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Scott and Harv, if someone wants to study the concepts you are describing, what kind of course would this be? Physics? Acoustics? Electrical engineering? Is there such a course as sound engineering as it relates to the actual bandwidth spectrum rather than sitting and mixing like the school in southern Ohio is all about?

I wanted to take acoustics in college to understand better why speakers are built like they are, how to design optimal sound rooms, etc..... The prerequisite was a second Physics course and I struggled to survive with a passing grade in 101. All that memorization was rough for me back then. Theorums, postulates, Newtons Laws, Archimedes principles.... One project that was heavily weighted for final grade was to take a Da Vinci blueprint and explain why it was going to work or not work. The day that assignment came out was the day I learned my first Yiddish word.

Oy......



Eddie, I learned this stuff by practice first, and then by theory afterwards to better understand why the knobs I turned and sliders I slid did what they did.

I've been running live sound since the mid 1980's. I've been recording since the mid 1990's. I took my first graduate level acoustics course in the 1994 time frame, and the second one around 1995. In 1996 I took a graduate level digital signal processing course - this was all through the distance learning program that General Motors had set up with Purdue University, Penn State University, and others.

You don't need all of the theory. There are great schools for learning this stuff that stay away from the heavy mental lifting required by graduate engineering courses. SAE Recording Institute is a great first place to start. Full Sail University in Winter Park is another one.

However, you can learn a heckuva lot by just reading and experimenting, reading and experimenting, reading and experimenting. Sound on Sound magazine has always stood a little above the others in putting in technically correct articles on all of this kind of stuff.

Electronic Musician is another one. I've subscribed since 1986 off and on. Craig Anderton is an absolute fount of knowledge and you would do well to read every single printed word by him that you can get your hands on - then try it out. Once you think you understand a concept - prove it to yourself experimentally.

Tonight, I'll be doing my first clarinet recording ever. It's my 6th grade son wanting to try out for honors band - and they allow audition by recording. I'm putting up all of my mics in a semi-circle to record his stuff simultaneously, not because I have to, but because it will be fun in a nerdy way and I'll get to hear if there's significant differences in the mics for recording clarinet.

All of my mics are cheap, but I get alot out of them because of knowing what works and doesn't work. I have a Samson dynamic that's supposed to be like a Shure SM-58, a cheap EV dynamic, a CAD M-177 large diaphragm condenser, and a Cascade Fat Head ribbon mic. I now have an interface that can pre-amp them all at the same time. Guess what, nobody has ever heard any of my recordings and commented negatively about mic selection. I've learned how to use them through reading and confirming with experimenting.

Gonna get at it tonight with Ben's clarinet.

I'm gonna help this kid in any way I can. A couple days ago he says to me: "Dad, you that song ______, I really like that one?" I said, no I haven't heard of it (hence the blank). He says, "You know, that Dexter Gordon song...."

Proud Papa!

And no, I haven't listened to enough Dexter Gordon to have the song titles memorized - but he has. 6th grade.

-Scott

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