These lessons are available free to anyone who wants to use them. If you are an instructor who uses this blog in a class, I would love to hear from you and get your feedback!
Update your BAVC profiles. I have sent each of you an email telling you what you're missing. Please check your BAVC gmail accounts and see what you need. At the very least everyone will need to upload their Final Projects (see below).
Finish your Final Projects! You will need to convert your Projects to MP3 or FLV movie format. (People doing an audio post-production piece will need to convert their files. Ask Quinn how to do this.)
Backup your work. In the Shared Media folder, there is a folder called Best Work. Inside that folder, there is a folder with your name. Please put 3-4 of your best pieces INCLUDING YOUR FINAL PROJECT in that folder. Also, if you would like to back up your work, I have DVDs that you burn your files onto and take home.
Thanks for being an amazing class. I can't wait to see you guys at our
Graduation Event Friday, June 18 5:30-7:30pm
@BAVC's main office 2727 Mariposa St., 2nd floor San Francisco, CA 94110
Each of you are going to come up and show me how to get a basic recording session going. Here are the exact things I'm going to ask you to do, so if you are unsure about any of these, please be sure to ask me to go over them before we get going.
Select vocal and talkback microphones. Set up the vocal mic on the mic stand.
Plug cables and headphones into inputs on the Digi 003.
Create a new Pro Tools session in a designated folder.
Create new audio tracks and label them accordingly.
Set the microphone inputs on the audio tracks.
Get signal from the mics and set good levels.
Adjust headphone levels.
Record a short vocal segment.
Save and close the Pro Tools session.
Transfer the session folder to the Media Share folder.
Today we are going to be sharing the work we have done so far on our Final Projects and provide feedback to help us get these sounding/looking as good as they possibly can.
First, please put copies of your projects into: Shared Media>Student Work>Peer Review
When you come up, before you play your project for us, I want you to say a few words about it. This will help you to be prepared if someone hears your project at the Graduation and wants to ask you about it. Please answer the following questions:
What's your name?
What is your project? (song, audio post production piece, etc.)
What do you think is unique about it? How does it reflect your own personal style?
What software programs did you use to make it?
What is one part of it that you really like? What inspired you to create that part?
What's something that was hard about your project? How did you do to make it work?
What do you have left to do?
Out of everything we have learned about in this class, what did you enjoy the most? What kind of project would you work on next?
Today your priority is on getting as much work done on your Final Projects as possible. We will be getting up in front of the class and presenting what we've got on Monday, so try to knock out as much as you can.
The other thing I will be doing Monday is starting to give you guys individual evaluations on what I think are the most important thing you should be leaving this class with. Namely, I want you to be confident about setting up and running a recording session!
This is not supposed to be a surprise test and I'm not going to try to trick you. In fact, I will tell you right now what I am going to be asking you to do. Please take a look at the list below and see if there is anything there that you feel unsure about. If you would like to go over anything, please come up to the instructor station sometime today and I will be happy to review with you! Setting up a Session Each of you is going to come up and show me how to get a Pro Tools session going. Here are the exact things I'm going to ask you to do, so if you are unsure about any of these, please be sure to ask me to go over them before we get going.
Select vocal and talkback microphones. Set up the vocal mic on the mic stand.
Plug cables and headphones into inputs on the Digi 003.
Create a new Pro Tools session in a designated folder.
Create new audio tracks and label them accordingly.
Check the inputs on your tracks and make sure the correct mics are going to them.
Get signal from the mics and set good levels.
Adjust headphone levels.
Record a short vocal segment.
Save and close the Pro Tools session.
Transfer the session folder to the Media Share folder.
Well, we are getting very close to the end of our class. Here are some dates you should be aware of...
Important Upcoming Dates:
Friday, May 21 - Last makeup class
Tuesday, May 25 - Peer Review
Thursday, May 27 - Last day of class
Friday, June 18 - Graduation!!!
Final Projects Starting today, everyone will be working on a Final Project. Our main focus until the end of class is going to be in getting these projects completed. This is your chance to make a polished audio project that showcases the skills you have acquired throughout the course of the program. You can decide what you want your project to be, as long as it uses the skills you have learned in this class (recording a song, audio post production, etc.)
The first thing you're going to do is think about what this project is all about and plan out a schedule for how you will get it done in the classes we have left. Please do the following:
Please copy the following file to your computer and open it: Shared Media>Class Materials>Final Project_Schedule.odt
Fill out this sheet - answer all the questions and map out what you steps you want to get done in each class.
Save it as: your name_final project_schedule
Put a copy of the document in: Shared Media>Student Work>Final Project Schedules
All projects should:
Be a reflection of your own unique experiences and skills – give me something that no one else in the world can give me!
Be at least 4 minutes long
Be polished, and complete
Include great attention given to the mix (volume, panning, FX, automation)
Have some type of live recording (vocals, guitar, ADR, sound FX)
If you are making a song/spoken word piece...
It should have a deliberate arrangement and structure that keeps the listeners interested
Vocals: rap, singing, poetry, essay, speech
Complex instrumentation
Final piece Exported/Bounced song as an audio file
If you are doing Audio Post Production...
