September 4, 2008

Three most important things I learned in class today:

1) In class we went on a journey to an open field where we clustered in the left corner near the road.  We were discussing sounds when Professor Beffel brought up the point that there is never silence.  There is always some sort of noise in the background whether they are voices in your head, a slight hum, or ringing in your ears.  I never had thought of silence never existing until Professor Beffel began the discussion.  It was a fascinating fact to encounter.

2)    2) During class we were introduced to audio recorders.  We were able to discover the different opportunities the recorders allowed us to use.  I learned the difference between he 120 and 90 frequency; discovering that 90 picks up less background sound waves than 120, which has a larger sound range.  The audio recorder was an interesting device that was fun and simple to use after following the tutorial.

3)    3) Professor Beffel introduced the program Sound Studio 3 to all her students.  The audio mixing program was exciting to experiment with.  After learning the basics, my group and I were able to record foreground, midground, and background sounds throughout the quad and import them into Sound Studio.  We were able to layer and mix them together to produce one sound stream.  For our first project we are assigned to make our own sound stream.  I am interested in experimenting with dorm distraction sounds.  I am very excited to begin this project!