Things That I Know

So I am starting a business. What better way to go about all of the setup than to write about it as I do it, sharing my experiences and hopefully hearing about yours. I am not opening a shop, or starting a traditional small business, but rather starting a company that will cover all of my freelance work, as well as a very narrow business in the management field.

The main part of the company will be managing one or more DJ’s in the Las Vegas area. It is not a full-time, quit your day job type of gig, but I plan on doing it right, from setting up a corporation to handling all of the tax paperwork.

So far, the outline for the company has been created, along with a decent, but not great business plan. That needs some work still, but I still consider it a work in progress. Also, we are in the final stages of narrowing down a name for the company.

After examining the options, I have decided to set up the company as a Limited Liability Corporation in Nevada. Once a name is finalized, I will be filing the LLC paperwork and moving on to the next step.

If anyone has any information on setting up an LLC in Nevada and/or business licenses in the Las Vegas area, feel free to contact me to share your experiences and any tips you may have.

Once I get the LLC paperwork taken care of, I’ll update the status of my new business.

Everybody in the modern world has come across the task of hooking something up. New television, DVD player, surround sound, TiVo — all of the luxuries necessities of today’s digital age. All of these products work hand in hand together. Understanding signal flow will put you in a position to hook up any new piece of equipment that you get.

Signal flow is a term used to describe the flow of the audio signal in a recording studio. That’s where I learned it, but the understanding I got working with recording studio signal flow can be transferred to any signal type of media. While the term technically describes the flow of audio in a studio, the same concepts can be used to get your consumer electronics hooked up and working together.

In a recording studio, a basic signal flow chain would take the signal from the microphone to the preamp to the console to the speakers. When you start inserting outboard gear like compressors, equalizers, and effects processors, you become more reliant on signal flow. Understanding signal flow is essential for troubleshooting, as you can interrupt the flow at any point and measure the signal. This lets you pinpoint the exact location of the trouble, and fix it.

With consumer electronics, you are really mixing multiple signals, but the main idea crosses over quite well. In order to make your entertainment system work, you need to take the signal from it’s root, and get it to it’s final destination. This may be as simple as taking your cable signal from the wall and making it show up on your television.

Before we get into how to connect everything, let’s go over the common wires and terms you’ll need to know.

Cables

There are many options and varieties of cables out there, and knowing which ones go with what is important. Some of them are also interchangeable, information you may want when shopping on a budget.

Coaxial Cables

• Coaxial cables are the most simple cable out there. This is the cable that comes out of the wall and goes into your cable box or satellite receiver. It carries both audio and video on one cable, and screws into the only place that it fits. There will be both and IN and OUT on most devices, but the most simple setup runs from the wall to the IN on the cable or satellite box. Most setups will start with coaxial, then move into the rest of our cables.

RCA Cables

• Probably the most common of the cables, this is your simple cable with a red, a white, and a yellow plug. This cable carries both audio and video. Video is the yellow cable, and the red and white are audio cables.

  RCA Cables can be used in a large variety of ways. Using certain connectors, you can use an RCA audio cable to go right into your computer or any other interface through the 1/8 (or mini) or 1/4 inch slot. For instance, if you wanted to dub something off of your television into a personal audio recorder, you could take the RCA audio OUT to a RCA to mini adapter, then use a mini to mini cable into your audio recorder. Or, a more simple way is to just get yourself an RCA-to-mini cable. This will all be explained in more detail later, but just know that when using RCA cables, you have tons and tons of options.

  Most basic setups that have more than just a television involve only RCA cables. If the absolute best quality isn’t you top priority, you’ll be fine just dealing with RCA cables.

S-Video

• An S-Video cable is a digital cable that transfers only video. There is no audio on an S-Video cable. It is the equivalent of just the yellow cable on an RCA cable. It provides a better quality picture than an RCA cable, however, but you’ll need a separate cable to transfer the audio.

  Some S-Video cables come coupled with two audio cables (red and white RCA cables), allowing you easy hookups if you’re not using any other equipment.If using S-Video, quality probably matters to you, and I’d suggest stepping up to the gold plated cables for better connectivity.

  If you are using a surround sound type of set up, this won’t be a problem, since your audio is going to a different place anyway.An S-Video cable only fits into S-Video INs and OUTs. You will not confuse this cable with any others, since it has a unique look of four metal prongs with one plastic prong. It will only fit in one place.

