Throughout this week's lesson, the aim was to continue developing our project 1 page and submission. To achieve this, we were required to go through further glossary terminology and understand the meaning of different keywords. The keywords that we focused on this week were comb filtering, dynamic range, timbre, pitch, acoustic envelope, and RMS.
As a preclass activity this week, we were required to watch a video about acoustic envelopment. This video provided us with an idea of what acoustic envelopment is and how it could be applied. In terms of this week's glossary terms learnt, all definitions can be found and identified under class notes below or within the project one tab of this unit. This week was also used to meet up with my group members and discuss what the next steps are before next week's submission dates. The main aim was to identify and explain what had already been covered and explained within the project assignment and also what could be improved to improve our project submission. In regards to the track analysis, I decided to create different subheadings throughout our group project to identify what content was done by whom.
The way in which the learnt glossary terms can be used and applied in a real-life context is when working with different artists and engineers and when analysing the audio features of projects both in a live sound and studio senarios. The learnt terms will help us as audio students define what can be seen and heard using the correct definition and key terminology. My next steps for this week are to review the whole project document and understand what sections can be improved. To action these steps, I will be emaling my group members' with my opinions and ways in which I feel they improvments can be implemented. I will also look to insert examples or other comprehensive tasks as references. During today's session, we also had the opportunity to discuss and collaborate with other students on what they have done in their projects and how they have undertaken the research process.
Lastly, in regards to the transferable skills learnt this week, I feel that cognitive outsourcing and problem solving were things that were strongly applied and could be reflected on. The reason why I feel these two skills were strongly applied within this week's lesson was due to our, as individuals and groups, having had the opportunity to collaborate with other students to reflect on what they had done in comparison to our project. This task gave us a guide for improvement and reflective practice.
Pitch: Pitch is simply defined as the vibration that an instrument makes. The pitch and a timbre define how a note sounds. When pitch and duration is combined, melodies are made. There are 5 types of pitches. They are Perfect Pitch, which allows a person to identify a note in a scale if they have another note as a reference point. Absolute Pitch is when a person can easily identify any musical note just from hearing any song without needing any reference whatsoever. A Sharp Pitch is a type of pitch that is too high for a specific note, however, it can be adjusted by re-tuning your instrument or by adjusting your technique. A Flat Pitch on the other hand, is too low for a specific note, which is the complete opposite of a Sharp Pitch. The last pitch type is a Diatonic Pitch, which is a part of a major or minor scale. For example, in a C major scale, notes C,D,E,F,G,A and B are all diatonic pitches (MasterClass, 2022).
Overtones : overtone, in acoustics, tone sounding above the fundamental tone when a string or air column vibrates as a whole, producing the fundamental, or first harmonic. If it vibrates in sections, it produces overtones, or harmonics. The listener normally hears the fundamental pitch clearly; with concentration, overtones may be heard (Britannica, n.d)
RMS: This stands for Root Mean Square, which is a metering tool that is used to measure the average loudness of any audio track within a rough window of 300 milliseconds. The value that is displayed is an average of the audio signal. The value gives the person a more accurate display of the perceived loudness of the audio track for the average listener. Utilizing metering tools help to visualize the average RMS of a track that helps with avoiding distortion (Modrall, 2021).
Filtering: It is essentially using tools called filters in order to transform the tone of a song into what we want. They can remove certain frequencies or isolate certain frequencies so that they can be boosted. The two most common filters are Low-Pass Filters and High-Pass Filters or LPF and HPF for short. LPF’s are mainly used to isolate bass, create warmth in a song by removing harsher high frequencies, preserve the fundamental frequencies of a sound, whilst removing harmonics, last but not least, they also create low shelf filters. HPF’s on the other hand, are used to remove rumble and any other sounds that are below the lowest fundamental frequency of a sound, remove basslines and kicks when sampling and mixing and also to create tension before a bassdrop arrives so that there is more of an impact when the low ends return (Producer Hive, n.d).
Frequency analysis: Normally, sound and vibration phenomena occur with specific frequency characteristics. Multiple frequency components coexist in complex patterns. Determining the respective levels of these frequency components is called frequency analysis. (Support Room, n.d.)
MasterClass. (2022). Pitch in Music Explained: 5 Examples of Pitch in Music. Retrieved from: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/pitch-in-music-explained#how-is-pitch-measured
Producer Hive. (n.d). Audio Filter Types (Explained Simply). Retrieved from: https://producerhive.com/music-production-recording-tips/audio-filter-types/
Youtu.be. https://youtu.be/Q-ot9AaJx-Y.
Support Room.(n.d). Frequency Analyzers. Retrieved from: https://rion-sv.com/support/st_frequency_en.aspx
“Speed of Sound.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Mar. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound.
Splice. (2020). What is distortion? | Distortion’s main types and use cases in music. Retrieved from: https://splice.com/blog/effects-101-distortion/
Towards Data Science.(2021). Learning From Audio Spectrograms. Retrieved from: https://towardsdatascience.com/learning-from-audio-spectrograms-37df29dba98c
Wikipedia. (2022). Harmonics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic