Immersed In Live Sound

EMERYVILLE, CA -In San Francisco’s East Bay, the Ex’pression Center for New Media is busy establishing itself as the hottest place to get an education – and a job – in animation, game development, web design – and live sound.

The $28 million facility, opened in January 1999, was totally funded by Dutch tycoon Eckart Wintzen and designed by John Storyk, one of the world’s leading recording studio designers. Its 65,000 square foot space is crammed full of the latest gear, from 20 SGI computers running Alias/Wavefront Maya to dual G-4 Power Macs and Sonic Solutions DVD authoring workstations.

The facility especially shines with its set-up for recording and live mixing. The Tascam Heptagon Studios features six independent and/or synchronized control rooms wrapped around a large accoustic studio, allowing six groups of students to record one band simultaneously.

For live sound studies, the heart of the program is the Meyer Sound Performance Hall, a 200-seat 5.1 surround sound performance hall. There, musicians and bands – including the Jerry Garcia Band, Merle Saunders, Sons of Champlin, and Train – use the performance space to rehearse, while Ex’pression Center students get the chance to mix live music in a real-world environment.

There is a Crest 52-input V12 console (which emulates the Yamaha PM-4000) for the front of the house, Meyer monitors and outboard equipment that includes BSS compressors, gates and equivalizers and Lexicon PCM-80s and 90s.

"The point is to give our students the equipment they'll be handling once they're out in the marketplace," notes Ex’pression Center president Gary Platt.

One of Ex'pression Center's "claims to fame" is its phenomenal success rate at placing students in jobs: 100 percent (a week after graduation, the tenth class is so far 94 percent employed). To go from neophyte to working professional takes more than great gear and a great performance space: it takes experienced live sound mixers who have the ability to teach what they know."

The director of the live sound studies, Hani Gadallah, offers just that mix. A graduate of the Institute for Audio Research in New York and a life-long percussionist, Gadallah began his career as a mixer on a year-long car trip from New York to California, during which he stopped to work for brief stints in clubs and studios all across the country. Once he arrived in San Francisco, in 1990, he paid his dues by working in audiovisual at corporate events until he got his first club job at The Last Day Saloon.

His live sound mixing career took off, and Gadallah now works at clubs and for sound companies all over the city and has gone on tour for numerous bands.

Personal career highlights include mixing Ray Charles, James Brown and Train. Gadallah had taught at the California Recording Institute and enjoyed the experience, so when Third Ear Sound, one of the companies he freelances with, got a call from Ex’pressions Center for New Media looking for potential teachers, Gadallah jumped at the chance.

Ex’pression Center believes in an immersive educational environment, which translates to a very intense 14 month program of about 45 hours of classes and labs every week. Lab groups are made up of six or fewer students and include enough equipment to allow all of them to work simultaneously on hands-on projects, in video, animation, lighting and, of course sound arts.

The comprehensive Sound Arts program devotes two intense months to a two-part course in live sound. Live Sound I starts with an introduction to the signal path as well as the components and power requirements for live mixing.

“They come to me from a total recording environment,” says Gadallah, who notes that his students represent a balance of genders and a range in age from 17 to 40+ . “And the first thing I say to them is, whatever you learned in recording, leave it behind. Live sound is really different than recording.”

For Live Sound I labs, students who are musicians bring their instruments in to the Hall and the students take turns performing and mixing. “This way, when the bands come in the second month, they’re ready for it,” he notes.

In Live Sound II, the students cover speaker design, crossovers, console specifications and every other technical specification introduced in Live Sound I. Next comes physics and mathematics, including a solid grounding in Ohm’s law, resistance, impedance. “This is a must,” says Gadallah.

“It’s not an option. You have to know physics and math in order to do sound. You can’t go into any place without figuring out how to match resistance between speakers and amplifiers or you’ll blow the system up.” This second part of the live sound education is where students get an opportunity to mix professional musicians and bands in Meyer Hall. Gadallah supplements this by taking his students with him on his gigs.

"I let them run cables and work..this way they can have a real hands-on situation,” he says. “No matter how you teach in a class or lab, it can’t compare to a real live event.”

That includes a grounding in the psychology of live mixing. “One thing I emphasize in my class is how to interact with musicians,” says Gadallah. “The attitude is a total part of the job. We cater to the musicians’ needs and whatever they need, you should be able to give it to them.”

