Intermediate Audio Production Week 5: Valuable Intel

I had a lot fun of working working with my group members Roman and Eric over the weekend on our Radio Drama. Getting into the studio and getting down to business for ourselves was a long awaited treat. As I've said before, there is a great deal if difference between being told how to do something and actually doing it for yourself. However, just sitting and listening is a big part of this course which probably just comes with the territory. There's a lot of material to absorb and sometimes the only way to break the ice when learning about it is to sit and listen. It felt really good to get into the professional studio environment and actually get things to work. We worked well as a team and took care of business. It's nice though that everyone got an extension due to the whole reading week thing, because it will give us a bit more time to fine tune it. The class today was also very fun. We got a practical example of recording in the studios and the remixes we started with Kevin were fun as heck. Pro Tools is so cool because you don't actually need to record anything to make music. Just import some music and mess around with effects like elastic time  and add the preloaded backing tracks. Also, not really being into electronic music of any kind, I was quite enlightened by the discussion about MIDI. What boggled my mind is the fact that it is computer information which exists out in the ether of the virtual world and not actually existing as music. I can't wait to actually use this stuff for myself because it's just so damn cool. Although this course is as heavy as they told us, the stuff we're learning opens up so many possibilities in the realm of audio production that it is worth the six hour power session.

Intermediate Audio Production Week 4: Weapons Training

I had lot of fun messing about with the pass/fail assignment Kevin walked us through. It was nice to actually get to do some of the things we've been talking about over last couple of weeks. It's one thing to listen and learn about stuff but I feel it is much more effective to just get in there and do it for yourself. Making mistakes and filling blanks for yourself is an effective way to learn something new, for me anyways. When you figure something challenging out for yourself I feel you retain that much more. Brian spoke about what I think of as the musical assembly line. All the different steps involved from recording a song to getting out into the world. What seems like a very simple two step process is as dense as it is deceptive. Usually people don't think about how much work goes into a production be it music, movies, or whatever, the only thing they are seeing is the final product. Being in a production based program, I have really gained a new appreciation for all the work that goes into any sort audio-visual work. I hope to apply the things we've learned so far to our radio drama assignment which is coming up. No doubt we can have a lot of fun with this and get to know our way around all the magnificent equipment as a team.

Intermediate Audio Production Week 3: Standard Issue

Building on our audio-technical theory class from last year, the microphone demo really hammered home the fact that for for every kind of job out there that requires you to harness the power sound, there is a specific microphone for the job as well. From the looks of it there isn't a mic yet that can make your coffee in the morning but with enough time someone will develop it. I wonder what everything (Movies, music, etc) would sound like today if only one type of microphone had ever been invented. As aspiring audio technicians its comforting to know that for the many situations we may find ourselves in, our choice of sonic weaponry is not limited. Speaking off harnessing sound, It appears that there is also no limit to what we can do to sound once we've captured it. The array of effects and combination of different effects we have at our disposal is so vast there is almost an infinite amount of different sounds we can create from just a single tone. We can actually get to the point where there is more of the "processed" sound than the original sound which is scary.

Intermediate Audio Production Week 2: Basic Training

Well, a week into it and already my mind is blown. When they said material heavy course they meant material heavy course. For starters, the routing demo Finlay gave left me as lost as Frodo was in Mordor. There is definitely more to Pro Tools than I first imagined. I've never used any sort of professional level software but since Pro Tools is the "industry standard", learning how to use it should help to build a familiarity with all the different audio production set ups out there. I always thought an audio mixing set up was binary: an input goes through to a mediator which then goes to an output. At the core I guess that's what it is, but the really magic takes place in between those steps. This was made clearly evident with all the "bus-ing" that was going on. A bus used to be a big box with wheels that took you form place to place, but now it is some mystical, virtual, outlet in the ether of Pro Tools. That Pro Tools Refresher we did was nothing compared to the tasks ahead. I am looking forward to learning all these things but now I have these wonderful studios to familiarize myself with, another uncharted territory we must traverse through this term. These studios look so cool when you're standing at the door but once you get inside and sit behind the big desk with all the different buttons and knobs and flashing lights and little screens and input/outputs and sliders and speakers and wires and sliders and.....Yeah, it can get a little intimidating. My experience in the studios can be described best with the metaphor of a country person moving to the big city. (I'm from Scarborough so it's sort of the same thing).

