MMS 172: Midpoint Blog

My progress so far has been slow, and I’m going to be honest that I am clearly struggling with my plans for the project.  I’ve been able to do some test recording and brief editing on said materials but I still can’t figure out the crisp I am looking for in my project.  The lessons so far have been a great help to me in order to understand more about post-editing of audio and the purpose of each change made.

I have finished reading all course manuals in the portal and have gained a lot of information through it. I also used the course manual to choose some materials that I’ll be using for the project, one of which is the microphone. Knowing that I’ll be doing a podcast type of project (as I have planned from my assignment 1), I decided to buy a cardioid type of microphone since I’ll mostly be prioritizing to record my voice. I aim to minimize the surrounding sound so I opted for it since after reading the module, I learned that cardioid types have a broad frontal acceptance. Effectively reducing the sound from the sides and the rear. Given the tools I have, like I’ve said on my Assignment 1 submission, I’ll be focusing on maximizing what I can do on editing the sound to become prim and proper though I’m still having some trouble learning the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that I’m using. Tracktion Waveform is still something I am figuring out to this day, and I really hope I manage to learn the basics or starters from it. I’ve been watching videos regarding its usage but I am yet to grasp it wholly so far. Audacity on the other hand was somehow simpler to understand for me, but I mostly just aim to use it as a basic audio editing app instead of my main DAW for the project. Aside from the DAW, I was lucky to have some IEMs that I’ve bought out of pure curiosity back then. Both of which I use in assessing the audio recordings I am editing. I used to have the standard earphones bought from the sidewalk for around 5-8$, varying based on brand and location but still offers nearly identical audio quality. The IEMs that I have changed my perception about earphones though as it gave me a new experience, the wired one that I use was capable of delivering a clearer vocal audio reception. I tested my old standard earphones back then with a random music which I also played using the IEMs that I now have and I can tell the big difference in terms of clarity and quality. I am excited about how I’d be refining my project for the course. The voice recording tips from the course manual was really great to use as a reference. For someone who has no experience at all for this type of production, It’s like a god-sent material for me. Knowing that I am basically unexperienced and have little to no idea what to do. The only thing I know from audio recording was still back when I was in primary and secondary school years as I watched some broadcasting team doing their daily practices and such, but otherwise, none, none at all.

I was unfortunately unable to attend the recent F2F session because of personal responsibilities and part-time work as an encoder. I’ve wanted to attend the session as I have some questions in mind and I am hoping to learn more on tips and tricks on what I can do to further enhance the quality or the outcome of my on-going project as well. Evenso, I might consider asking my course mates who’ve attended the event and hopefully they are willing to entertain my questions too.

Right now, as I am typing out my thoughts in this blog. I am both extremely nervous and excited about my own project and the projects that are going to be made by my classmates. There are some that I am looking forward to, a news type solo podcast like mine, and some tutorial type of recording. My emotions when this course was started initially was entirely fear because I’ve never been able to do this at all. Well, I guess that’s true for anything or anyone doing something new once in their life. In any case, I hope to manage to pull off a project that I can definitely be proud of. I am definitely a newbie in this category but everyone ought to start somewhere.