Sweetwater Internship Post 7 - 4/1/2021

As my internship at Sweetwater Studios comes closer to an end, there continues to be interesting and exciting projects that come through. But on the same coin, there are also moments when absolutely nothing is going on. Either way, just being in the studios and around such talented engineers is enough to make the experience worthwhile.

On the exciting part of my recent weeks, the studio had a very special guest come in and make some videos and other content to be released in the near future. It was a pretty big production since this guest is well-known. You'll also notice that I am neglecting to name this guest, and that's because Sweetwater needs the confidentiality of their projects in order for them to maximize the exposure. Nevertheless, I can still explain some of the things I learned about working with large-fanbase clients. First off, everything needs to look pristine when you work with someone big. In this situation, we set up a drum kit with a rack, and in order to make the microphone cables look neat, we ran each wire along each other underneath the feet of the rack to make them look like one solid run instead of a jumbled mess. Also, we sort-of hid the microphones and mic stands inside and around the kit so it looked a lot cleaner than miking everything from the outside. It's little details like this that really help make a high-quality production. Lastly, I got some experience with what it's like to collaborate with a film crew in a studio. Our guest came in with a couple backing tracks, and in order for the video and audio times to line up, the engineer had to start recording with a huge preroll to allow the film crew to slate each camera, then get out of the shot, and still leave the artist room to get the count-in to the backing track. Overall, the whole experience was quite wild and a little hectic, but I really enjoyed being a part of such a huge and important production.

Like I said earlier, not every moment in the studio can be fun and games. At some times, there will be absolutely no clients in the studio, and you will either have nothing to do, or only boring and tedious tasks. Out of all my weeks here, I've certainly experienced plenty of both, but the most important thing to remember is that even the small tasks will teach you a thing or two about how to become better at what you do. For instance, a couple days ago , I was given the task of disassembling and reassembling small Neutrik power cables into longer ones. This means, I had to spend a lot of time taking apart cables, cutting and stripping new lengths of cable, then remaking the cable at the longer length. Though this may seem like an uneventful and undesirable chore, it has actually served me well. I now know how to assemble my own Neutrik power cable on my own, and that's a fantastic plus in regards to live event production.

To end this blog, I'll also mention that I had to change out the humidifier packs that are used by the studio to keep the in-house guitars in good condition. By doing this, I also had the opportunity to see what kinds of guitars the studio keeps available, and let me tell you there are some awesome pieces in their collection! Though every one of them are gorgeous, I'm only going to show you one in order to spare you from a blog that's actually mostly a photo album. Anyways, here is a beautiful Les Paul that you yourself can use at Sweetwater Studios if you book a studio session:

As always, be sure to check my blog again soon as I might end up posting one more Sweetwater internship update before my departure from the company, and because this is my only main blog, I will continue to use this platform as an outlet to share all the exciting things I've got my hands in. Thank you so much for reading!