When the tables are turned for a recording engineer

Yesterday I spent a day in a recording studio for the first time – As a client. I have been working in studio environments probably for thousands of hours and have recorded hundreds of songs. But I have always been the one in control of the recording process. A sound engineer recording himself as a musician is a completely different thing than a sound engineer being recorded as a musician, by another sound engineer. By entering the role of a client for just one day, I learned some lessons that aren’t apparent from the perspective of the sound engineer. This is an invaluable experience which can be applied in any domain, not just music.

Acoustics, Music, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistJanuary 23, 2021studio, recording, music, guitar, growth, acoustics, musician

Acoustics and Men’s style

Earlier this year, my wife introduced me to Bailey Sarian’s Youtube channel. She produces a program called “Mystery and Makeup”, where she talks about True crime and Makeup. She is insanely popular with 3,4 million subscribers and I can understand why, even if I have only watched one episode. Her passion is apparent and shines through like a bright light. She is indeed a great storyteller. The episodes start out with Bailey completely without makeup and then she tells a story about some famous true crime while putting on a professional makeup. About 30 minutes later she finishes the story and by then the makeup is finished. Bailey Sarian is perhaps one of the strangest combinations I have come across and it works. She is the perfect example of when two seemingly unrelated ideas are synthesized and produce something new and greater than the sum of the parts. She planted a seed in me. If I were to do something similar on Youtube, what would it look like?

Acoustics, Education, Engineering, Habits, StyleRikard ÖqvistDecember 19, 2020acoustics, elearning, education, synthesis, ideas, youtube, style Comments

Designing the ultimate home studio

When designing a room, you need to balance and prioritize certain aspects against each other. For a home studio, I consider the following three to be the most important: 1) Acoustics, 2) Aesthetics and 3) Functionality. I am currently building my fourth home studio in my garage. Each iteration has had a different priority order and the results have varied accordingly. As with any project, you need to write down the purpose of the room, to understand how the parameters should be rank ordered. In this article, I will describe what I have learned from my different home studios.

Live streaming university lectures on Youtube

When I do my university courses, I usually reserve the last five minutes of the final lecture for course evaluation. I have found that the most valuable method is to keep it simple. I ask the class to write down on a small anonymous paper note one (1) thing that was good about the course, and one (1) thing that they wish I do next year. This is a powerful method, because when you are forced to give just one answer, you tend to choose the one at the top of your mind. The most important. On one of the notes I read “I wish that you would record the lectures, so we can go back and repeat them”. When I read those words, it felt like a bolt of lightning had struck my head. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that? I am doing the lectures anyway, so why not add a camera and a lapel microphone and start recording them? If you are reading this post, old student who wrote that note, I salute you. That little note back in 2017, planted the seed of a powerful idea and you have helped hundreds of people by now with their studies in acoustics, and the number is growing. I cannot thank you enough.

Education, Acoustics, HabitsRikard ÖqvistSeptember 12, 2020elearning, distance learning, educationforall, transformingeducation, learning, livestreaming, teachingComment

The best of two worlds

I have always stood with one foot in the private sector and the other foot in academia. These two worlds are like Yin and Yang. When working as an acoustic consultant, efficiency and rapid progress is the name of the game. Solve the problems as using the fastest and simplest solution, send an invoice and move on. In academia (especially with research), you thoroughly investigate all possible paths and strive for perfection. Quality over Quantity is the name of the game here. I have never felt comfortable living in just one of these worlds. My gut feeling has always told me to keep one foot in each camp, even though it typically involves more work. Well, until now, that is. It is a long-term strategy that is starting to pay off in a beautiful way. The marriage of two diametrically opposite worlds has the potential to create a lot of value.

When you know why, how is irrelevant

Yesterday, I livestreamed and published the final lecture in my introductory course in building acoustics. When the dust had settled, I realized that I have never ever felt such a sense of meaning, in anything I have done in my professional career. There has been a lot of friction along the way, especially with technology. Yesterday’s lecture was a personal record in IT problems. First, I did not click the right button when the stream started, so I accidentally presented the first ten minutes of the lecture to an audience that could not see or hear me, and thus had to start from the beginning again. And then my computer crashed in the middle of the lecture and required a reboot. These are major setbacks, but I am amazed by how fast I could just snap back into it and continue the livestream with a genuine smile on my face. As Nietzsche said, “he who has a why, can bear almost any how”. My livestreaming lecture endeavour was a clear example that he was correct.

The best idea I have ever had

Earlier this year, I met a new friend with an interesting background. He was an architect and guitar luthier. And now he had decided to become an acoustician. This might sound like a strange combination, but it turns out interdisciplinary knowledge might be precisely what we need to crack the code on how to build the optimal wooden building with regards to sound insulation.

AcousticsRikard ÖqvistDecember 6, 2019music, woodComment