When the academics and labs are done, the school requires an internship, based on each student’s specific interests. Twenty-year music veteran Shiloh Hobel, director of placement, has arranged internships for students interested in careers in live sound mixing with Ultra Sound/Pro Media in San Rafael, CA; and, in San Francisco, The Last Day Saloon, SFX, and JK Sound.

The 14-month program doesn’t come cheap: the comprehensive Sound Arts program costs $29,950. But it comes with extra bang for the buck: a chance to earn a Bachelor of Applied Science degree, with the addition of a semester’s worth of general education classes offered by Dominican University, on site. An Associate degree of Applied Science is also available. Compared to students at a four-year college, points out Platt, Ex’pression Center graduates will be in the workforce 2-1/2 years sooner, earning money, and building experience and contacts.

“Good help is hard to find, and once the industry knows you’ve got good employees, they suck it up like a sponge,” says Platt. “We’re putting students into great jobs. That inspires us to take this further and make it better.”

'Total immersion' education is the aim of the impressively equipped Ex'pression Center. Steve Harvey guides the tour.

'An adult Discovery Zone' is how Gary Plat, President and founder, describes the campus of the Ex'pression Center for New Media. The image is reinforced by the interior's bright decor of purple, gold, green and red, intended to reflect the appearance of the high-tech environments in which the majority of the students will find employment.

The school, which opened its doors on January 11, 1999, is located in Emeryville, California in San Francisco's East Bay. The location is no coincidence: the region is home to Silicon Valley and cutting-edge facilities such as Skywalker Ranch, Pixar, ILM and SGI, and it is hoped that students may not have to travel far to find jobs.

Platt, a veteran of the Full Sail school in Florida where he designed the curriculum and last served as Senior Vice President, is enthusiastic about his latest project. "We want to offer the most positive cultural experience to our students," he says. "We're aiming for small, high-quality classes of very talented, very productive students. We really don't want this to be a giant campus." The sentiment is echoed by Peter Laanen, Ex'pressions CEO. "We don't want this to be a factory," he concurs. Laanen is a Dutchman, like the school's principal investor and chairman, Eckart Wintzen, and has many years of top management experience. Platt and Laanen adopted an open-door policy from the start and know all of the students by name, and they have no desire to lose the family atmosphere that engenders.

Hands On

There are 162 students currently enrolled at Ex'pression, divided almost equally between just two courses, Sound Arts and Digital Visual Media, which are taught n an intensive style referred to in the brochures as 'total immersion', Every weekday students spend three hours in class with another six hours of practical hards-on instruction in 'laboratory' sessions, for a total of 45 hours of instruction per week. "The merging together of both group and individual sessions made the most sense, " notes Platt. There is one instructor for each lab group of six students. It is not unusual for lab sessions to run until midnight.

Courses start six times a year, with a maximum of 36 students per course for each intake. Platt and Laanen would like to see the total number of students reach 600 within the next two years. Each course lasts 14 months, with an option to continue for a further ten months to achieve a bachelor's degree in Applied Scence.

As a licensed vocational school in the state of California, Ex'pression is subject to the Maxine Waters Act, which mandates that at least 85 percent of students must have jobs in the field in which they were trained within six months of graduation. Students who have not found employment within those six months may return for a free refresher course. The school also assists alums with a twenty-four-hour hotline for technical questions once they are on the job.

Room For Expansion

Ex'pression is housed in a 65,000-square-foot building that was originally constructed for the school's neighbor, software developer Sybase. Almost 75 percent of the building is currently in use; the remainder is earmarked for expansion within the next couple of years. Platt and John Storyk of the renowned Walters-Storyk Design Group, a New York-based architectural and acoustic design company, conceived the layout. Storyk also teaches at the school.

Platt notes that Wintzen has invested nearly $23 million in Ex'pression. The investment is visible in the equipment that the school provides for its students, with every studio and every classroom-including digital graphics rooms-outfitted for 5.1 surround sound. By forming partnerships with a host of equipment manufacturers, Ex'pression has been able to install the latest technology to ensure their students will be ready for the real world.

