muzicman82.net

Ok people. This news kinda made my day… but only slightly…

One of the best computer games I’ve ever played. American McGee’s Alice. is going to be made into a movie!! If you’ve never played the game. you should… It’s basically Alice in Wonderland gone horror. It’s a pretty gothic game. Apparently S.M. Gellar is cast for it. We’ll see how it turns out. It’ll probably be another 2 or 3 years before it comes out. but we’ll see about that too.

Well… Let’s see… I did that video shoot in Dover. DE today… then went to Best Buy. I returned a couple things and bought six CDs with the money. So. I’m well equiped (music wise) for my drive to Greenville on Friday. Here’s my list of new music for the past month or so. Some of these I’ve had but just bought the CD now.

The Rocket Summer - Hello Good Friend
Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
Various Artists - Punk Goes 80’s
Umbrellas - Umbrellas
Finch - Say Hello To Sunshine
Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This To Memory
Coldplay - X&Y
Lovedrug - Pretend You’re Alive
Fall Out Boy - From Under The Cork Tree
Acceptance - Phantoms
The Academy Is.. - Almost Here.
As Cities Burn - Son. I Love You At Your Darkest
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Origin Vol. 1

Yes… That’s a ton of CDs… so I won’t be bored… Yay.

I’m going to go to bed. It’s 12:30 AM and I’ve been up since 4:15 AM. Eww!

Ok so. I definitely haven’t had time to work on this poor site since my last post. Lately. work has consumed the mass of my time. Today I had to be over at the DuPont Country Club at 6 AM to do sound for a meeting. then tomorrow I will have to be at the shop at 5:15 AM to head to Dover. DE to do a video shoot. Bah! Thursday should be chill… which I need it to be.

Friday morning. I’m heading out west. The trip is two-fold. First. I’m stopping in Milford. OH to get my TV from my Uncle’s. Then. I’ll be continuing west to good old Greenville. IL to help Rod move to NJ. That’s right folks… he really is moving to the dark side now! It’s all good… Rita’s Water Ice. the NJ Shore. Tax-Free shopping (in Delaware). and endless nights in the Shade/Marques household are just days away.

I’ll be getting to Greenville on Friday night… hopefully before 10 PM. I’ll probably hang out with Dan and some other folks. So. if you’re in Greenville or near by… and wanna hang out… You’ll have about 24 hours to do so… More like 12 hours. Give me a call!

Speaking of calls. I have a new cell phone number. I’ll miss my IL number… but the new one is 856-404-8697. Call me. TXT me. whatever. I have Verizon Wireless so if you’re *in*… it’s free!

I have a call into Comcast Cable to see if we can get Cable Internet. Well. I know we can get it. but when we priced it out 10 years ago it would’ve costed $1.000 to run cable down the 1.000 ft. driveway. So. hopefully that has changed in the past decade.

I’ll probably write more later… but… who knows what later really means! Leave comments and inspiration to write more.

Well. it was a long and hard battle. and its not over yet… but as you’ve found… I’m back. with a .net. The .com is floating in cyberspace and I cannot get it transfered yet. Once I do.. I’ll have both I guess. I kind of like the .net anyways… What do you think?

I’m going to try some nifty things in the near future. I’ll post more soon.

It’s been forever. Let me sum up everything since my last post: WORK.

Yep. So. I graduated from Greenville College on May 22nd. I have a diploma. they have my money. All is good. On the 23rd. I drove home to beautiful New Jersey. On the 24th. I slept till about 7 PM. On the 25th. I went back to work. Since then. I’ve had 2 days off. and I’ve worked 100 hours. Do the math. I’m not sleeping! We’ve been doing some cool things though. Tonight was “The Best of the Sacred Concerts” by Duke Ellington. The program was the start of the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. I basically ran sound for a 40 piece choir to put them over a big band. It was awesome. I used a Yamaha 01V96 and controlled it with my laptop. Amazing!

I started building my PC. I got everything working… then the thing stopped booting. I think my motherboard is bad. Sending it back tomorrow. Blah.