All actions and dialogue should have corresponding audio with them - good synchronization, no empty gaps.
Should have an original musical score that you create
Mix the audio - make the actions believable with the use of mixing, panning, FX, and automation.
Export/Bounce the final piece as a Quicktime movie
Couple things... Collaboration is encouraged, but be careful to budget your time accordingly - ESPECIALLY regarding the use of the vocal booth. Be considerate of the fact that everyone needs to have access. You are encouraged to constantly get feedback from your peers throughout the production process.We will be doing a Peer Review on Tuesday, May 25. If you have an idea for a project that is different from the two options above, please talk with the instructor to discuss the best way to make this happen.
Continuing from our assignment last class, we're going to spend some time mixing our beats. The trick is, you are going to mix someone else's beat and someone else will mix yours. Here is what I want you to do. We're going to do this in 3 steps:
Export audio files of all the individual instruments of your beat out of Reason.
Import a classmate's files to Pro Tools.
In Pro Tools, use faders, panning and fx processors to create an interesting mix.
Part 1 - Exporting
Create a folder called: your name_trackout
Do a file Save As and call your save the song as: (name of song)_trackout
In the Mixer, COMMAND-click on ALL your pan knobs and faders to reset them back to the default settings.
Set the End Marker just past the end of the song.
In the Mixer, click on the S button to Solo the instrument you want to export. NOTE: if your Redrum is going to one channel on the mixer, you also have to click the S button on the drum channel in the Redrum.
Go to File>Export Song to Audio File
Change the filename to the name of the instrument you have solo'd.
Make sure the file is going into the Trackout folder you created in step 1.
Hit Save.
Check the Export Settings (44,100 Hz/16 bit is fine)
Hit Export.
Repeat Steps 5-11 for each instrument in your song.
When you have all your audio files in the Trackout folder, put a copy of the folder in Shared Media>Student Work>Influence Trackouts
Part 2 - Importing to Pro Tools You should all be pros at this by now. Just in case you forgot...
Copy a classmate's Trackout folder to your computer
Open Pro Tools.
Start a new session called: classmate's name_your name_mix
Go to File>Import Audio and import all the tracks from your classmate's folder.
Today I had planned to do a lesson where we get into using a new software program called Logic Express. Unfortunately, we're having some trouble with our serial numbers for the software, so we're not going to be able to get to this today. Instead, Quinn is going to talk a little bit about how we as artists can listen to other artists and use these influences to help us in developing our styles.
As part of your assignment, I want you to send me an email (crunde@bavc.org) that includes the following info:
The name of the song and artist that you are going to work on
3 elements from this song that you think are important to the artist's style.
On Thursday we will be taking a field trip to Sony's Playstation office to learn a bit about the kinds of audio work that goes into video games. In recent years, games have become a huge part of the entertainment industry and it is important to be aware that whether you're an animator, a video person, or an audio engineer, there are many jobs in gaming that require your skills. So today I wanted to take a little time to talk about the different elements that go into sound for games.
Games have come a long way in the last 35 years, or so. One of the very earliest games was this game, Pong:
Pong was a big deal when it came out back in 1972. The idea of playing a game on a screen was pretty high tech and magical. And even in those very early days, sound was considered a key element to the gaming experience. How many sounds did you hear in that clip?
Now let's take a quick look/listen to this clip from the game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which was released on Sony's Playstation 3 console in 2009:
For the record, I neither condone nor condemn violence in videogames. This particular game, however, is notable for having won a number of awards, including in the audio field.
So, what did you notice about the sounds from that clip? What kinds of sounds did you hear? Were they constant throughout the play?
In a lot of ways, game audio is the same as any other type of audio post production. You have the same basic elements of
FX
Dialog
Music
However, these elements behave somewhat differently in games than they do in, say, films. The big difference is that in a game, the player controls the movements and actions of the character. That means that there isn't just one set order that all the sounds happen. The sounds need to reflect what is happening on the screen in real time.
The main way that this is done is through the use of triggers and zones.
A trigger is just an action that triggers a sound. For example, the character opens a door on the screen, triggering an audio file of a door sound to play back. The character walks, you hear footsteps. The character jumps on a mushroom, you hear a sound.
A zone is like a preset map in that tells the game when to play certain sounds. For example, when the character starts to get close to a waterfall, you start to hear the sound of a waterfall. As he/she gets closer to it, the waterfall gets louder and louder. When he/she walks away, it gets softer and when he/she gets a certain distance away from it, it stops altogether. Zones are also important for music, because they determine when certain transitions are about to happen. Ever notice how a lot of the time you just sort of know when something bad is going to happen? Maybe the music starts to build up, or maybe it goes away completely. Chances are, you walked into a certain zone!
There are tons of topics that we could get into about this, but today I just wanted to give you some basics. Your assignment will be to do some audio post for a piece of this clip from Uncharted 2:
I am the instructor for the Digital Pathways Audio B program. Digital Pathways is an afterschool media training program for youth offered by the Bay Area Video Coalition (www.bavc.org).
