This week at DME I mainly created Bat/ Bar Mitzvah themed invitations. Last week I had to do a lot of research on the Jewish community along with figuring out the most popular party themes. I  gathered my research and sent it in for approval. Once Anna my mentor approved I was able to start creating designs and themes. I tried to go off my research of what the most popular party themes are. I made one that was poker related for the guys. I stuck with the poker theme and came up with my own design and turned it into a party invitation. The most challenging part was incorporating the Jewish symbols along with keeping the hole party theme. I got the hang of if and before I knew it  designing became simple. I also created two other girl invitations with keeping a tropical theme. I created one with the hand of god and one with an owl since owls and elephants are trending in girls fashion. As seen below I have created small samples of Party themes for Bat/bar Mitzvahs!!

bat/bar mitzvahs

bah mitvah!!

bah mitvah!

Each week a new group of kids are registered for the camp. We usually have about 20 kids in each camp. Each group always has a different dynamic. This weeks group is quite rambunctious and talkative, but it’s inspiring to see so many young kids with plans of becoming veterenarians. Most of the other interns are not quite 18 yet, so I feel that tends to be a slight challenge simply because of their lack of real world, raw life experiences. Most of the activities are pre-planned and repeated each week, but it is left up to us to facilitate, instruct, and guide each activity. I’m becoming very good at recognizing which kids will need more one on one help during certain activities. I am also beginning to analyze the usually drastically different traits and characteristics of boys versus girls at this age group. Another interesting observation (although slightly off topic) is the commonality of majority of the boys in this age group that have, or claim to have either ADD or ADHD. On the animal side of things, I am happy to say I have witnessed many adoptions out of the Humane Society, and there is nothing better than seeing a pet go home with it’s new family for the first time.

I originally had been interested in the program at stetson: Educating for Social Justice. With recent advising meetings and guidance for my future plans I am also looking into the masters programs nearby about non-profit. Still my next steps remain uncertain, but each day I learn something or take a new step and hope to find a clear path.

In my last post I discussed a couple projects that I’d like to start, but I don’t have the materials yet. One of those projects is recording a drum kit using a dbx 676 mic preamp. Earlier this week Jason, the guy who asked me to do this project, was able to get a set of AKG drum mics for the studio. This is great because it was the main piece that was keeping me from starting on this. Last week we retrieved a drum kit from one of Harman’s warehouses and set it up in the studio, but unfortunately it was missing some pieces, including cymbals. Now that I had mics I decided to do a trial run of tracking the kit without the cymbals, just to make sure I knew all of the signal routing through the board, patch bay, and 676. What I discovered was only 2 of the 8 inputs into the board work. Apparently we have a faulty snake cable coming out of the wall panel into the board. This is a huge problem and has been another set back.

I contacted Jason about this and explained that we need a lot of new cables for the studio in order for this to be done. I explained that I could still make a recording with an external 4 input audio interface, but that the studio needs these new cables if they want to be able to use it for these applications. Apparently this is a result of the studio being set up in a hurry when the building was built last year. They didn’t give too much thought to multi track recording or recording in general, and just put a board and some rack effects in there without routing the signals properly. They don’t use the studio for much recording anyways so it hasn’t really been a problem.

Jason is going to talk to his superiors to see if the purchases can be made, and in the mean time I’ve been tweaking mic placements on the kit to get to know the mics that I have, and tuning and retuning the toms and snare to make sure I have the best tone when I finally have all the pieces I need to get this done. I’m a little frustrated because obstacles keep presenting themselves for this project, but at the same time I’m happy that the problems at work that I’m having are revolving around drums and audio recording, both things I greatly enjoy.

Also here are links to the DigiTech AMA thread, which I assisted in, and DigiTech’s soundcloud. 90% of the audio clips on the soundcloud are of me playing, and all of them were recorded and edited by me.

We are DigiTech, makers of guitar pedals and effects processors. AUA!
byu/DigiTechfx inIAmA