Blog #1: Midpoint 🎯

Hearing how they had professional microphones with good recordings gave me enough pressure that I had to be on par with them and tried to convince myself that no matter how much acoustic treatment and soundproofing I do, as long as the microphone itself is not good, I won't be able to get and learn the full potential of audio. It took quite some time before making the final decision to buy a microphone, as there was also a part of me that said that my equipment is quite privileged enough considering it is lowkey on the decent end, and some are just using their smartphones or earphones to record--that I should be thankful enough to have a proper headset for recording, or that my other classmates who were just using average equipment such as their phones were able to be on par with the ones that had professional microphones. This salient argument led me to question myself if maybe I was the problem, or if I was not just doing enough to treat my recordings well. After some careful thought, I still decided to buy one as I thought that it was still a good investment, even if I currently have no idea how I am going to use it in the future. Who knows? :)

I have decided that I don't want to succumb to negative pressure so I remained optimistic. If there is something I learned halfway through Unit II coming into fruition, it's that if I may not be able to be on par with a listener's general hearing to a well-sounding recording, especially for my future works such as the final project, it's that I tried to learn from the process and use it as my tools for improvement. This is not to make any excuses for creating haphazard work, of course, but I thought of this as a healthier way of competing not with others, but with myself, where I get to acknowledge my vulnerabilities and try to learn from my mistakes, while still pushing myself to do best. In this way, the pressure that I felt and will feel is turned into something more productive, and take this pressure to drive myself to learn more outside the four corners of MyPortal. 

Taking these realizations into account, this is where I have planned to take an objective approach to my final project. I want to remain focused on looking into my work, where I will dig deep into loads of resources that I may deem helpful in my creative process. Genuinely speaking, I also root for my classmates upon seeing their project proposals in the forums as I find their ideas cute, creative, and unique. I may have also caught myself being sort of inggit (used the Filipino term as envious sounds too much in my sense) because most of them will resort to singing, as I would not even think twice about doing the same thing if I just knew how to sing LOL. There may be a few hiccups of overthinking every now and then for wanting to do the best for the final project, these cannot be entirely avoided but I will still do what needs to be done to create as decent of a work as possible. 

As I mentioned a while ago the beauty of this course for driving me to learn outside the four corners of my screen, unfortunately, I was not able to go to the recent F2F session in the UPOU headquarters, as I am still from far Metro Manila. However, if given the chance that schedules and the universe will allow me to attend to future sessions for this course, I would gladly join and pitch myself in. As everyone knows how the setup in UPOU works, socialization is still a must and sitting on our screens 24/7 must also be tiring. Although it was a choice to study here, it would not hurt to try and be a social butterfly from time to time! 🥳🦋

-end-

References:

1. Karp, T. (2011, May 2). Random thoughts on art and other stuff - From my new book. Art And the Zen of Design. http://www.tlc-systems.com/artzen2-0035.htm