish calamity on someone like that... If anything, I wish they could see their situation through my eyes; perhaps they might appreciate it more. But I get so jealous of them, because things that seem to come easy to them just don't come easily to me. Some things which they have had ingrained into their minds since an early age I am just recently coming to grips with and am trying so hard to put into practice. I feel like an acorn sitting on the ground next to an oak tree, feeling so small and intimidated, trying to find a place to grow roots without disturbing the space that they have clearly been occupying so long before I came around.
Maybe some seeds aren't meant to grow.
As an "outsider welcomed in," I find it incredibly difficult to fit in to the bible college social atmosphere even after 3 1/2 years. I feel like an awkward bud in a field of flowers. Instead of embracing the process, I became jealous. I grew cold. I envied every person around me for one reason or another. Perhaps I wished I could have their kindness, or their social charisma, or their musical ability, or their money, or their seemingly naive willingness to submit to authority. But the people I am most frequently jealous of are those who seem to be deeply and immovably rooted in the faith. I often find myself wanting more than anything to be able to say something that I will never be able to say: "I am so grateful that I grew up with an example of faith and love." Maybe I'm just too scarred to stand among models.
But I failed to address my own disorder. Instead of watering my own lawn, I grew increasingly jealous of my neighbor's grass. Instead of accepting that my brokenness would require a long and careful process of God putting me back together, I chose instead to sit in pieces, staring at others who were whole and wishing I could be like them. Sure, part of it is depression, but that's no excuse. If creator-of-the-universe God could do all the amazing things shown in scripture, then my own depression stands no chance. But the biggest problem is that I want to be like everyone else around me. My own talents and abilities never seem to be enough.
I wonder how many of those people I find myself jealous of find themselves jealous of me. It sickens me how much calamity is glamorized. Those who should be bursting with joy and gratitude for the examples of faith they grew up with often find themselves full of discontent, wishing they could have the cavalier story of one who grew up in a context like what I grew up in. And yet I, who should be grateful for how much darkness God overcame to find me, and should be exulting in His glory, and bursting with joy and gratitude and singing praises about how great and powerful He is to save a wretch like me, find myself instead discontented, wishing I never had to go through the things I did, and am still going through.
Maybe I need to just be still and let God do His God thing.
Last night, I was working with text and images in Adobe Premiere Pro. I was using text overlays at the end of a video. I had inserted and blown up a transparent PNG logo image with additional text as the last overlay, but had to change the font of the rest of the text to match the font in the image. The first three text overlays were 150% font size. But when I resized the PNG overlay in the last bit, I had to use 160% font size to match the image's text. Well this proved to be sloppy and unprofessional looking, so I wanted to fix it, but I wasn't sure how to resize the image and text to match 150% font size that was present in the other title overlays. Then I remember something I learned in high school: algebra.
The image was scaled to 185% original size.
The font was 160%, but needed to be 150%.
If 160=185, then I needed to figure out what 150 would equal. I just needed to work the numbers a little.
185/160 = 1.15625
1.15625 x 150 = 173.4375
So I resized the image to 174% and the text to 150%, and presto, everything matched.
YEAH, MATH!
Call me a nerd, but I think math is immensely important. I have to use it all the time when I'm working with sound, video, or general I.T. stuff. Perhaps your line of work won't require you to understand algebra, but understanding basic tenets of mathematics is essential in life. Want to know your fuel mileage? Track your miles per tank and gallons per fill. Want to know your cost per mile? Track your cost per tank and miles per tank. Want to be able to project your current spending into the future and re-configure your budget to be able to save a certain amount of money by a certain date, perhaps to buy a plane ticket for travel? Are you in a band and need to figure out how much you can spend on a tour while staying profitable? You need to understand math to do these things.
Props to Marjorie Craemer, one of the few high school teachers I had who legitimately cared about her students and their futures, for devoting her career to teaching math. Partly because of her influence in my life (along with numerous other factors), I really think CCCB needs to incorporate math into its general curriculum. Even if the college can't afford to hire on a part time mathematics professor, at least requiring students to take a course or two at MACC would be better than nothing. If the college wants to train people to work in churches and help those churches to function well, then it needs to train its students in mathematics beyond an elective "personal finance" course. It should include at least one course in basic business management so that people can get an idea of how to work an organization's budget.
Okay. Enough ranting.
/Plug