I’ll write more later… but yeah… I’ve got some catching up to do.

This post might be kind of long. and for that. I’m sorry… unless you’re the type that like long blogs. I hardly write really long ones… but I think this one fits. Anyways…

In a little over 36 hours. I will have graduated from Greenville College. I began my journey here in 2001 as a CCM Major. I didn’t become an ITEP Major until the beginning of this year. I was even accepted into the Recording Emphasis. However. after a lot of thought. ITEP was pretty perfect for me. I did 99% of the CCM Major. ditched some pointless Gen Eds. and added some Digital Media and CIS classes to make my ITEP. I also put in like three fold for Sound Reinforcement. Anyways… This year seemed kind of like busy work for me mostly. but I’m glad I did it anyway. I’m glad I came here. When I started looking at colleges in High School. I knew the CCM Major was pretty much what I wanted in a major. I looked at the DM Major. and decided that wasn’t exactly what I wanted in that area. I knew I was coming here… In fact. I didn’t apply to any other colleges. Illinois seemed far. but I travel a lot anyways. GC is in the middle of nowhere. but not anymore so than my house in NJ. So. I’d say I gained some knowledge over the years. But more importantly. I’ve gained experience.

With that. I have some advice.

1. Don’t be confined to what you think you’re majoring in.
2. If you’re interested in Sound Reinforcement. don’t be guided by Studio Recording… they’re NOT the same thing! Teach yourself all you can. Run sound for everything you’ve got the opportunity to. If you want to do something. speak up.. or just go do it.
3. Run sound for Rock Class!! Even if you’re not all that interested in SR. do it. There’s no other time in your life that you’ll have the opportunity to mix 4-6 bands in 2 hours for FUN! You’ll see some amazing musicians. hear some great covers. and by the time you’re done it. you’ll be prepared to run sound for any weird thing that comes your way. It may also change your mind about Sound Reinforcement.
4. Your best mindset should be that you do not know anything… and everyone around you knows more than you do. Follow that. and you’ll learn a TON from other people. Don’t pretend you know it all. you’re the best. you don’t need to practice. or that you don’t care.
5. Pursue what you don’t know instead of protecting what you do know. Stretch yourself to learn something new.

And while I’m thinking about it. it’s going to be odd not being around the friends I’ve made here. It seems like yesterday that I was going on 3:01 AM McDonald’s runs with Rod for the (new) McGriddles or staying up to 3 AM becuase we were bored. I remember watching movies in Snyder Hall on the projectors because it was easy to break into. There was a time (when I didn’t have a car) that we’d walk from Joy to MotoMart at 4 AM… though that was probably before we discovered McDonalds. Oh. and last year. Rod and I discovered that you (college student) could get free fries and soda from the Greenville Hardees when you bought a burger… That meant a $3 meal. A couple months later. it closed. This year has been amazing too. First semester was a riot living with Rod. You could only imagine. It only took 3 years for us to room together… although we were probably both safer that way. I’ve spent a lot of time with Dan Wolfe. discovering more and more that we’re kind of the same (both geeks)… and he can make my sink turn on from his kitchen. And. we can let each other into each other’s apartments. Jason Leong sure likes his (sour patch) kids. $0.97 at WalMart can buy a little piece of Heaven.

Almost finally… I hear there’s like 28 CCM Majors graduating with me. If you’re reading this… I think you’re all amazing musicians / songwriters / producers / engineers / noisemakers. Don’t make the mistake of not keeping in touch with the people you’ve been learning. studying. and playing with for the past 4 years. We all know Greenville is competative… but I think its time you use each other’s talents. Too many people leave here and don’t use connections when they’re probably around the corner.

Finally… The east coast is amazing… and New Jersey is amazing. You should come visit. Good night!

So the Copeland show is over. What’s funny is that Dan Wolfe and I knew we were going to end up working at it somehow in some way. Copeland was amazing. They’re all nice guys and put on a great show. Their sound guy was something else though. Let’s go through Dan Strickland’s and my experience with him.

