Of Sound Mind

People will watch YouTube videos of terrible quality on palm sized screens as long as they can understand what’s being said… but put an HD video on a large screen TV with poor sound and they quickly lose interest.  While the visual is sometimes self-explanatory, the audio completes the communication.

Many articles have been written about the relationship between audio, the brain, and memory including, Music, Memory, and Emotion (Lutz Jänke, Journal of Biology 2008, 7:21). or Involuntary Memory (Wikipedia contributors, “Involuntary memory,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (accessed January 14, 2013).

While media doesn’t necessarily start with the audio, it finishes it.  Remove the music soundtrack from a movie and the scene is empty.   The closest thing to a time machine I’ve ever experienced is hearing a long forgotten song.  Music becomes the soundtrack to our life.  So, audio is kind of important.  Quality audio is our commitment.

and with that… cue the crickets…

 

 

 

 

 

Media, Meteor, Meatiest

GROMMES PRECISION WEBMud-Hut will be 20 years old in October of 2012.  I recently finished my fourth major studio upgrade, and it gave me a reason to think about the amazing experiences I’ve had.  Five different computers and operating systems (starting with DOS), a music industry that imploded on itself, and cell phones that record with better quality than the equipment I started with, seems incredible.  The hundreds and hundreds of releases on cassettes, vinyl, CD’s, DVD’s, and USB drives, are impressive, but what really excites me are the thousands of awesome clients I’ve met.  I’m humbled by the number of talented and hilarious people I’ve worked with.
Sure, I could recall the tale about the all-nighter spent flashing the ROM on my first CD burner from my Window’s 95 platform, or that this is my fifth major web design, but it doesn’t compare to the incredible people I’ve met.  From drug dealers and their posse’s to Baptist ministers and their bibles, “I’ve had a most righteous journey, braw!”
One time, I had a band that got so drunk that the bass player started crying during the mix down.  “I’m sorry!” he sobbed.  “I just played so bad today…I let you guys down”.
A. There was nothing wrong with his playing.  B. If there was, nobody else in the group would have been able to catch it.  They finished three cases of beer and had purchased more.  I put a cap on alcohol consumption simply by recounting this story to subsequent clients.
Then there was the burned out bass player who sat on the couch in the studio studying an apparent age-appropriate book from my coffee table, “Where’s Waldo?”.  He proudly announced to us that he had just found Waldo “Three times in a row!”.  When we realized that he had done this while staying on the same page, we became absolutely incapacitated with laughter.  There were literally guys laying on the floor.
As I said, the best part is the people!