Tesfa Dennis

Journal Entry #6

Moving forward at this point, I am now focused on the Fashion Show and its logistics sound wise. Having been brought into the production meetings for this event gave me a better overview of the things that I should keep in mind. I have to take into account who are the performers, what kind of performances will they be doing, where each performer needs to be placed on stage, what looks aesthetically pleasing to some degree, the needs of the performers sound wise, and anything that the working crew behind the scenes like myself might need.

Next step is to put together a system diagram so that the sound crew knows what they would be building as far as the FOH (front of House) and Stage mixing system goes. A video system diagram also has been made along with a complete Overflow System diagram. A list of equipment has been made so they know what will be used for the day of the show, and input list so the crew doesn’t have to guess what channel is for which instrument and singers.

Then Hubert and I decided who would be assigned to a particular task concerning the show (FOH, Stage, and Communication, Camera Setup, Logo projection). On the last crew call before the event each member went to their assigned post and completed the task at hand with very little supervision, I would say about 90-95% of what we needed to do got done during that call. On the day of the last two things will be installed and running before the show starts.

Journal Entry #5

At the point at which we find ourselves is this, project idea #1 has been scratched, so we move on to idea #2. Things have fallen through the cracks for idea #2, a few deadlines have been missed due to scheduling conflicts, and a couple of personal life happenings, for the most part we are holding on strong. But before we go any further let me tell you about project idea #1, and why it no longer here with us today.

So project number one was a brilliant idea, fascinating and intriguing, and slightly risky all in one. See this project was originally about the comparison of mic pre-amps inside of digital mixing consoles, to do a double blind listening study with a group of people (including Hubert and myself) to determine if we could tell if there was a difference in the quality thereof. In order to actually do this study, we needed permission from IRB. This entity, IRB, determines whether a study done by students are within the boundaries of safety for all participants involved.

The issue with getting the approval we needed goes as such; there was a survey that we had to take in order to proceed ahead. We got certified according the test we had to take, but the instructions on how to proceed throughout its entirety was not well spelled out, it was ok to a certain point then became vague. We thought that we completed what we needed to do the first time around but that wasn’t the case. Along with emails taking a long time to be answered, and at one point the schools internet went down it added to the derailment of project number one.

Journal Entry #4

Having now gathered all the information I need for the MAPP part of the project (Meyer Mapp, a speaker prediction software) I then emailed my finding over to our Advisor for him to look over so that we can move on to the next part of this culmination project. Once the information was looked over we got back an email saying that the data is inconclusive, and therefore could not be used to do a comparison with the second software that we had planned to use in our project. I later found out that in order to properly use the MAPP software, we had to figure out what was the specs of the room where the speaker would be use. We needed the height, length, and width of the room in order to get the correct information when using the MAPP prediction software.

By the time we got the details we were looking for concerning the space it was determine that finding the time to do the research comparing the findings of the two different software, we wouldn’t be able to complete the study. So now at this point we have to focus on the logistics aspect of the show, and for the most part things seem to be okay so far on this end.

Journal Entry #3

There has been a bit of a scheduling issue so far, and what I mean by that is this; I am not able to find a good date to set aside time to meet up with my advisor for us to do the speaker prediction part of this project. Because of this problem, rescheduling has occur quite a few times, and it has led to the pushback of a few things that is determinant on this particular part of the project moving forward.

One of the issue regarding this problem is the website that give us the free software to use that we need for the project. The software is free according to the site, but once you apply for it, they said that they will reach out to you regarding everything about getting, installing, and using the software. It has been about two weeks and I have still yet to hear from them. After all that time I was told that the software is actually on the computers at school. That took a while to find them because I was misdirected at first, but nevertheless I found a computer lab with the software and now I’m able to complete this part of the project.

Journal Entry #2

Finding another project to focus on for culmination didn’t take long to find soon after we were told that there wouldn’t be enough time for the previous idea we had in mind. As of right now Hubert and myself find ourselves preparing sound for the school’s upcoming fashion show, I want to say this should be easy but, let me not get ahead of myself just yet. More so, we are also looking into doing speaker predictions for getting proper calculations of the speaker’s coverage pattern so that we can align them properly in the event space.

My Culmination Project here at City Tech is a joint project with me and another student, Hubert Alcide.

For our Culmination Project we wanted to do a concert for the Spring semester of 2017, we have been thinking about this project from Spring Semester of 2016. This would involve us providing sound for a live band that we knew, I would be the Front of House engineer and Hubert would be the stage mix engineer. Unfortunately our plans for that didn’t go through only because it didn’t fit into the ENT Production calendar time frame, so because of that we had to come up with a new project.

Looking for a new project our advisor, Huntington, had suggested putting mic preamps to the test to hear if there is really a difference in the quality it has on sound between different digital consoles. Before we could do that we need approval from IRB, which is a board that determines if the research that students do are safe to be conducted if they involve any other participant(s) other than those conducting the research.

I hit a few road blocks because the process to filling out the application for the approval was a bit complicated and not well spelled out in terms of directions to follow. After some time have passed we finally got through the approval process for our research, but at this time it was too late to put the rest of our plans in motion, so now we must find another project for culmination.