orchestra

I recently did a major musical, and when I say recently I mean it closes tomorrow.  Well to save money, we decided to not hire any musicians and rent the computer genterated track from real-time music solutions.  Sinfonia. Oh the bain of my life for the last 4 weeks.

Sinfonia is what i call Sibalus for beginners, only you can't program the music into the computer. Sure you can control tempo's and keys and even repeats and vamps. You can also control individual volumes on instruments as well as muting them. Sinfonia is supose to be a orchestra suppliment, meaning you have 3 or 4 musicians in your pit and the computer plays along with them. We didnt do that.

I'm glad we didn't. While the orchestrations are nice, the issue was volume with the tracks themselves. Example, when you open the program for the first time all instruments are at 100. If you think of it like a soundboard 100 actually is 0, 0 would really be -100 and 200 would be +100, Understand.

So lets start the first song.

Oh thats sounds nice, wait where did the music go?, Oh there it is, HOLY CRAP WHY IS IS SO LOUD.

No joke that was the first 2 minutes of the first number. Now imagine having to sit down and edit every song and every point where the music could be at a more constant level. I'm not talking equal volume the whole show, I mean barely anything showing up on the sound board sensors to everything peaking in the matter of a measure. 

So for 2 weeks I edited and fixed and worked on everything. Then load in occured and we went into the theatre.

Everything I had mixed and edited was trash, but the problem was the show didnt sound right at all. I called Sinfonia and they didnt know what the problem was, in fact they still don't.

While our audience likes the orchestrations and they sound good, my suggestion, ude at your own risk first. It may make your life a lot harder as a sound designer.  I didnt get a decently sounding run thru until the night before opening, and after rehearsals it would be the director and myself in the parking lot working on 2 to 3 hours of notes on just sinfonia.

Would you make the same decision…

Recently, I got an email from the school asking me to take part of a survey. What my school wanted to know was how extensive did my education go for me, as well as how many types of papers I did versus test versus lectures versus types of classes I took. This was interesting to say the least, but while I was filling out the various answers, there was one question that just resonated with me.

If knowing what you know now, would you still choose this institution again.

My answer, NO.

Why, I was failed by this institution. You see, I am not the target audience that they are going for. I am not directly out of high school, I will be 30 this summer. So why should I be upset. From my first day on campus it was a cluster. It was truly a sense of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.  If I needed an answer to a question, I would go to one person, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else. Literally, there was one entire day I spent running around the campus looking for certain people who others said had an answer but in fact didn't.

Then you have the bickering. My department has always had this issue. The professors just don't get along and from a students perspective, they don't want too. I had two of my good friends who used to be student liaisons. What they would do was be available to students who were having issues and then be invited to a department meeting and share these concerns with the faculty. The problem was, the issues the students were having were the professors not getting along. My friends, when they sat in this meeting, watched for 2 hours, as professors made snide comments, argued and berated each other for the entire meeting. Then closed the meeting with, "what's going on with the students?". Seriously, our problem is you.

That isn't even my main concern with the university. Its out for money, the general well being of the student body isn't a concern, instead getting more and more money from each student is. This could be from raising school "fees" more and more every semester, or requiring more gen-ed classes, or even more fees in general.

Let's attempt to break down the program service fee for ETSU. The only document I can find on the ETSU website comes from the 2011-2012 school year.

"The fee is based on the number of credit hours for which a student enrolls and is capped at $531.50 for freshmen and sophomores and $506.50 for all others.  It includes parking, athletics, student activities, and other items.  Students enrolling in certain courses or programs of study will also pay fees to cover additional program related costs."

from What You Should Know About Tuition and Fees

But that itself doesn't break it down, I couldn't get my hands on the most up to date breakdown of Tuition and Fees for the school.  That's ok though.

I recently signed up for summer classes and there is a $750 university charge per class and an additional $500 charge for the summer term. I think that is outrageous. The site doesn't break down what this fee is it just adds it all together.  I want to know what I am paying for.