Monthly Archives: April 2016

For the reading in this week, to be honest, the theoretical knowledge of sound is a little boring. And I did spend lots of time to understand and receive all the knowledge, but I still feel it is hard to remember all the knowledge, especially the part of microphone. Too many types of microphone need to be identified, and various functions of each microphone need to be known. Finally, I found out that it is not necessary to remember all the microphone types, and also it is difficult to remember without real goods.

After reading this article, I did know lots of new and interesting knowledge of sound. Firstly, it is the importance of sound. Except visual, sound is another good way to help imaging. Sound helps people to understand what they see with eyes, helping them to make sure are there any other meaning behind visual. For example, environmental sound can help people to find out the location of sound source. When people hear the sound of running water, they will know the sound source is near the river, sea or lake. Now, I remember the reading and lecture last week, deaf people cannot hear, but they still can fill sound and beat. Actually, sound is not simple, and a good audio can be felt by everyone.

The next part is about the definition of sound. Because sound is created by physical vibration, all the knowledge in this part is physics knowledge, a little boring. When a sound is made, the molecules in the air surrounding it are displaced and then pull back slightly, creating a pressure followed by release. That is the wave of sound. Wavelength, frequency, pitch, amplitude and velocity are proper noun of sound. The shorter the wavelength is, the higher the frequency. The larger vibration is represented by a taller sound wave.

About recording sound, the reading discusses the differences between analog recording and digital recording, and the advantages and disadvantages of analog recording and digital recording.

In this workshop, the most interesting part is recording exercise. Using the H2N zoom, Sylvia and me chose the first question to do exercise. And also, in this class, Professor Louise gave us a suggestion for sound editing. Once the sound editor editing audio, it would be better to put the sound appear before the appearance of the character. In this way, people would feel more comfortable to see the video, accepting video.

To record sound, it is difficult for recorder to avoid noise so people need to record sound in quiet space. If recorder needs ambient sound, it needs to be recorded as another audio, and then combine all the audio together. By this method, the main audio that is the sound of interviewee can be placed on foreground.

Sound, to be more concrete, it should be Media Affordances, which is the topic of this lecture. Rachel Wilson showed us a PowerPoint of the topic, and that PowerPoint has almost 70 sides, that amazed me. To be honest, I download that when I back to home, reviewing the lesson. Too many knowledge need to be knew and remembered. Indeed, I have spent a lot of time to read that PowerPoint although some people told me that is not worthy.

In this PowerPoint, there are seven parts to introducing the Media Affordances (Sound). There are Listening VS. Hearing, What is Sound, Components of Sound, Types of Sounds, Sound perspective, Recording Sound and Microphones etc.

For the first part, listening and hearing, these two quiet similar words are actually different. According to the PowerPoint from Professor Rachel, Hearing is an ability of perceiving sound, and Listening almost depends on attention. It can be easy to understand by listened to the music made by John Cage who was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. The most famous music is 4’33’’ but this music makes many musicians angry, because there is no traditional melody in that music. Also, for me, I cannot understand what he wanted to express when I listened 4’33’’ firstly. However, I do think that his music is one of the best examples that can help people to understand the difference between listening and hearing. It makes me remember the video called the beat I was born without.

This video talks about a experience of a woman who is deaf. She cannot hear everything since she came to this world so she cannot normally communicate with normal people, that makes she feels very lonely. Travelling to Holland, she found out a community that lots of deaf people gather together, enjoying dancing and listening in clubs. Not only this woman, almost every deaf people here express that they can listen to the music, dancing with the beat.

So, to be honest, everyone can listen to music if they focus.

It was the first time that I recorded sound with professional machine that is the zoom H2n. At the beginning, Sylvia and I spent some time to make sure how to use the recording machine, indeed, that was very attractive. The first problem we met is that how to find out the files that belongs to us, and we finally solved that. Then we chose a special space in level 11 in building 80, just the level up on our classroom. Then the next question come to our mind was that who is the interviewer and who is the interviewee, but we didn’t spend lots of time on that. After discussion, Sylvia became the interviewee because she has a better voice. Although the special space is empty and Sylvia still felt shy, the results are good.

To make a audio, recording is the first step. Now turn to the next step that is editing. This time, I used two softwares that are premier and audition. Firstly, I used premier to cut the sound in order to connect each main recording, making it more fluently. Next I found out there are some noise in the ambient sound so I used the audition to dislodge that noise. Moreover, to protrude the main recording that is the voice of Sylvia, I used premier making the loudness of that sound more loudly.

At the end, I think it would be better for me to edit sound with premier and audition together.