DSU Alumni Composes Soundtrack for Documentary Film

Kristen Cooper, a graduate of the DSU Digital Arts and Design Program, specializing in Audio Production, has been featured in an article about her soundtrack composition for the documentary, "Cosplay Nation"!

Kristen has been especially active in electronic and MIDI composition, as well as performing as a DJ. "When I produce my own songs and remix," said Cooper in the article, "the songs become dark trance more than anything. However, when I produce a piece of music like I did for 'Cosplayer Nation',  I base it off of more what they wanted it to sound like or genre they may want. This way I don't stick to one genre and I adventure out."

In addition to her work as a composer and producer of electronic music, Kristen has been a featured DJ at a number of events, including Sogen Con, Hetalia Masquerade Ball, Sodak, The Eclective Collective Fashion Show, CoreCon, and most recently, at Anime Fargo.

Kristen's music can be heard on her SoundCloud website, and the article can be read at the website 925rebellion.com. We can't wait to see what great work Kristen will do next!

DSU Live hosts folks band Condor

DSU Live, in collaboration with the Madison Area Arts Council, was excited to invite the Sioux Falls band Condor to perform a concert on the DSU Campus. Condor is unique in that they are a three-piece group with banjo, acoustic guitar, and cello. The band performed an extended set with a variety of original songs, and even threw in a surprising cello piece on Bach while a broken acoustic string was being replaced!

As is a traditional part of the concert series, we also recorded the audio of the show and will be sending it to SDPB radio to be broadcast on the show, “No Cover, No Minimum”. There was also student artwork on display from Cassie’s Design 2: Color class. The concert was a lot of fun, both in terms of listening, and practicing recording techniques. Here is a video of one of the songs, "Sunshine Wine", with the mixed audio:

"Condor" to perform at DSU!

Condor is an outstanding folk trio from Sioux Falls, featuring cello, guitar, and banjo. They will be visiting DSU on Saturday, February 21st at 7:30pm for an intimate concert.

DSU Live and the Madison Area Arts Council are very excited to add another talented band to their series that has been running over the past several years. There are plans for Audio Production students to record the concert for potential airplay on South Dakota Public Broadcasting Radio. It looks to be a fantastic event!

Audio Students Return to the State Capital

For the second year, students from the Audio Production program visited the state Capital in Pierre for the annual "Madison Hosts the Legislature" event. After taking a visit to the Capitol building, we set up for the reception, in which legislators are given the opportunity to browse the various displays and talk with students, faculty, and Madison representatives.

It was fun to travel and connect with our state representatives, as well as people from the Madison community that we don't often have a chance to connect with. Students Dan Shay, Kyle Vis, Dylan Norris, and Derek Carlson set up an excellent audio/visual presentation and promoted our program with enthusiasm. It was great to get the word out about Audio Production at DSU!

Students Take the Stage for Open Mic Night and More!

Open Mic nights can be a fun way for students to take the stage and show off their skills, and that's exactly what happened in late October when DSU Live assisted student Tanner Bowman and the English club with the event.

Talent included some great singers and poets, some of which were using this as a warm-up for the English Club Poetry Slam that took place several weeks later. In a change of outcome from the past several years, the faculty snagged a victory based on the final tally from the judges' scoring.

The entertainment continues as DSU Live hosts a Karaoke night this week and Sandy Champion's music students perform a musical variety concert this weekend featuring the music of Disney!

DSU Live Hosts Jami Lynn and Chris Champion

It was a great pleasure to welcome Jami Lynn and Chris Champion to DSU as a part of our ongoing concert series collaboration between DSU Live and the Madison Area Arts council. As in previous semesters, we transformed an auditorium into an intimate acoustic music venue, complete with staging and lighting. The DSU Live students did a fantastic job helping with setup, and Nolan Moser took the help as our lead live engineer.

Chris is always impressive on guitar, sharing both originals and covers, and showing off his stellar guitar chops. Jami followed with her South Dakota-inspired original tunes, sung with acoustic guitar and banjo. She was later joined by Andrew Reinartz on upright bass, and Dalton Coffey on dobro. The trio made for a gorgeous sound that perfectly filled the auditorium.

Once mixed and mastered, the recording will be submitted for broadcast on SDPB radio’s “No Cover, No Minimum”, and there also will be several videos produced from the evening. Below is the first one completed, a tune performed by the trio called “Red Fox”:

Audio Program Featured in Recent Ad

Audio Production student Derek Carlson (and a blurry Daryl Becker and Cody Welu) were featured in a recent DSU advertisement highlighting the Audio program. The pic was posed during one of our Live Sound classes in the Trojan Center Underground last year, as we practiced setting up various live audio scenarios. Check it out!

