Monday, 26. October 2009, 03:55:18
parents, audio, anniversary, microphone
I picked up a new USB microphone for myself this past weekend. I wanted to record speeches and pictures to make a presentation for my parents. This is a segment of what I recorded on my old laptop, the microphone itself was over 3 feet (1 metre) away from my brother! That's why there is background noise from the restaurant: hard brick walls, tile floors and mirrors on the walls all reflect sound easily (but adds to the "room feel" of the recording). I just had to boost the overall sound volume with editing software I use and do some compression to reduce the file size. The audio quality is pretty decent, I think. You listeners can be the judge of that!
Listen to the streaming audio underneath the microphone:
(If the 'Play' button doesn't seem to work, refresh the page and try again; the pointer should change to a finger-click icon)
Sunday, 13. September 2009, 00:29:22
audio, life, church
About 2 years ago a small cable shorted and burned out a channel on the mixing board at my church. It wasn't a major issue since we had a spare channel to use and the dead one was just taped up.
I got the schematics from the national distributer of this mixing board and tried working on it myself to save our church spending some big cash. Couldn't find anything obvious as to why it was dead. Left it until I went on vacation in late July and took out just the dead channel strip to the national service depot on the edge of Toronto. After a couple of weeks, they call back and say it's fine. The technician suggested a few other things to try - all of them time-consuming.
I put the channel strip back into the mixing board and thought, "Why not just see what's going on?" I plugged in the wireless microphone as per usual and fired up the board. No flashing lights. No smoke. Good so far. I turned on the mic, turned on the channel - and it worked! But I don't know why. I experimented with different types of inputs and they all worked. Humph.
Just hope it stays that way.....
Saturday, 18. April 2009, 20:37:01
allen & heath, audio, sound tech, t-shirt
...
I tell this to the worship leaders at my church all the time. I've always wanted it on a T-shirt. It should look like this. Allen & Heath are my favourite mixing boards.
(Of course they
REALLY know I take very good care of them and serve them wholeheartedly
)
Saturday, 18. April 2009, 13:10:44
gina milanese, audio, life, music
Well, last night was a first: my first time taking the skills as an audio technician and making a memorable night for this local Christian music artist -
Gina Milanese. We all had a good time to simply enjoy her music along with a backup band consisting of local musicians who did a fine job rounding out her sound.
I've never done a local pub scene before. Never done anything outside of a church before. It was Gina's first public performance as a solo artist and I wanted to make sure it sounded good for all the people who were paying to come last night. All those years of learning to plan and organize paid off. I made sure she had each set planned for the songs she was going to do, when the draws were going to be done, and so forth. We had a limited amount of time and I wanted to make sure it all flowed smoothly. The drummer (who is our church's main drummer and the one who offered my services for the evening) said it was the most organized gig he had ever played in - and he's done a lot of them. A big "Thank You" goes to Gina's manager, Cathy Yanko. She did all the room setup. Gina's husband, Neil, did a PowerPoint that ran throughout the evening.
Unfortunately for me, the sound board was a unit built into a wooden rack with all the amps and equalizers mounted under it located in the corner of the tiny platform. I had to sit in the corner against the wall so most of the people wouldn't see me. I had the bass amp blasting in my right ear and Gina's stage monitor blasting in my left ear. It began hurting after about half an hour. Thankfully, I did have a couple of opportunities to jump off the stage and listen from the rear of the room to see if my sound balancing was decent. It was all good. Glad I had found the owner's manual for the sound board to read up on how some of the effects worked. Added a bit of room reverb to make her voice and electronic piano sound a bit larger.
I actually did get paid
and I got the evening's poster signed by her too! Can't wait to do another one!
Monday, 14. January 2008, 17:47:38
audio, Spoonerism, humour, voice
I do a lot of audio editing of sermons and teachings at our church; typically 2-3 hours per week. A 25-40 minute presentation can sometimes take up to 2 hours to be hacked down to a smooth audio recording 5-15 minutes less than the raw recording.
Some people are a breeze to “edit”, others make me cringe when I know they are going to speak. Watching a person speak or preach masks nervous mannerisms because the mind is distracted by visual cues. When dealing with just the audio alone, the nervous mannerisms tend to leap out—at least to my ears.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy editing to ensure the audio presentation of their topic flows smoothly to the ears; that it will be heard and understood with clarity. It's a largely unknown and unappreciated aspect of “getting the Word out to the world” via the internet or through CD requests. A huge church in the area also has their sermons available through the internet—but for the sake of expediency, they sacrifice the audio quality for small file size to download. That is unacceptable to my standards—and I don't want to present my pastor or other speakers in a bad way via post-production audio (the file size is significantly smaller than the original, but it is almost as clear). When in front of the congregation, there's nothing I can do to help them....much like Reverend William Archibald Spooner.
It has been said Rev. Spooner did not like having his name attributed to slips of the tongue and transpositions that usually elicit at least a raised eyebrow. The following is lifted directly from
Wikipedia. So don't get your kounge in a snot over these things, it apparently happens in many other languages...
Many of the quotations attributed to Spooner are apocryphal; The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd edition, 1979) lists only one substantiated spoonerism: "The weight of rages will press hard upon the employer."
Some of the more famous quotations attributed to Spooner include, "The Lord is a shoving leopard," (instead of "The Lord is a loving shepherd"), "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride," ("It is customary to kiss the bride") and, "Mardon me, padam, this pie is occupewed. Can I sew you to another sheet?" (Pardon me, madam, this pew is occupied. Can I show you to another seat?")
Other purported gaffes include his angry address to a student, "You have hissed all my mystery lectures, and were caught fighting a liar in the quad. Having tasted two worms, you will leave by the next town drain" (intending to say "You missed all my history lectures," "lighting a fire," "wasted two terms," and "down train," respectively). He supposedly remarked to one lady, during a college reception, "You'll soon be had as a matter of course," when he meant to say, "You'll soon be mad as a Hatter, of course." Others include, "Let us raise our glasses to the queer old Dean," ("dear old queen"), "We'll have the hags flung out," ("flags hung out"), "a half-warmed fish," ("half-formed wish"), "Is the bean dizzy?" ("dean busy'), "Go and shake a tower," ("take a shower") and "a well-boiled icicle." ("well-oiled bicycle").A final one to add lifted from another site:
The famous Dr. Spooner found himself in quite a situation when he was invited to a very formal occasion in England; an occasion at which it was necessary for people to appear in pairs, whether they happened to be husband and wife, significant other, or whatever. And as luck would have it, at the last minute, Mrs. Spooner felt ill, wasn't able to go, and Dr. Spooner hurriedly raced around and found someone else to go with him. As he greeted his hostess, he came up with this particular Spoonerism. Instead of saying "Oh good evening, Mrs. Wellsley. I'm so pleased to be here. And you will be pleased to know that I have, due to the illness of my wife, produced a substitute", he said: "You will be so pleased to learn that because of my wife's illness, I have managed to seduce a prostitute."
WIDGETIZE