Reply To: Who are we…

[dpdan]

It has been fun reading about you guys and how much we have in common. Lot’s of talent here!

I just turned 59 last Wednesday, holy crap! In 1971, I started recording my high school band, orchestra and choir concerts with a TEAC mixer, a reel-to reel tape recorder and AKG microphones. When everyone else was buying drugs and mag wheels, I was buying microphones, speakers and amplifiers,,, no drugs for me. I absolutley love “LIVE” sound. Like others here have mentioned, I have recorded and provided sound for some big names, and little ones too, as well as some that have gone to Hollywood USA and have made it into the really bigtime. I won’t name drop.

I don’t have a huge sound system like 40 line array cabinets and twenty subs per side, I don’t have a need for any of that. I do have 20,000 watts of new QSC PLD4.5 power amps, and my speakers are mostly all home-made by me in my basement. I use JBL components for subs and lows, and old Altec Lansing 288 drivers/horns for mid/highs. My system can very adequately provide full range stereo sound for outdoor concerts with up to around 5,000 people. For wedding receptions and smaller jobs, I use QSC K12 and K10 speakers for monitors, and either double 18″ subs or singles depending on the venue and band.

In the past years I have owned Yamaha, Soundcraft and Allen & Heath sound consoles, OK, I always called them a mixer. The brits refer to them as a desk. My first Allen & Heath product was a MixWizard that has been incredibly reliable, I just donated it to a mission in the city for a sound system I installed for them. I have installed more sound systems in churches and trained more sound people than I can remember. That perhaps is my most fun,…. when I am explaining and demonstrating something, and I can see that they actually “get it”.

Like many of you, I recently sold my racks of processing and snakes in trade for a digital mixer, well, two actually, I also own a Mackie DL32R, and I love that thing. It is so great for wedding receptions where I don’t want or need a “FOH” and a snake, even if it is just an ethernet cable on a reel. I did about forty wedding receptions last year with a Mackie DL1608, and then this past November I replaced it with Mackie’s new DL32R, and it too has been rock solid.

I am so glad I can provide mixing and multi-track recording, but no longer have to lug around 32 splitters in a rack, with multi-pin connectors to the mixer, desk, console. Then of course there is the 200 foot long 40 channel snake with splitter cable and multi=pin connectors, and Alesis HD24 machines synced with nine pin sync cables. It’s all gone!!!!!
Gee it was not that long ago I was Sooooooo glad to get rid of analoge recording and go with ADATs, then hard drive ADATs were the bomb, now all I need is a USB cable and a laptop… how times change.

Back in 2004, I decided to teach myself how to use midi in Digital Performer, but because I have no formal musical training except three months of piano lessons at age seven, I do everything “by ear”, picking out the notes of each instrument in the recording, then playing the notes on a midi keyboard where the midi data from the keyboard is recorded into Digital Performer. I made quite a few recordings using sampled sounds from the Mac Pro computer using Garritan Personal Orchestra samples. Some of the music I made with Garritan sounds can be heard on my website on the MIDI PAGE. I think perhaps the one thing I am most proud of, is when the director of the 20th Century Fox Ochestra in Hollywood contacted me via email. He asked for permission to use my arrangement of The Theme from “On Golden Pond” by Dave Grusin, for a recording that he was doing to honor the film career of Dabney Coleman. OK, so that was a name drop, sorry 😉

About five years ago I decided to do video too, and that has been really fun, and another way to make a buck/Euro.

I will stop because I could go on forever about how fun this stuff is. It is how I make a living and I am blessed to do something that I love.

Always remember we can call ourselves professionals as long as we are paid.
Professional … not meaning great, just paid. (profession, to be paid)

More fun stuff can be seen and heard by visiting my “cheezy” website.
https://www.dankury.com

sorry that was soooo long 🙂