Week 2 (26/09) : Audio Recording Introduction & Soundwalk Exercises

In this weeks lesson we were introduced to the audio recorders and microphones that we will be using throughout the first year of the module (Marantz PMD-661, Sennheiser K6, Sennheiser Dynamic Handheld Mic). I have very little experience working with sound, the only audio recorders I have used before have been small lapel mics and a zoom mic, so being able to experience new equipment like this was very exciting! 

After being introduced to the equipment we were asked to split into pairs and do 2 seperate soundwalks. First we were asked to use to the Sennheiser Dynamic Handheld Mic to do an omnidirectional soundwalk so myself and my partner Connor decided to walk through the Eat Central hall and the Co-op on campus in order to capture the transition between two different acoustic spaces in our recording. After completing this we downloaded the audio clips onto our hardrives and put them into Adobe Audition in order to adjust them slightly and add certain effects to the beginning and the end to make them sound more effective. We were then asked to do a directional soundwalk this time using thr Sennheiser K6 so Connor and I decided to walk around a certain section of the campus so that we could capture snippits of students conversations as they walked past. As we were outside it was really nice because we captured the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze and the sound of our footsteps as well as the birds squawking in the sky, all these sounds came together to create a really lovely soundwalk. We then did the same with the second group of clips and edited them slightly in Audition and then played the soundwalk out to the class. 

The omnidirectional soundwalk can be found here.

The directional soundwalk can we found here.

Week 1 (19/09) : Introduction to the Course & BBC Sound FX Exercise

The first Creative Production Sound lesson was really interesting this week as we were introduced to the course itself and the BBC sound fx library! We started off by having a brief group discussion on radio/sound design basics and more specifically the idea of 'pareidolia' (a psychological phenomenon where the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists, e.g seeing a cloud that you believe looks like a certain animal) We were shown an audio clip and we had to identify how many voices we thought we heard during the short clip. I guessed that there were 5 voices in the clip and some other students guessed as high as 12, when in actual fact there were only 2! I found this concept really interesting, how certain sounds can be mistaken as the human voice. 

After that we were then introduced to the BBC sound fx library and Adobe Audition, we were able to see the large amount of sound effects on offer and had to pick 10 from the list in order to create a short soundscape for a location of our choice using Audition. Being from Brighton I decided to make a soundscape of the beach, to do so I used a small range of sound effects such as water flowing, pebble splashes, footsteps on stones etc. I found this exercise really exciting as I have used the Adobe Creative Suite before but never Audition, so learning this new programme was really fun!

The soundscape that I created can be found here : https://soundcloud.com/user-546805850/week-1-multitrack-mixdown