Industry Ties

A prime example of the close relationship the school has nurtured with manufacturers is the Harman Studio, a digital recording facility with a 600-square-foot control room featuring a 96-input Studer D9505 (surround version) audio console and Studer D827 MCH 48-track DASH tape recorder. "A manufacturer like Studer is happy to partner with us," says Platt, "since it also helps them to increase the number of operators for their equipment."

Surround monitoring in the Harman Studio is provided by a new and extraordinary Meyer Sound active studio system, about which the manufacturer is not yet at liberty to speak. (Further information will be released as soon as certain licensing agreements are signed.) A variety of outboard processors, including several vintage analog units like the Teletronix LA-2compressor/limiter, are housed in the studio credenza. The studio looks onto a large tracking room, with several isolation booths that would be the envy of many commercial facilities.

Analog is Not Forgotten

Familiarity with certain large-format analog mixing consoles is a prerequisite for neophyte recording engineers venturing into the commercial world, and one area at Ex'pression offers students three similarly configured studios equipped with two of the most commonly found. The first of these studios features an SSL 6048 G+ console with Total Recall, outfitted with both E and G equalizers. The SSL Suite houses an Otari MTR-100 analog two-inch 24-track tape recorder plus Tascam DA-98 and DA-38 digital tape machines. Fairlight MFX3plus, Waveframe and Digidesign Pro Tools 24/Mix digital audio workstations are also available to students. The surround monitor system comprises five JBL LSR 32 three-way loudspeakers and two subwoofers, with level control courtesy of Baldwin Products' Masterpot. The adjacent recording room stains a Foley pit and projection for film and video. The room is large enough to hold five musicians.

Next door a second, nearly identical suite offers a Neve VR 48-input console with Recall and Flying Faders automation, paired with a Studer A827 24-track plus the ubiquitous Tascam eight-track DTRS machines. The recording room is acoustically designed to produce a more 'live' sound than its neighbor and is big favorite for those recording drums, according to Platt.

The third in the series of studios is still in the late stages of construction. No decision has been made regarding the equipment; Platt says the console they stall could be anything from a Mackie d8b to an SL 9000 J.

Compare And Contrast

The most novel classroom experience may be had in the innovative Tascam 'Heptagon' Studios. Based on the concept of a life-study drawing class, the Heptagon offers six identical control rooms, arranged in a semi-circle, in which students may record an artist performing in the large tracking room simultaneously and independently of each other. The instructor monitors their efforts from a seventh room. Each control room is equipped with two Tascam TM-D4000 digital mixing consoles linked to a Tascam DA-98 master recorder with two DA-38 slaves, for a total of 24 tracks. There are plans to substitute the DA-38s with Tascam's new MX-2424 24-track, 24-bit hard-disk recorder in the near future, upgrading to 32 tracks in each room. Each of the six rooms also includes a Pro Tools 241Mix system.

Although Hi-8 is a prevalent format, recording and playback of projects is not limited to tape. All students learn DVD authoring on the school's many Sonic Solutions workstations. In addition to the equipment found in the individual studios, there are also a number of centrally located recorders that may be patched anywhere within the facility, including a Studer D827 DASH 48-track, three Studer V-Eight digital tape recorders and three Tascam MMR-8 hard-disk recorders.

Yet More Options

Study is not restricted to state-of-the-art recording techniques on the highest-tech equipment. The Garage Studio reflects a typical home studio set-up-complete with traffic noise, thanks to its proximity to the 1-80 freeway-and is designed to present students with the challenges such an environment offers. Equipment is by Mackie, Alesis and Tascam.

Live sound and lighting is taught in the 200-seat Meyer Sound Performance Theater, which has been designed not only as a classroom but also a public performance space. In addition to a substantial lighting rig the theater utilizes a Meyer Sound PA system (5.1, of course) and a 48-input Crest V-12 console. A backstage production room provides facilities for live performances to be recorded and filmed.

The staff at Ex'pression are determined to graduate well-rounded students who are expert at more than simply operating the latest technology. Basic maintenance, studio design and music theory and history are all on the curriculum. The Maintenance Lab is close to completion and will feature 20 iMac computers running test equipment software. John Storyk teaches the acoustics and architecture course, with students expected to source materials and budget for a studio construction project. Everyone must take two courses in music theory plus one on music history, the latter covering from 1945 to the present.

In March 2000 the first graduates of Ex'pression will emerge; we wish them all the best.