Mic Czech

The microphones finally arrived in the mail last week! I immediately took them into the studio and tryed them out with Gary and Phillip McWhorter (I'm sorry if I spelled your name wrong) up in the D Room. Gary agreed to loan me the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder so I don't have to drag my computer and MBox with me every time I want to do a recording somewhere. It's a little handheld device that records to an SD memory card. It can do up to 24 bit/ 96kHz wave file recordings, 2 inputs -either TRS or XLR (it's got those handy little combo jacks)- at a time and I think it's pretty neat. I was hoping maybe I could use something with SMPTE that could record in HD so I could hook it up to Felipe's ridiculous video cam and make some serious ready-for-Sundance independent art films, but I hear those can sometimes take more than 2 months to make anyway. 

I told Mark Erickson about the project a couple weeks back.

He actually approved it!

 In fact, in contrast to all the other ideas I have come up with so far, he talked me out of more complicated ideas and into simpler ones. Which leads me to think that maybe I had the wrong approach all along (you know, before coming up with this plan). 

He told me to document everything I was going to do - pictures, journal, the whole works. I told him about this blog.

I don't think he was interested. 

I only believe this because when I said "well, actually, I'm blogging the whole thing online with pictures and videos," he said "oh, I won't read a blog."

...

Anyhow...the mics!

I got these little guys from a company called Core Sound out of New Jersey. You should check out their site - I think it's like a one or two man operation but they make some cool mics. The mics are indeed binaural but just using them like they are doesn't convey 360 degrees of information. I discovered this upon testing them out. You get the left-right info but front to back is non-existent pretty much. At the very least mostly unintelligible. I inferred this from the beginning, however it's nice to have the sensory proof so i know that the building of this whole contraption isn't just for the sake of having a neat-o looking doodad to carry around and impress people at parties. 

U.S.POSTAL.SERVICE. aka I'm not a very good photographer

Just thought I'd update on the status of my little project. Thus far the head and it's ears have arrived via the USPS, but the microphones are still en route.  Someone clearly doesn't have their act together on the shipping. I think it's the microphone company, but enough finger pointing...

Alright back to the point. Knight in shining armor (see below). Seriously, this guy's gonna save me from academic purgatory. I still haven't decided if I should paint him up or not because I dont know if it will interfere with the sound going to the mics.

And here's one of his ears. It's made of silicone and feels kind of creepy. It's a little weird having models of human body parts lying around the house.

Later dudes.

Introduction (future posts won't be this long)

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

So here's the deal;

I'm 24 and I've been in college for going on 6 years now. That, my friends, is WAY TOO LONG. This wasn't in my original college plan (staying forever) but let's face it - sometimes things happen that we can't foresee. For example - losing all motivation. Getting real scared of the future. Feeling like you're just not good enough to do the job you thought you wanted to do. 

Everybody goes through it, but some people let it affect them more than others. 

I'll spare you the gritty details. 

The point is I got stuck in college. I managed to complete all of my classes and even walked across the stage in my cap and gown in what is at this point still just a "mock" graduation, back in May of last year. What I didn't do was complete my internship, do a senior project and turn in my portfolio before that little ceremony back in May. Thus, here I am.

I haven't been totally unproductive however. Immediately after graduation I attended the Tape Op Convention (now called "Potluck Conference") in New Orleans where I met indie *engineer/producer/pAper chAse front man John Congelton after a panel where he was a speaker. After a few messages back and forth on myspace a couple of times and running into each other randomly at the Tom Waits show in Dallas, he offered to let me sit in on some sessions he was recording in an "internlike fashion" if you will. 

Unfortunately, things didn't get rolling as quickly as I needed them to. I considered moving to Dallas for awhile and focusing on interning and what have you up there. Dallas, isn't really  my scene though, and since John is a pretty busy guy (see above asterisk) I wasn't sure how much time I would get to be in the studio. I don't know, it was a lot of things and I won't try to sum it up in a few sentences.

I instead began my search for internships in the Central Texas region, and soon found myself at Tequila Mockingbird - where they sometimes even let me touch the equipment! Egads! 

hehe. I think I speak for everyone when I say interning isn't my favorite past time. I'd much rather just have a job and get paid to do what I'm watching other people do. Oh wait....

I eventually did get to observe John in the studio some last month. He was recording a band from the UK called Tom McKean & Emperors at a new (and badass) studio up in Plano called The Track. I actually witnessed an analog recording process - on a Studer A820. That never happened at the Firestation, but totally should have and was really intriguing. John and the house engineer, Drew, were entertained by the fact that I'd never seen a tape machine used (probably a little disturbed too). Oh, and by the way, that's the biggest remote control I think I've ever seen. 

Here we are in the present. I needed a senior project. I had mulled it over time and again in my head, coming up with and subsequently abandoning several of my previous ideas. I wanted to do something original instead of the same old full-length album business everybody else did. Everything I came up with was either not involved or ambitious enough, or involved doing something I really had no interest in. 

Then it came to me. 

Mindlessly surfing the waves of the internet, I came upon some instructions for building my own binaural dummyhead microphone. I've always been intrigued by these microphones ever since I was first introduced to them in the beginning of my college career (circa 1969, post summer of love). I've also been trying to figure out a way to incorporate field recording into my senior project. This seemed like a great opportunity to have it both ways.

I now enter the present.

For my senior project, I am going to build a binaural dummyhead microphone, test it, make it work, then go hog wild, toting that thing everywhere I go - from house parties, to bars, to bus rides, the river, the dentist, mardi gras on 6th street, the east coast, japan....(ok, i wish). I will then edit the recordings into a lovely presentation, macgyver a way to obtain 40 sets of pro-audio headphones (and enough headphone boxes/splitters to support all that mess) and then present it to a group of my closest friends, teachers, peers, family members. I will simultaneously work like a crazy person throwing my portfolio together, and at the end of the academic year, hand it all in, accept my diploma and dance and laugh all the way to the...unemployment office?

 (hah, too bad I already did that after I turned down a fat job with Rupert Neve so I could ... be an intern? awesome.)

As a side note, I'm also trying to come up with a good idea for bringing the recordings together in some kind of short film, but as of yet I still await that stroke of brilliance. 

Well there it is. All laid out for god and everyone to see. Let's hope this works.