Component Video

• Component video cables are very similar to RCA cables in look and size, but act differently. Instead of sending the video signal on one wire, they send the video on three wires, separated by color for better quality. Component cables are a step up from RCA cables.

  If you want the best quality possible when using component cables, spring for the Monster component cables. They are a bit more costly, but you’ll see the difference.

Connectivity

Many of the cables mentioned above can work very well hand-in-hand with each other. Your setup can have every cable I’ve mentioned, and they would all be fine together. Remember, the key is to follow the signal from where it comes in, to where you want it to end. If you have satellite or cable, it comes in from the wall, and ends up on your screen. All you have to do is figure out what stops it’s going to make along the way. You may have a TiVo, DVD, VCR, DIRECTV, and surround sound all ready to be hooked up in one room. If you have a plan, it will be no problem getting it all hooked up.

Since these cables all work together, you can often combine the technologies. If you have a DVD player with only S-Video OUTs, and a TV with only RCA INs, we can take care of this. The easiest solution is to get yourself an S-Video-to-RCA adaptor. Then you just need an S-Video cable, right into the adaptor, and then an RCA-Video cable right into your TV. If you don’t have an adaptor, then we’ll have to get more creative, but trust me, we can make it work.

When it comes to connectivity, the first thing to remember is very simple. Audio-to-audio, and video-to-video. While that sounds very simple, you’d be surprised how often people hook things up wrong by crossing audio and video cables.

Hooking up entertainment systems is like hooking up Christmas lights. Really, you’re just making a chain. The signal starts at one end of the chain, and travels to the end, making the necessary stops along the way.

The Hook-Up

Now that you are familiar with your cables, it’s time to hook up your system. The goal is to take the signal from the wall, and run it through whatever pieces of equipment you have to get your desired goal.

First things first, get yourself powered up. That means all of the things you are going to hook up need a place to be plugged in. Get yourself a quality power strip“>power strip or if your budget allows, a good power center. If you’re spending a decent amount of money on all of your equipment, you might as well spend a little more to protect it. So step one is to arrange everything approximately where you want it to go, then run your power lines and plug everything in. (If you prefer to wait until all is hooked up to plug in, feel free, but at least run the cables to make sure they are long enough, etc.)

After you are plugged in, it’s time to get everything working together. The first thing you need to do is take your signal from the wall and get it to it’s receiver. This could be satellite television or cable, but you need to plug the coaxial cable in from the wall to the IN on it’s respective receiver. Once that signal is in the receiver, it’s time to spread it out.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume you have satellite TV, a TiVo (or VCR), a DVD player and a surround sound system. You want the signal to go from the satellite to the TiVo to the TV, the DVD to the TV, and the satellite and DVD to the surround sound.

Step One - Satellite to TiVo

• Simple enough, you take the cables of your choice (I’ll say we’re using RCA) and go from the satellite receiver OUT, to the TiVo IN. (To set up the TiVo, you’re on your own. Just follow the instructions on the screen)

Step Two - TiVo to TV

• After running an RCA cable from the satellite to the TiVo, the signal is now in the TiVo. To get that on your screen, you need to run another cable from the TiVo out to one of the INs on your television. The new televisions have room for up to about 10 inputs, so pick the one you’d like this to be. Since it’s probably your most commonly watched input, I’d plug this into INPUT 1. Now if you turn your TV and TiVo on, you should see the picture. If you plan on using your sound system for all of your sound when watching television, you only need to hook up the yellow cable in this step. Leave the red and white empty — we’ll get to them on step four.

Step Three - DVD (or VCR) to TV

• Just like the previous step, all you need to do is run a cable from the DVD OUT to the TV IN. Since DVD’s are all digital, you may want to use an S-Video or component cable here. Every little bit helps the overall quality. If you’re using RCA cables, remember that the yellow is video and the red and white are audio. If you’re using S-Video or component cables, you’ll need to run a separate line for the audio.

