FVD 143s -- Special Topics in Sound
Online Syllabus for Spring 2008
James S. Lee, Ph.D.
Duke University
Program in Film, Video, and Digital
MW 7:30-9:30pm
Smith Warehouse 228
E-mail: jim.lee@verizon.net
Equipment Checkout Times: TBA
Access Times for Media Lab: TBA
A Preliminary Listing of Readings and Resources
Online texts (Free): Overview of the Course:
This course is about listening! It is an exploration of the art of audio production and some of the aesthetic and theoretical issues that attend that enterprise. It is an opportunity to explore some of the possibilities of audio as a stand alone medium and audio in conjunction with other media. It is my hope that your thinking about audio will reach way beyond radio programming and new CD releases within the first few days. In one sense, this is a creative, production oriented course in which you are encouraged to stretch the limits of your imagination and pursue your interests as far as time and facilities allow. In another sense, this is a theory and criticism course in which you are expected to develop a keener sense of the place of audio in the sensory world. Mainly, this course is about listening!Some of what we do in this course will depend upon your interests and skills. For that reason you will be given a questionnaire which will help me structure things in favor of your interests and needs. Previous experience with audio production is not assumed. We will, therefore, go over some of the basics in the first few days. Students will be encouraged to concentrate on a single area of interest. That could be live music recording, documentary production, dramatic works, natural history research with field recordings, abstract works, audio installations or whatever strikes your fancy. The whole point of the course is exploration of the field of audio production within the constraints of time and facilities given us by the University.
Perhaps the most important thing you will learn in this course is how to listen. Aesthetic and technical criticism are key aspects of the work you do here. All work will be presented in class and you will be expected to provide thoughtful criticism of your own work and that of your classmates.
Each class session will consist of some lecture/discussion based on assigned readings, some hands-on work with the hardware and/or software of audio production, and some listening opportunity. Your obligation is to show up ready to discuss and work.
Major Assignments and Grading:
Project One (10%)
Project Two (15%)
Project Three (15%)
Project Four (20%)
Project Five (25%)
Term Paper/Proposal (15%)
In addition to these production and writing assignments you will be given an exercise in Listening and Reflection to be completed within the first week of class.
All audio projects will be presented in class for evaluation and critique. They must be submitted in wav format (44.1kHz, 16 bit minimum quality) on CD-R. The Program in Film, Video, and Digital has two USB CD burners available for check out and use in the lab or elsewhere. The lab computers have CD-RW drives installed. MP3 is generally not an acceptable format for projects in this course.
General Audio References:
Perhaps a good place to begin an exploration of audio matters is with the vocabulary. Barry Truax's Handbook for Acoustic Ecology is at the very least an excellent annotated dictionary of audio related terms. It should be used as a beginning point for any new territory of exploration. You can search the text by theme or by alphabet. This is the free online version. A more recent CD-ROM version is also available. It is well worth the price. Yuri's Audiodramatists Lexicon is another good review of terms related to audio production. It is not limited to terms related to audio drama. Take a look at the Rane Professional Audio Reference , an online dictionary of audio and audio-related terms. This is a technical document, one intended as a reference for people interacting with professionals. The Filmsound site is another wonderful reference for sound terminology especially as it relates to the moving image.Paper Textbooks (Not Required)
If you want to have some dead trees to haul around, you might consider printing out some of the web sites shown in the syllabus. Alternatively, you could purchase one or more of the following. Combined, this collection of books would make a great beginning library of books about sound. There is enough theory, practice, history, and combined wisdom in these pages to keep you busy for years to come:1) Alten, Stanley P. Audio in Media (Eighth Edition), Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2008. Alten's book has become something of a standard for production courses in universities. For a comprehensive look at audio matters it is hard to beat. It is expensive ($90.00) but worth owning if you are really serious about audio this one is a keeper, one you will use for years to come. You could save some money by buying an earlier edition or doing some comparative shopping online. Try Best Book Buys. Some might argue that the fourth edition is more complete. It is certainly bigger.
2) Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994. This work does a wonderful job of being both integrative with respect to image and sound and reductionist to the point of rendering sound understandable in its own right. It is a very enjoyable read. Chion's basic conceptualizations of sound/image relationships are covered online at the Filmsound site.
3)Krause, Bernie. Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, Berkeley, CA: Wilderness Press, 2002. This book is about nature recording. That is reason enough to own it. Beyond that, though, this is one of the most comprehensive, yet concise, books about sound, how to record it, and why we should care. It comes with a CD that contains some of the most interesting soundscapes from around the world.
