MMS 172 Midpoint Blog

My thoughts so far...

I want to start this blog by stating the emotion that I am feeling straight away. As of now, I feel a bit anxious more so about time management rather than the course itself. Even though there are less activities required for this term, I feel like the difficulty is slightly higher especially when combined with the workload from other courses. Added to this is the fact that I have very little experience with the technical aspects of audio. Nevertheless, I think I am trying my best to work with the equipment I have as well as the knowledge I have learned from the lessons so far. 

To talk more about the lesson modules, I mentioned in my self-introduction that I wanted to learn how to produce great quality audio that can help increase the caliber of my media work as someone who works on video and motion graphics. I believe that it has been doing quite well in living up to the expectations that I have cited. Currently, the lectures have been providing me with a lot of important knowledge that I never knew about. Some of those include the technical terms used in audio production, the different types of equipment, as well as the flow path of sound in the process of production. At the same time, I am realizing the causes for things I have wondered briefly before but never really dug deep into, just like the answer for why sounds echo more in empty rooms. To be even more specific, I am presently finding interest in hearing how different audio can sound like depending on the items surrounding the recording setup. Figuring out which items cause sound to reverb or become muddled has been very fascinating. For this reason, I am enjoying studying the lessons even if they can be difficult sometimes as a complete beginner.

Moving forward, I, too, have expectations for my own final project and the thought of being unable to properly achieve the results that I envisioned makes me uneasy. To be honest, I really did not contemplate other types of projects because I don’t have that much talent or skill that relates to audio. While I am able to do basic singing, I do not think that I have that much skill to be confident in recording a song. At the same time, I also do not have engaging speaking or voice acting skills to do something like storytelling or doing an audio drama. That is why instead of thinking too much about different types of projects, I focused more on what I can do with the skillsets and interests that I currently have, resulting in the project plan that I came up with for the first assignment.

In order to briefly describe how my progress is going, I am already writing the script for my podcast and have already thought of the flow that I want it to follow. While the script helped me with narrowing down the music pieces that I want to cover using the violin, I think that I would still have to try playing them first to see which ones are most achievable and would take the least amount of time, taking into account that I also have to work on activities and projects for other courses. To continue, as of writing this blog, I have tried out using my microphone with a windscreen. Using one has slightly improved the quality of my sample audios by reducing the plosives recorded. Of course it does not make my lavalier mic suddenly sound like great quality condenser microphones, however, I think that it is possible to solve that problem because I have been learning how to make my audio significantly more professional sounding through the DAW. The Unit 3 readings together with some DAW tutorials on Youtube were helpful for this. While I still plan on using Logic Pro as my main workstation, I am looking into studying Audacity as well. Depending on which one is easier to operate with as a beginner, I might use the latter for my initial recordings then transfer the work to the former to add virtual instruments and initiate the final mixing. Or I might just stick with Logic Pro for everything. Nothing is set in stone yet. For now this is where I am at in terms of progress. Coming after it will be practicing for the violin and for recording vocals.

In summary, I can say that while I am enjoying going through the lessons, the anxiety about failing to reach the standard that I expect for my project output is still overpowering everything else quite a bit. Even so, I am glad that I am making some advancements with my plans, especially with achieving audio quality improvement. It won’t be easy but I hope that the rest of the process stays smooth for the most part.

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