Mike Lewis, vice president of product marketing at Fender joined CRAS for a special recording session in Tempe Studio A on 9/17/2009. Director of education Mike Jones ran the show with the help of CRAS students. So why is a VP at Fender playing a beautiful Gretsch guitar? Simple… Fender markets, produces, and distributes Gretsch guitars. Fender’s international headquarters are located near CRAS allowing the two companies to easily form a mutually benneficial relationship. At CRAS you’ll find all kinds of Fender products on campus including guitars and amplifiers. See photos of the session here.

On August 19th 2009, CRAS instructor and tech Jeff Harris guided students in building their own reamp box of Jeff’s design.  A reamp box allows recorded instruments such as electric guitars to be re-recorded by directing the output of a recorded audio track back into an instrument amplifier.  Normally the audio output from a recorder outputs a signal that is too high in level.  The reamp box solves this problem by taking the high level output and lowering it to a volume that instrument  amplifiers expect.  At that point the instrument amplifiers can be set to the desired sound and re-recorded with a microphone. To have a little more fun, students used their newly created reamps to feed multiple guitar amps and speakers that were setup on the Convervatory’s live sound stage.  Audio was provided by an Alesis HD-24 hard disk recorder playing back a previously recorded session.  Guitar, bass, drums and vocal tracks were each sent to independent speakers so that students could examine how sound combines in air, as opposed to being mixed with electronics.  See photos from the event here.

CRAS live sound instructor Keith Morris guided students through Roland’s compact yet extremley powerful V-Mixing system during a clinic held August 8th, 2009.  Students were given hands on time with the M-400 mixer as it drove sound through CRAS’s L-Acoustics Kudo line array PA system.  In addition students could acquaint themselves with the brand new M-48 personal monitor mixers just released by Roland. Keith demonstrated how musicians can have instant control over their stage mixes, or how the system can allow the front of house mixer to step in and remotely control an artists mix via a laptop.  To top things off, Keith even showed how the Roland system can accomodate multi-track recording with a laptop running the Sonar digital audio workstation.  All of this is made possible through the use of Roland’s digital audio snake system that uses standard Ethernet networking cable to connect the front of house mix position to the stage.  Photos of the event can be found here.

Joe Ciaudelli and Volker Schmitt from Sennheiser talking about wireless in their traveling RF roadshow, live in the Conservatory’s 6,000 sq. ft. Live Sound Classroom.

photo caption: l to r, Harry Warman (Warman Marketing), Keith Morris (CRAS), Mike Reinhard (U of A Asst. Tech. Director), Jim Kinkella (L-Acoustics), Mark Miceli (U of A), Gary Lotze (U of A Production Mgr.) and Mark Cowburn (AZ Pro Sound)

Today was an interesting day at the CRAS. A host of audio pros from the University of Arizona in Tucson, about 90 miles south of Phoenix, came to hear and evaluate our L-Acoustics Kudo line array system. The world-class speaker rig hangs in our 6,000 sq. ft. Live Sound classroom where each student learns the operation and setup of the system. The University is considering Kudo as a live sound reinforcement solution for the U of A’s Centennial Hall. The Hall opened in 1937 and now serves as a concert venue hosting the likes of Herbie Hancock, Martha Graham’s Dance Company, Wynton Marsalis and others. It has been repurposed and renovated several times and has presented an acoustical challenge as it was first designed as a lecture hall.

Robert Scovill teaching a group of 22 students the finer points of audio

If you follow who’s who in audio, then the name Robert Scovill is a familiar one. He’s been FOH engineer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Prince, Def Leppard, Rush and Matchbox 20. Under the banner of Audioseminars.com, Scovill recently held a 3 day intensive seminar at the Conservatory of Recording Arts. The Conservatory’s 6,000 sq. ft. live sound venue offered attendees access to professional staging, lighting and live sound gear including a V-Dosc line array, Dolby Lake Processing and amps from Lab Gruppen. During the seminar, students had their hands and ears on Digidesign’s VENUE live sound console, which has quickly become the #2 console in sound reinforcement.

Another view of a Cycle 10 session in Studio B, Gilbert from student Gabe Noto.

video caption: Cycle 10 student Gabe Noto made this video during a setup for a session class in the Conservatory’s Studio B at the Gilbert location

Cycle 3 class waiting for the band to set up before setting up microphones and lines to FOH. Musicians include Drummer Dowell Davis, Bassist Felix Sainz and Guitarist Anthony Kinchion