DSU's Got Talent returns!

Our annual homecoming week "DSU's Got Talent" show was another success this year, mainly featuring singers, along with a saxophone quartet performing Pharrell's "Happy".

Our judges this year were Professor Glenn Berman, Professor Michael Gaylor, and student Andy Meyer. They gave a lot of witty commentary between acts, and judged the students in order to determine three top winners at the end of the evening.

The first prize winner was Jenna Sorsen, who did a solo vocal rendition of a song that she wrote. There was a packed crowd that was hugely supportive of all the acts. It was an awesome evening of entertainment and a great way for students to share their talents!

The Fall 2014 Semester Kicks Off With a Bang!

As is often the case when the new school year kicks off, we have a ton of exciting events happening in the first couple of weeks, including karaoke, a comedian, and a DJ dance. But before all of that, the Student Activities Board welcomed the duo, "Scratch & Bang", with audio help from the DSU Live Technical Services students.

The group has a unique twist on the typical dance DJ format. One of the members is a DJ, while the other is a drummer, which adds a nice extra layer of impact to the performance. The duo performed non-stop for over 90-minutes and played every song from modern hits, nostalgic classics, and some wild cards thrown in the mix (I think I heard the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song in there at one point).

The night started with a packed crowd of over 150 students, and the most exciting part is that only the Freshman had moved in thus far. "Scratch & Bang" put on a killer show that set the tone for the rest of the events to come. Now it's back to school this week. Fall 2014 semester is here!

The "Last Week Luau" Wraps up the Semester

Every Breath rocking acoustically

We finished up a semester packed with concerts by welcoming three excellent bands to play for our "Last Week Luau" on campus: "The Business, Man", Every Breath, and June Embers.

June Embers

Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate for an outdoor show, but the students set up the show in the Trojan Center Marketplace and the bands rocked out throughout the evening. The show was a great combination of acoustic music and alternative rock. It was also a great experience for the students to move all of our audio equipment and set up in a new location.

The Business, Man

We broke our event record this year, combining DSU Live concerts and Technical Services assisted shows, there were a whopping 42 events! Now, all we have left is finals week and summer is upon us!

"Every Breath" Records in the DSU Studio

The acoustic duo, Every Breath, has been recording for the past several weeks at the DSU studio with Audio Production student, Kyle Vis. The posted this really cool photo collage to show some of the process as they have been making their recording. We are also excited to be welcoming them back for a live performance at the end of the semester for our outdoor concert at the "Last Week Luau"!

Folk and Country musicians visit DSU

There's been a ton of great live music at DSU this semester, including a fantastic show with acoustic musicians John Statz and Zachary Lucky. Zachary is from Saskatchewan, Canada, while John resides in Denver. They teamed up for a month-long national tour that had its final night here at DSU.

Zachary and John’s music covers a wide-range of topics, many about traveling and various locations, and some quite serious and deep, such as a song from John about a man suffering from a head injury following a career in football. As a part of the show, my wife Cassie’s “Design II: Color” students created abstract paintings that were shown on the projector screens. DSU professor Wayne Madsen also displayed his artwork around and behind the performers.

Adam Hammer paid another visit to DSU to talk to students about music career and perform an acoustic show. I was also excited to play an opening set that night for Adam, which gave me the opportunity to perform some of my new songs!



Lastly, we had a really stellar show featuring the bands Burlap Wolf King, a folk rock band from Sioux Falls, and Expatriate, an alt-country band from the Twin Cities. We had a great turnout, and the show was excellent!

Audio Student does Internship at the Washington Pavilion

The stage set up for the Green Day Musical "American Idiot" - Photos by Matt Lyon

Soon-to-be DSU graduate Matt Lyon spent the past several months as an intern at the Washington Pavilion Performing Arts Center in Sioux Falls. Over the course of the internship, Matt focused on learning skills in live audio production, but helped in nearly every facet of event production.

Some of the major events that Matt helped with included the "American Idiot" touring musical, featuring the music of Green Day, "Rain", a Beatles tribute concert, and several performances by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.

Matt said that the internship was a huge learning experience. Safety was always a key concern, and they would wear hard hats whenever working on constructing a set or making other changes to the stage. He said that he was really overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge that the audio engineers possessed, but was able to take in as much as he possibly could. Matt also said that his experience with DSU Live was a huge help in terms of knowing how to host a live concert event, even though the events at the Pavilion were on a larger scale.

Now that his internship is complete, Matt has just recently accepted a job with Daktronics and will be starting there soon. We wish him all the best!

Interested in Audio Production? Come and "Discover DSU"!

