No Match This Time

Look at me! I’m updating my blog less than a week after my previous post! I think this is a new record, and all thanks to Miss Allison Hay, whose request for a new entry was too much to resist. Well, here it goes.

Work continued to increase in interest this week. On Wednesday, I got to mix sound for the very first time! Whew, it only lasted for about seven minutes, but it was exhilarating. Jason, my quasi-supervisor, was mixing an elementary or middle school concert band performance and…actually, let’s linger on that point for second. I think that this is precisely the reason I would find it difficult to be a sound engineer. I would not want to have to listen to so much bad music. If your job is to record people, you can’t exactly have an audition to make sure that their music is what you could tolerate hearing for hours on end. You take whatever money people will give you, and if that means hearing a ten year-old clarinettist squawk through half an hour of music, then so be it. Though I find many other aspects of sound engineering quite fascinating and rewarding, that one issue holds me back. Anyway, now on to the moral of the story.

Jason handled the first set of the concert and then said “Do you want to mix?” I thought I had misheard him, so I asked him to repeat the question. I understood him correctly the first time, though, so I nervously took his chair and readied myself for instruction. I first adjusted the volume of the microphones in the Deca Tree (yeah, I’m throwing around recording lingo. Look it up.). Then I added some near and far reverb to make it sound more realistic. Then came the EQ (equalization for all you newbs), which I wasn’t able to handle so well. My ears are really not trained well enough to recognize deficiencies or excesses in the sound frequencies of a recording; that’s what the rest of this summer is for. So I then relinquished the seat to Jason, whose deft mixing left me in awe.

The weekend was a very welcome change from the recording studio, as enjoyable as it can be. On Friday I met Gillian and some other people at the Smithsonian Sculpture Garden for the free jazz on Fridays. From what I heard of it, it was very good, but alas, we moved locations after about fifteen minutes from where we could hear the group to where we couldn’t. It was all for the sake of socialization and such, which is great, but it’d been so very long since I’d heard good live music that I was remiss to move. After that, Gillian and I supped at Ruby Tuesday, followed by the watching of ‘Kung Fu Panda.’ It was an entertaining flick. Dreamworks does well to make their films funny, but I feel that they lack in a quality storyline. For this reason, I anxiously await the release of Wall • E on June 27 :D.

I’ve really gotten into soccer lately, and I’m not sure that I can completely explain it. For one thing, it’s so much simpler than most other sports. I’m not even aware of all the ridiculous number of rules in American football; baseball is really not intuitive; and even basketball is more complex. With soccer, you can’t touch the ball with your hands or arms (unless you’re the goalkeeper), you can’t kick it out of bounds and you can’t have physical contact except for shoulder-against-shoulder. There is the whole offsides rule, with which I’ve finally come to terms, but other than that the game is pretty simple. Plus, there’s very little superfluity with the sport. At least at international matches, there are no cheerleaders, no music over the PA and no gimmick games during timeouts (of which there are also none). Simplicity. I respect that.

With that being said, Gillian and I planned to attend the D.C. United match on Saturday night. We were all set to go (and very excited), but dash it all, It was raining and we didn’t feel like toughing it out. So we'll just wait until next week. We’re fair-weather fans, obviously. So we ended up playing Mafia (that old standby) and having an all-around good time. Then today we went over to Eastern Market prior to attending church in the evening, and it was at this time that we went into the bookstore where you see me walking down the stairs in the photo. There were books everywhere they could be placed, and it was awesome. There was some order to the volumes’ placement throughout the store, but it was mixed with a good deal of chaos as well. We didn’t have much time to spend there, so I’ll definitely have to return. Who knows what I’ll be able to find?

I have now stayed up way past my bedtime and will likely be a little tired tomorrow, but it was worth it! I’d do it again, and most likely will.