Vicki Richards

From the blog

Music recording/playing technology..impedance/schmimpedance

Here’s my story…the Laywoman’s Experience with audio engineering stuff…just trying to transfer music and record new tracks…long distance between studios
I’ve been on a learning curve & I feel increasingly incompetent but don’t give up.

Look at the jam I got into with just getting files transferred that were some or all of these: AIFF, WAV, ACC, MPEG, MP3. I had my burned “studio session” CDs (are they MP3s?) strewn around here, my laptop music files that were MP3s or ACC, the mighty new iPod I thought would be my storage & transferrable info….”shouldn’t be used” said the head engineer. Dang.

So I bought a Thumb drive with 16 MG capacity yesterday. That’s like enough space….like using an 18 wheel truck to haul a toaster. I got space!

Oh, here’s more….Days ago talking with a Sweetwater Engineer about impedance of the violin, the iPod, the Jam man and asking, trying to “Grok”, which volume pedal would do it all. (Aren’t they all the same?)

Got an Ernie Ball stereo output. (Hey, I asked if it was AC powered or had batteries. Good question and I looked for it in the box and thought I had gotten ripped off.) Then I said to myself…passive? aggressive? powered? phantom. I plugged it in and it functioned…success!
(score is : 1 for Vicki and 10,000 for technology)

So at the Friday gig what I’d endeavored to prepare logically & technically was a Y connector for 2 inputs into the brandie new volume pedal to switch back and forth from Jamman or the iPod feed in order to control the beginning and endings of loops or accompaniments while playing live…the engineer (Yup another one) said it wouldn’t. He was right. Fortunately only the iPod was used…because it worked! My first time.
(Score: Vicki at a huge #2!)
Here’s where I’m spending all my mental time and questions: Is it Stereo? ..ummm….yes…which, the iPod or the Jamman? … ummm
low or high impedance? ummm ..yes?

You know it’s been a lot of just not knowing and continually asking as the deadlines loomed.Sweetwater, Radio Shack, Staples (thumb drive)
“How many 20 minute songs does it hold?”
By the time it got down to asking the first engineer a question about the long distance studio files to transfer one more time, with an explanation beyond my capacity …well I can see that I had “techno overload”.
The session went well enough but my brain is exhausted from straining on the left hemisphere.