Step Four - Audio

• After you have the picture from your TiVo and DVD player hooked up into the TV, it’s time to get your sound going. If you plan on listening to things through the TV’s built in speakers, just hook up the red and white audio cables right along side of the video cables you’ve already plugged in. If you want the sound going through the surround sound speakers, then you’ll need to plug them in now.In the same spot that your video cable is, run an audio cable (red and white) from the TiVo OUT to one of the INs on your surround sound. There should be an input labeled TV INPUT or something similar. Plug it in there.Same thing for the DVD player. Run an audio cable from the DVD’s OUT to an IN on the surround sound (should be labeled as DVD INPUT or something similar).

  If you have speakers but are not an audiophile, and still like to have the sound come from the TV sometimes, you can plug things in a bit differently. This way may be easier for some people. Instead of running separate cables for the TiVo and DVD audio, just plug in the cables along side of the video cables. Just run all three (yellow, red, white) from the TiVo and DVD OUTs to the TV INs. Then, what you can do is run one audio cable from the TV’s OUT to the surround sound IN. This means that anything you plug into the TV will be able to be played out of the surround sound speakers.

Summary

While this may seem like a lot of words and look a bit confusing, it’s not. Remember that the goal of getting your system hooked up is to send the signal from it’s origin to it’s final destination. Following the signal flow of any signal is the best way to do it right and understand how everything works. You could make your system five times more complicated than the example I gave you, and it won’t matter. It’ll be the same theory with the same hook ups, just a few more of them. Just follow the signal flow and you’ll always know how to hook up that new piece of equipment.

Tags: Audio, Cables, Hooking Things Up, Signal Flow, Teach Yourself

Rather than read sheet music, most guitarists read “tabs.” Tabs are music written out for the guitar by string and fret. Tabs can be simple, one note at a time; or, they can be very complex with multiple notes being played simultaneously. We’ll start off here with the basics of how to read a tab.

The standard tuning on a guitar is E-A-D-G-B-e. That means from the top (thickest/bass string) to the bottom (thinest/highest) string, the strings are tuned EADGBe. Both the first and sixth string are both tuned to ‘E’, so a lowercase ‘e’ is used on the higher string to differentiate the string we’re talking about.

A basic tab sheet will look like this:

e———————————
B———————————
G———————————
D———————————
A———————————
E———————————

Now, any number that shows up on the tab indicates what note to be playing on that string. For instance, if there is:

e–7————————-
B—-5———————–

…then you would play the 7th fret of the high ‘e’ string, then the 5th fret of the ‘B’ string.

Try this one:

e—0-0-7-7-9-9-7—–5-5-4-4-2-2-0——————-
B———————————————————
G———————————————————
D———————————————————
A———————————————————
E———————————————————

That should sound like “Twinkle, Twinkle”.

Eventually, you’ll be playing:

e————————————————————————-
B—0——-1——-3———-12—-12–12—-12—-12–12————
G——0——-0——-0———-0——-0——-0——-0————-
D————————————————————————–
A———–0——-2———-10——10——10——10—————
E—3———————————————————————-

E—————————————————————————
B—5——-8——-7——-10———8—–8—8—–8—–8—8——-
G——-0——-0——-0——-0———-0——-0——-0——-0—-
D—————————————————————————
A—3——-4——-5——-6———-7——-7——-6——-6———-
E—————————————————————————

That’s “Blackbird” by The Beatles. Now, that may look intimidating now, but you’ll be able to play that much sooner than you think. I only post that tab so you have something to shoot for, sort of as a measuring stick. When you can play “Blackbird”, you’ve got a decent grasp on playing tabs.

In the meantime, there are plenty of websites that offer guitar tabs, so pick some of your favorite tunes and give it a go. There will be plenty of songs too advanced to start with, but make note of them, and periodically check back to see if you can play them yet. It’s a good way to keep track of your progress. You may want to play a song now, but it looks like it’s in another language, then, six months from now you can cruise right through it.

For tabs, there are lots of sites, but I recommend:
Ultimate Guitar
tTabs
911 Tabs

There are obviously more like this, but these are all good. Of course, you can buy tab books from your local music store as well. This is a good way to get a good selection of music in the genre you like, and you can play without having to sit in front of a computer.

Tabs take some time to fully grasp. But if you’re not just playing chords, they are the best way to learn how to play a song on the guitar. Take your time and play each note. Then, when you get comfortable with when to play each note, you can speed up your play to the tempo of the song.