Intermediate Audio Production Week 1: Welcome to the Fold

Well here we are in another year school. A year which looks to be as promising and eventful as the last one. I have chose to focus on the Audio branch of RTA to see if my passion for music and audio in general will put me on the right path for the future. "Intermediate Audio" however looks as scary as it sounds. From the looks of things we'll be jumping straight into the deep end in this course. Finlay mentioned that this is a double credit course and that we will be covering lots of material. That in conjunction with a 6 hour class should prove to be a fully loaded learning experience. I must say though that as much as I am looking forward to this course I quite nervous as well. I've always been making things at home for various assignments and other personal endeavors but I have never been in an actual, professional level, audio environment. I hope this course will rid me of my fears and also help build my confidence in the sonic realm. You can enjoy doing something but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good at it. I do hope that that is  not the case here because if I could work in audio in a professional capacity in the future that would be so cool. I'm exactly sure what sort of audio production I might like to do, be it music production or sound for films, but hopefully this course helps me figure it out and narrow my focus accordingly.

I really enjoyed first year audio production and I'm sure this year's course will add on the foundation first year gave me. When it comes to media, I consider myself a jack-of-all trades which is why this program appealed to me in the first place because it has pretty much everything. However I've always leaned more to working with sound. Apparently I have nomadic kin in Ireland that go around playing music and stuff...whether that has anything to do with anything remains to be seen. Intermediate Audio Production looks to be an interesting time no matter what happens and I look forward to developing my audio-technical skill set in such a professional setting that is the Audio department of RTA. 

Week 12 in Digital Media: Farewell

Goodbye Digital Media... but not really. As this is an integral part of the whole radio and television industry, I do believe I will be running into it again in some form.

When I first saw this class on my schedule, I did not think I was going to enjoy it. I mean, I like creating things on the computer as much as the next person, but I figured since there was a lecture and lab dedicated to this course, it would be much more in depth than simply just computer stuff. I was pleasantly surprised however with what the course brought forward and introduced to me. I usually don't have the patience for this sort of thing, the precise clicking and timelines and layers and masks and effects and render options, but I actually enjoyed learning how to do all of it. Having said that, I believe that this course has also turned me off digital media, but in a good way...if there is such a thing. I knew going into this program that I was leaning towards the audio side, but I did want to see what the digital media side offered as well. Like I said, I was happy with everything it taught me, but it has also confirmed that my skills and true talents lie somewhere else, which is not a bad thing at all.

The fact that the this course had both a lecture and a lab was really helpful. If it had just been a lab we would not have learned how the work we do in the course is actually part of a much bigger picture... and I do mean picture, or poster, or card, or screen. The lecture taught me a lot about the history of media and how it has affected the world in the long and short term. The examples shown in lecture helped me understand how each aspect of media is put to use in the world around us. Knowing all these aspects better prepares any of us who wish to pursue any sort of career in this field.
The lab taught me a lot about the technical side of digital media. All the programs and such that are used in this business. I must say that I thought it wouldn't be that hard to use some of these programs but they turend out to be quite a challenge. As digital is not my forte it was actually a challenge in a half but I enjoye dit and was pleased when I was able to open up a program and know exactly what to do, and i can thank this course for giving me the skills necessary to do so.

All in all, I think this course was a fun and crucial part of the foundation required to continue in this business....duh. Although I was not the best at it, I still had fun figuring stuff out and creating stuff I didn't know I could do.

Week 11 in Digial Media: Interactivity + Web Media

Interactivity is pretty cool. Things that seemed impossible not that long ago are now a reality. We can now have conversations with computers.... and actually result in something constructive. Things like figuring out what the weather will be like or having something searched up. Not only interacting with computers is cool, but also interacting with the world around us in different ways. Of course we interact with the world around us, like when we go out, but now there's a whole new dimension to interacting with the environment. By combining our digital world with our physical and natural one, we've opened up so many new possibilities. Imagine you're walking down the street one day and a picture jumps off a billboard to advertise something to you. We're not quite there just yet, but we are well on our way. This whole interactivity thing also has it's.... mehs.  Sooner or later, there's going to be no such thing as an individual because there will always be some sort of connection to the rest of the world. Just when you think you've found a quiet spot to relax a hologram pops up and starts talking to you, like the doctor from Star Trek.

When a brand allows it's fans to do the creating is pretty cool too. One recent example was from the Walking Dead where they got the fans of the show to create a teaser trailer for the first season and chose the best one. Now that the audience has become a part of the creating process, it's hard to figure out who the artist is. The lined between fan and artist has become blurred in a sense but this isn't really a bad thing. With everyone creating, there are a surplus of ideas. No matter how good or bad these ideas are, they usually get to put to use in some shape or fashion. Whether its an idea for a tv commercial or poster for a movie, the audience takes the creating part in to there own hands and does there best to make the vision they have for a particular brand, a reality. From youtube videos to blog posts to facebook uploads to tumblr posts, the "fan" these days has many ways of getting their views seen by lots of people.