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Malcolm begins the meeting by gathering the crowd's attention and thanking everyone for
attending the week 2 meeting. He introduces that the CRAS AES student chapter hosts its
meetings every Monday night to promote new news, events, and tips to the attendees. He moves to the next slide into the presentation where he introduces AES and explains that it is an international organization that unites audio engineers, scientists, and students throughout the world to promote advances in audio and research, as well as the standards committee that sets the professional standards for gear made worldwide. Malcolm then says that he has met many amazing CRAS graduates and individuals while attending these meetings.
Malcolm then introduces the member benefits including event invitations, discounts,
access to networking and career resources, as well as new news and information. Sol then
mentions an AES benefit that he received which was an invitation Vinyl Mastering clinic with
Jeff Powell has worked with artists such as B.B. King, Bob Dylan, and The Dave Matthews Band. Moving to the next slide Malcolm reiterates that attending the CRAS AES meetings is completely free, but that to be a member of the student chapter you do have to pay the discounted amount of $50 for your first-year post-graduation. Malcolm then mentions that the current office holders are in very late cycles and that we are looking for new student officeholders.
Moving onto the next slide in the presentation, the introduction slide. Malcolm asks the
crowd to respond with their name, cycle, and answer the question "Who is your favorite
person in the audio industry, music or otherwise?" The crowd responds with the aforementioned
name and cycle questions and respond to the question with varying replies such as "Drake,
Alphamist, Tyler The Creator, Frank Ocean, Ricky from CRAS, Richard from CRAS, Pierre
Bourne, Tom Waits, and Gorgio Morodo."
Malcolm then moves the attention over to the announcement coming to CRAS. CRAS is
having a Rode Microphones takeover where Rode Microphones is coming to show off new
gear, microphones, etc., as well as raffling away two free microphones and how that all students
have to do to be entered into the giveaway is show up to the demo booth at their signed-up slot.
Then he mentioned that after the takeover Rick Allen and Ryan White are going to be doing a
horror movie sfx foley recording session in Studio C at the Gilbert Campus.
The next slide in the presentation goes over how in the next cycles the AES meetings
are going to start at 6:30pm in order to better fit with the CRAS schedules, as well as that CRAS
instructors will be introducing mix tips and that the student chapter board will be playing a
Kahoot! every week.
Moving quickly to the next slide Malcolm introduces the CRAS mentor program and the fact that there are study groups hosted every cycle, as well as 1 on 1 mentoring available via connecting with Brandon Valfre, Fran Magurney, or contacting the student help email. Malcolm then makes the point that if you are interested in becoming a mentor, Brandon Valfre will reach out in Cycle 6 to interview potential students to see if they are a good fit.
Malcolm introduces and plays a mini-doc from the Academy of Motion Pictures about
how foley and sound effects are made and recorded for movies. The video details how the
different departments of post-production follow the timecode and edit and record sound effects,
music, foley, and dialog to put together a movie. It shows off some techniques surrounding
footstep recording with footwear choice and dynamic stepping. The video then mentions that the
audio mixer uses many different types of effects, plugins, and gear to create finished sound
effects.
The next section in the meeting is the return of the free plugin of the week. Malcolm
mentions that Cube Mini from Lunacy Audio is currently free, he explains that it
comes with a load of interesting presets as well as adjustable dynamic, filter, and macro controls
to manipulate the sounds that you make as well as onboard fx plugins such as distortion and
compression.
Sol then introduces their mix tip of the week which is a plugin demo of the oeksound
plugin Soothe2. He begins by placing the plug-in on a vocal track does a live demo of the
factory preset and demonstrates how the plugin ducks resonances automatically. A member of
the crowd then mentions that some of the best presets are in the vocal category and Sol shows off
the Voice of God preset. Once again Sol reiterates that CRAS students get a 90-day free trial of
the oeksound plugins and that it is highly encouraged to use these plugins while you have them.
The final slide in the presentation that requires discussion is the CRAS AES subgroups
slide. Sol explains his EDM production subgroup where he goes over EDM mixing, producing
and mastering techniques, and he brings in a loudspeaker to demonstrate. Bea then explains
her guitar and bass subgroup and how it began as more of a technical look at stringed
instruments but went into greater detail about theory and lessons. Malcolm then explains Mikey's
Jammin subgroup where students meet up every week to record a jam session and that Mikey
brings in some instruments for everyone to play. He then explains Starr's sound design subgroup
and how it was created to remove the producer's and engineer's reliance on Splice and he
goes over how to create sounds such as drums and melodies from scratch.
Malcolm ends the meeting by encouraging the crowd to network with one another and
dismisses the group.
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