Kids'n'Cakewalk

[rayc]

I had to do a recording project at work - in Literature/Multimedia study the class of 12 year olds were doing readings from the Mercury Theatre radio play of the Wells' War of the Worlds.
I was going to use my 4 track but didn't have the space on my m/cycle that morning so I took in my copy of cakewalk pro audio 9 & loaded it onto a school laptop, plugged in a Behri interface as described by Ido1957 and set up a template for three mics (one for sound effects later on). Ran two Senheiser mics into a little mixer & the lines out into the Behri tested it, demo'd it to two kids & I showed them how to save the 1st one & how to direct the session & boost the final recorded two tracks a few dBs. they recorded 5 different projects of four kids reading their sections of the script.
the two kids aced it.
One, a girl runs the schools PA system & the 2nd, a boy just showed some interest.
BOTH had it down in minutes - they recorded a 10 min program from 2 mics. & repeated the process for a range of different groups doing their versions.
The same kid's'll engineer the sound effects & music backing the groups are rehearsing then I'll do some cutting & playing around to even up levels etc then the pair will mix to MP3 for the class to take home the recordings they took part in.
Now I know why they call it a Cakewalk - it really was that easy.
I was proud & pleased. The fellow is now talking about setting up an H/R rig.
Priceless to see kids take on & be successful with something new.

 

[Monkey Allen]

You're a teacher? It's good when things run smoothly and effectively in class huh

 

[rayc]

Makes such a diff to the squids too. After deciding against the 4 track I was planning to use audacity because it is easier but intuition told me to use pro as I could do more after tracking - turned out gooooood.
How're things settling in HK?

 

[Torpid-x]

See now, that was a nice post! I enjoyed the read. I would suggest, if you have a version of sonar 2 or above, to install 2.2 or higher for it's per project audio folders, keeps things cleaner on the hard drive and easier to manage esp. on a laptop. the cpu overhead shouldn't be to much different, if not lower than PA9 (if I remember correctly, cakewalk promised better performance back then ). 2.2 is when I first upgraded to sonar, using 5 now, and with the midi enhancements, I may upgrade to 7.

Cakewalk is the best and easiest pro audio app I've ever tried, I just got lucky that it was the first brand I bought, buying was pretty blind back then.

 

[Monkey Allen]

How're things settling in HK?

Whoa rayc! Haha...you asked this 4 weeks ago....how's things in HK?

Well I'm doing a shitload less recording, listening to music and coming here!

I sooooooooo wanna record

 

[rayc]

Monkey Allen,
OK, that's what you're NOT doing. What are you doing?
Have you assembled a little portable recording rig yet?
Are you comfy & enjoying life?
The cricket tests with P/stan weren't much, nor the 1 Dayers.
It's been wet though, and muggy - a bit like where you are really!

 

[Monkey Allen]

Hey rayc...it's pretty cold here at the moment...winter...so there's a bit of bite to some days.

I've been having a pretty good time here...about 5 weeks in so far. I live only a 5 minute walk from work...in a serviced apartment...nice.

There's a lot of very nice looking women here.

This weekend I played cricket in the HK 6's tournament. Was a boozy weekend. Been playing a lot of tennis too...there's a court here that nobody ever uses.

I went to a place called Sham Shui Po....an excellent strip of street audio products...a wide range of mics...I'm gonna get into them when i get a bit of time. I haven't seen any firewire soundcards in shops...but I'm sure they are around. I bought a really cheap kids size nylong string acoustic just for messing around with...but I'll pick up an acoustic soon...and set up a bit of a recording rig.

All in all it's been great. xmas holidays in about 4 weeks...I can't wait to get the chance to relax and take it easy.

I managed to keep up with the Aus/ Sri Lanka tests on cricinfo...for $160 HK you can get a cricket channel...all the domestic Australian cricket including tests etc. I think that's about 20 Australian dollars.