Tags: Guitar, Tabs

Teaching yourself to play the guitar could be considered a never ending process. As long as there are songs to be learned or written, there is more guitar playing to learn. But learning just how to play the instrument is something you can teach yourself, and make yourself quite competent in in a fairly short time.

When I say a fairly short time, I do not mean you’ll be good by next week. But you can play some things you recognize in that time. But it requires dedication to teach yourself how to play the guitar well.

In order to learn how to play the guitar, we’ll start with the basics, all the way back at step one.

First, what kind of guitar do you want to play. In general, you need to learn the basics for any style, but there are enough differences that the learning process will change. Do you want to play the acoustic, electric or classical guitar? While you can learn to play on any of them, they are all different instruments. For instance, the strings are different on each guitar, changing the level of playability accordingly. Acoustic guitars mostly are steel stringed, classical are nylon, and electric are also usually steel-based. The way they are made however, makes each one more or less “playable”. A first-time guitar user may have an easier time pushing down the strings on an electric guitar than an acoustic because of the strings.

Generally, classical guitars are used for classical music or similar types. Spanish music is often classical based. It has a softer tone to it and is played with the fingers, rather than a pick. Acoustic guitars can be played either finger-style or with a pick. It can be used for both rythym and for solos. Electric guitars are played with a pick and require additional equipment to be played. They are plugged into an amplifier and can be played much louder than acoustic guitars. Electric guitars can also be used for rythym or soloing, but are far better than the others for basic solos.

I’m sure some people will disagree with the basics of what I just wrote, but I’m just trying to give you a basic idea. There are plenty of expert classical guitarists that can out-solo electric players, but I’m only trying to speak in general terms. If you just want to learn how to play the basics, I’d recommend an acoustic guitar, then progress towards the style you like best after you have a foundation. I say this because I think the acoustic is the toughest to play. Not in theory, but physically. You need to push the strings much harder than on an electric, which makes moving to an electric guitar later seem much easier.

Making your choice of what kind of guitar you want to play is a purely personal choice. The first guitar I ever played was a cheap acoustic guitar. I didn’t find out until later on, that it was not a good guitar. But in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know, because being so tough to play has made all guitars I’ve picked up since feel like solid gold. My advice is to pick a guitar you like, one you’ll want to pick up everyday, regardless of it’s style. Pick something in your price range that you like, and you’ll be happy.

Once you have a guitar, you’re ready to start playing it. Be patient, and take baby steps, and next thing you know, you’ll be pretty good.

Now, it’s time for lessons in playing.

Tags: Guitar, Teach Yourself

I’ve taught myself a lot of things. From book learning, such as history, religion and philosophy, to practical skills, like playing the guitar or piano, or building a website. The most important aspect to teaching yourself anything is simply dedication.

In order to learn something, you have to be willing to suffer through the process of not getting it. For a while, you’ll want to quit simply because something doesn’t make sense, and it’s frustrating.

For me, the best way to teach myself how to do things is baby-steps. When you want to learn the guitar, learn it one note, then one chord at a time. After I learned the guitar, I applied the same techniques to the piano.

If you expect to teach yourself advanced skills overnight, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. With physical things, like instruments, you have to give your body a chance to develop muscle memory, and condition your hands to play in the most efficient manner. Be patient, and create a gameplan, and you can teach yourself many things you never thought you could.

In order to build a gameplan, research what you want to learn about and try to outline what order you should learn things in. Don’t try to start with advanced topics, because you’ll find yourself constantly going back to the beginning to fill in the blanks you’ll inevitably have. Figure out what you need to learn to satisfy your goals, then map out the best way to get there.

My basic outline for teaching yourself things is this:

• Pick what you want to learn

• Research the general field of that topic, even if it doesn’t make sense. This will help you with some of the basic terminology and ideas you’re going to come across

• Pick a narrow field within the broader topic to start with

• Build upon each topic one-by-one, simply adding on with each new step

• After each two or three steps, go back a few steps and make sure that it “stuck” with you

Of course, this may not work for some things. If you want to learn to fly an airplane, teaching yourself using these methods is probably not a good idea. But if it is something that can realistically be learned on your own, I recommend this style.

There are personal step-by-steps for individual topics elsewhere on this site.

Tags: Teach Yourself