Signal Flow
D-Command in RSTUDM
So, I work for the Department of Music at Towson doing recordings for their student and faculty recitals, and on certain occasions recordings in the RSTUDM (The Recording Studio of the Towson University Department of Music). Recently, I was scheduled to do a session with Towson faculty member and Trumpeter/Composer Dave Ballou and a Towson alumnus, Ellery Eskelin who was coming to town and wanted to try some different mics out. When we tried to run the session, first the displays were not working properly. We got one screen to display Pro Tools ,we normally run two; but we were just going to go with it.
The next, and more detrimental issue, was that we weren’t able to hear playback from the monitors, which was necessary for us to compare the different microphone pairs. We checked the I/O on both the software, and in the patch bay, and we thought that everything was plugged in correctly. I had not been in the studio since I was taking a class in the spring semester of 2009, so it was hard to recall troubleshooting techniques when dealing with signal flow. The musicians waited patiently for about 30 minutes while we went over the details trying to get sound to come out of any of the three sets that are in the studio; nothing. We later found out that the new instructor likes to run the studio a little differently, and had change a few things. Neither my coworker or I knew how to change it back to the way we were taught, so we were out of luck. That being said, it was an issue that could have been fixed in the patch bay, we just didn’t catch it.
When I introduced myself to the Saxophonist, Ellery, I thought the name sounded familiar. It turned out I had just seen an article about him in City Paper, but had not made the connection until after I had left the studio (and he was also on an episode of This American Life, a show you should already listen to). Eskelin has put out 20 jazz albums and is “garnered critical acclaim” in the international jazz community. A heartbreaking lesson in knowing exactly where you’re signal is going at every step of the process, from the musician’s mind all the way to your eardrums. A great opportunity missed, my apologies to Ellery and Dave; thanks for the patience guys.
