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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Definitely, it is extremely rare though, and usually has a good reason for it. Had one guy I worked with who used to be Rihanna’s sound engineer, I asked him why he stopped doing that and started working for a local corporate AV company. His simple response was that it wasn’t worth the stress, and he got to stay home and see his kids.

    Dude was easily one of the best sound engineers I’ve ever heard, he could make anything sound way better than it had any right to be, and yet he was the local guy pushing cases, running cable, and basically playing second chair to all the corporate AV guys thinking they were sound engineers, including myself for a while. All because it meant he could see his kids and not be stressed about it.

    I ended up making him my go to audio guy anytime I needed someone, and stepped back so I could learn.







  • They do have a pitch, however because it is percussive as opposed to sustained, we don’t register the pitch as easily. Many will also purposely obfuscate the pitch, such as cymbals, they don’t hold a tone, but rather multiple tones at once, making a washing sound and working for any key. If you ever look at a cymbal you will see the rings and divots around the cymbal, because if they weren’t there it would ring like a bell which definitely has a pitch.

    As for the drums themselves they definitely do a have a pitch and it is common for to tune them in fifths, or octaves. Think of a drumline, those drums all have pitches and tones, they also function identically to a traditional drum kit. You can very similarly to the cymbals obfuscate this tone by doing an offset tuning so your drum head resonates unevenly across the head creating multiple tonalities at once.

    You can achieve this by being lazy and not tuning.

    I’m a professional sound engineer and ex-professional drummer BTW.











  • And to add to that an outside vendor will almost always provide a better result because they actually have to work for their jobs, rather than their jobs being given to them. They also have to work in more venues so they are more flexible and able to customize your AV to meet your specific needs. Many of these in house crews have only a couple setups that they will do for a room and if your setup doesn’t fit that preset, tough.

    The only downside is, because their shop is not on site, last minute add ons are difficult if not impossible to do. So make sure you account for everything that is happening and communicate it with your AV company so they can spares for any last minute add ons you may want.