Herein is a recollection of a project that combined my enthusiam
of all things music, recording, mixing, production and public
presentation.
(Today, I would be perfectly fine living as a hermit - but that
is another story for another day.)
My highschool gym was equipped with 4 tower PA speakers in the
corners. There was nothing but distortion and echos everytime
it was used. But using just two at the front (on each side of
the stage) didn't seem to be any imporovement or powerful enough
when the place was packed with 1100 students.
I had a little musical project at that time. I would create
musical parodies in the style of "Mr.Jaws":
https://youtu.be/kDNlSpKLEEo
A 2009 remake of that is pretty good too:
https://youtu.be/lfwOqGSNWM8
My versions were based on interviews with the adults, staff, and
teachers. My character would roam the halls of the school and
ask questions as I encountered the teachers, principal and
v.principal. It was fun to get away with poking fun at them. I
made sure that my oversexed mind had an opportunity to make
jokes about their inter-relations and any other rumours that
might have been known at that time.
Anyway.. the existing 4-speaker setup sounded terrible. There
was no "low end", no bass. The echoing destroyed the tight
timing the recordings needed between the spoken word and the
music clip.
One day, I happend to "notice" a pair of giant round (they were
4 feet in diameter) horn speakers in one electrical class. They
were originally used for outdoor events and nothing else. I
asked about those for the gym. The teacher suggested the perfect
amp for them. He made the installation a class project.
The parody sounded GREAT. No echoing. Great dynamics. Lots of
punch.
To entertain students at the end of the day, I'd have a reel-to-
reel tape playing rock hits.
When it came time to play the parody during the official event,
I had to stop the tape during each segment while everyone was
laughing so hard. I couldn't play it through in real-time like
the Mr. Jaws recording because of the laughing going on - they'd
miss the next joke if I let it run.
I was a huge hit. I made a total of three parodies during my
last two years in highschool.
They were aired on the local radio station in town later on.
The originals were copied from the reel-to-reel to cassette. The
cassette was converted to MP3. The MP3 copies reside on either
an old hdd that I used with WinME or Ubuntu - but I can't
remember.
Everyone (ie students) thought it was a bad idea to remove the
horns from the gym. Going back to the original 4-corner 4-
speakers sounded pathetic and simply encouraged people not to
attend. They continued to use the 4-corner system for other
music events - they all sounded terrible.
The experience with the horn speakers had me hooked from then
on. I wouldn't mind owning any of the Klipsch models.
I missed my true calling. I'd be very confortable in a recording
studio.
--
../|ug
--- OpenXP 5.0.48
* Origin: Does photographic memory take time to develop? (2:221/1.58)