First. we meet this guy and he starts asking what we have and didn’t have. He gave us dirty looks when we told him we only had 4 insertable compressors. Then he wasn’t happy that we were sharing drum mic channels. I showed him the board and his face was kind of like “What am I going to do with this?” Then.. it was time for Copeland to sound check.

For one. their stage volume was a little too loud for the Blackroom. Then he starts turning things up and tweaking channels before he heard what they sound like. After drums were up. they were pretty much ripping the cones out of the subs. So. he had no respect for our system whatsoever. He didn’t ask us if it was too loud or antyhing. He was sending stuff to compressors and mains at the same time separately… which is OK. but he didn’t know he was doing it. And. he boosted 50 Hz on the reverb return about 5 dB… which was pretty pointless and just muddied everything up. At one point. he didn’t think he was getting bass. and he on the wrong channel. on the clearly marked console. Oh. and Wolfe had a really great disgusted look on his face while this guy was trying to sound check. It was great.

I didn’t get to hear house. but Strickland told me his mix wasn’t too bad but he just didn’t know how to really make it better. He just fiddled with things. Wolfe had turned the masters down to start with… And Strickland said he turned them down more at points. I wonder if this guy even noticed that.

All of this makes me feel good that I learned something here. Four years paid off. So has working for BEL. I’m also glad I don’t claim to know everything… but I know what I don’t know. Anyways…

Solafide was amazing last night too… In fact.. I’m willing to bed they sounded better than Copeland. I know they did from the stage. Nice work Dan.

All in all it was a great show. but crazy stressful. It was nice doing monitors for once. I just wish I could’ve done real monitor mixing and not just turning things on… Sucks not to have an engineer wedge.

And now that the hype and excitement of Copeland coming to the middle of nowhere is all over… time to start on my Portfolio. I’m hungry.

I don’t know what is going on anymore. It’s 3:08 AM. and I have done nothing since I’ve been back to my room… for about an hour and a half now I guess.

So. I went to work today. then mixed for Solafide. Here’s a picture.

Tomorrow is the Copeland show. I’m running monitors. I can’t remember the last time I ran monitors. It’ll be fun though. I spent pretty much all day in the Blackroom. I managed to get the system sounding decent enough for tomorrow. Actually. I think it’s as good as it can be right now. I rewired the right side of FOH.

Today was one of those days where I really couldn’t concentrate. Like. while I was mixing. it was just really hard to hear what I needed to do. I think I EQ’d the system like 4 or 5 times today just because I couldn’t “hear” anything. However. the moment it all becomes clear is amazing. It’s almost like listening to a CD you know cold. and hearing some random track that you’ve never noticed before.

I really need to start my DM Portfolio this week… By that I mean like tomorrow. I also need to get stuff done for other people. I’m burried. I can’t breathe. I just want to be done. I ate at Taco Bell today for “lunch” with Jason. and went to McDonalds later with Dan and Becky. I guess I’ll work it off tomorrow. Oh wait. I’ll be in the Blackroom. If someone wants to donate a bed. I WILL sleep up there.

I had Bluetooth working on my phone… on my computer and Dex’s. Now. it won’t work on either of them and its annoying me. I broke it somehow… or it broke itself. Oh no. I just remembered I have Andrew Thompson’s Senior Recital this weekend to run sound for and record. But hey… this is the LAST ONE EVER! They’re fun. but they’re a lot of work for $50.

Someone needs to turn my Geek Knob down… I haven’t felt this anti-social in a long time.

I am supposed to be writing a paper. But instead. I am going to take a nap. and get up early to write it. Maybe.

At this moment. I am done COR401 video editing and Common Day of Learning… forever.

This is pretty cool. If you didn’t know. I work for the sound and production company Brandywine Electronics. They supplied Paramount Pictures with the vintage audio gear featured in the movie Forrest Gump. Here’s a capture below. If you look really closely. you can read BEL on the road case. If you ever walk into the New Castle. DE warehouse. this stuff is on display in the lobby.