Periodically throughout the year, DSU has a day to invite prospective students and their families to tour DSU, meet with faculty, and see what our University has to offer. For any of you out there interested in Audio Production, this means that you can chat with us about the program and check out the recording studio!

Our upcoming Discover DSU Day is coming up on Friday, February 14th (Valentine's Day), and you can check out the information page for the daily schedule, as well as future dates.

Audio Students visit the South Dakota State Capitol

We were thrilled this week to be one of several majors and specializations from DSU that were invited to a day-long event in South Dakota's capital, Pierre, to meet with legislators and show off our cutting-edge technology-based programs.

Checking out the main atrium in the State Capitol

During our visit, we toured the Capitol building, as well as the state forensic laboratory and police training center. We also had the opportunity to meet briefly as a group with Governor Daugaard and observe a legislative session.

In the evening, the students set up a display that included student-produced live concert videos and an interactive audio mixing station. Throughout the course of the evening, the students talked with a number of legislators about what we learn in the audio program and the careers that can be pursued in the field. We all had a great time and found it to be a very beneficial and educational experience. It was rewarding to be able to show off our great program!

A group photo op with President Borofsky

Student Records Some Serious Drums

Now here's a good way to follow up our drum unit: Audio Production student, and soon to be graduate, Dan Stefanich set out to do a senior project that would document how to tune, setup, and produce a full recording of a drum track.

Dan chose the song, "Curl of the Burl" by Mastodon. It was a project that combined skills in production, mixing, video editing, and performance. It is a great demonstration of what goes into creating a solid drum recording in the studio.

A Drum Recording Project in Recording Sessions

One of the more challenging parts of recording and live sound can be properly setting up and miking a drum kit. There are many factors to be aware of, such as how to achieve the best tone from each piece of the kit, and how to most effectively position each individual mic.

Derek showing off his mad skills.

Last week, the students assisted with a full studio drum setup. Even using a fairly compact kit, we still found use for 11 different microphones. Some microphones played very specific purposes, such as a pair of stereo overhead mics to capture the entire kit (and mainly cymbals). Other decisions were made to give a variety of sounds, such as placing a microphone on both the top and bottom of the snare drum.

Dan and Nolan admire the full setup.

The results were excellent! We made use of the large space in our adjacent lecture hall in order to capture the reverberation of the room, and the acoustics were great. Everyone seemed to come away with a deeper knowledge of microphone technique and added confidence for when they may be presented with a similar challenge.

AVIAN Returns Again to the DSU Underground

DSU Live was thrilled to once again welcome Avian (formerly Avian Sunrise) to perform in the Underground with special guest acoustic musicians, "Every Breath". Both bands rocked out some great tunes, including some amazing brand new songs from Avian.

As usual, the DSU live students worked very hard to put on a great sounding show, with the help of Avian's touring sound engineer. Enjoy the highlight vid from the show, including a time lapse of the full 5-hours of setup, performance, and teardown:

Recording Vocals in the Studio

 

As a part of our Recording Sessions course, we were excited to invite student Alexandria Monroe (pictured on right) to perform vocals for a session in order to demonstrate the technical setup and show proper voice recording techniques.

Some of the skills involved include proper routing and gain, sending the correct level and reverb to the vocalist, and creating "playlists" in order to do multiple takes. Alex was a good sport as we experimented with various routing configurations to demonstrate all of the possible sonic combinations. It was a good learning experience that the students can now pass on to their own independent projects.

DSU Talent Rocks the Underground

As a part of our homecoming week festivities, DSU Live hosted "DSU's Got Talent" in the Trojan Center Underground.  We were thrilled to have a huge turnout, with every seat filled! We were also lucky to have three ingenious (and quite hilarious) judges: Professor Michael Gaylor, Angela Behrends, and Susan Conover. The acts were impressive and diverse, including musical acts, comedy, and magic.

An anonymous posting from a student summed up the experience: "The DSU Talent show was amazing! Everyone there was nice, and well talented! For the first time I felt a feeling of bonding together and school spirit! From the very talented musicians, to the dorky hilarious comedians, over the bad ass rappers to stage breaking magicians, everyone was amazing! For the first time I can remember the school showed a sense of community. Everyone who missed this show better figure out what it was about! This year the events were joined in by so many people, it was a once in a life time event. The dance last month and many of the previous attractions were so well visited with such enthusiasm, this year is going to be a great one."

The scores were tallied from the judges, and the winner was Andrew Gross, followed by John Niesen and Billy Hofer. We can't wait for our next big event when we welcome Avian Sunrise back to the Underground in October! (All photos taken by Tiffany Sommer)