4) Schafer, Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1977, Schafer coined the term "soundscape" and almost single handedly managed to draw the attention of ecologists, artists, politicians, anthropologists, and many others to the problems of our acoustic environment. His book is a primer in listening. A true classic.
5) Augoyard, Jean-Francois and Henry Torgue, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005. This work is a very impressive attempt to give us a language with which to talk about what we experience acoustically in the real world. It is a sourcebook of eighty two sonic effects. Whether you are mainly interested in music, engineering, architecture, urban studies, physics, psychology, or anything else that might bring you to consider sound, this book must be in your library.
Listening:
Another site (You should consider this one required reading) that can enhance your sense of production in audio is the Noise site. Noise is a five part series of programs that ". . . will listen to these noises, and try to evoke the new modes of hearing being formed in response to the omnipresence and insistence of noise." An important part of this course is to help you develop an appreciation of the difference between hearing and listening. Some attempt to explore listening as opposed to hearing can be found in Garry Fearington's essay, " Keep Your Ear-lids Open ." The act of "listening" is a complex one made even more so by factors of expertise, physiology, emotional state, and culture. Hildegard Westerkamp's Listening to the Listening explores (with an example) some of the factors in involved in listening. Finally, read S. Arden Hill's Listening to Myself Listen. Many of these readings and more can be found at the "Library" page of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. The site is worth a thorough browse.Acoustics and Perception of Sound:
The Soundry is a good starting place for demonstrations of the principles of acoustics and audio perception. There are several other good online sources for the physics and phycho-acoustics of sound. One good page on the physical basics of sound is hosted by the UCSC Experimental music program. In fact they have a number of very good, easy to understand technical essays on sound and recording. Please read the online Physics Text that deals with Sound Waves and Music . Modules 37-45 in the Cybercollege online Television Production Text deal with audio. Review that material.Radio Journalism:
This is not a primary focus of this course. Nevertheless, there is something to be learned from the craft/art of radio journalism. The " Writing for Radio " site is geared mainly toward those people interested in commercial news broadcasting. It is well written and very basic . . . worth a scan. National Public Radio (NPR) actually archives most of the segments from Morning Edition and All Things Considered on the Web. You can listen online using RealAudio. If Radio Journalism is a real interest of yours, you owe it to yourself to make it a habit to listen to programs from Pacifica, NPR, and BBC, all of which are heard on local public radio stations WNCU and WUNC.
Radio Documentary:
Documentary production is a more specialized area. Producing Historical Documentaries for Broadcast and Internet Radio is a course offered at the University at Albany-SUNY. The site contains some interesting examples of documentaries using RealAudio. The site also contains many useful links to other audio production sites. Bookmark it. Sound Print is an audio documentary production center whose work can often be heard on NPR. Many of their works can be heard online using RealAudio. Sound Portraits is an internet site that features the recorded voices of ordinary people. It is a specialized kind of documentary site. 1stPerson.org is a relatively new web-based place to tell one's stories. They invite submissions of audio as well as graphic and written stories told in the first person. The site is very inspiring, well worth a browse.
We are fortunate to have close to home the Center for Documentary Studies. The Center offers a number of courses dealing with audio documentary production for undergraduates and through the Duke Continuing Studies program. This course is cross listed with Documentary Studies.
Radio Drama:
Radio drama? Listening to Radio Plays: Fictional Soundscapes , is Alan Beck's overview of the elements of construction in radio drama. His analysis is really limited to the earliest established conventions (which still work even if they offend us in their simplicity) or radio drama. These conventions, like all such conventions, grew out of a lack of a grammar of dramatic construction in radio. Beck also supplies us with, Is radio blind or invisible? A call for a wider debate on listening-in . In this essay he examines the limiting effects that viewing radio as a blind medium has on the way we use the medium, create for it, theorize it, and listen to it. While the work of a Journalist is never to fictionalize the news, it is certainly to tell the story. Perhaps there is something journalists can learn about story telling from the work of radio drama. Yuri Rasovsky's The Well-tempered Audio Dramatist is a comprehensive guide to producing audio plays. Definitely worth study if drama is your passion. Just be aware that Rasovsky's main interest is in audiobooks.
Sound in Film and Video:
If you insist, we can add some pictures. Sound in those other media. Filmsound is the site for issues of sound in film. This is an extremely rich site, easy to get lost in. For starters, concentrate on the terminology listings, especially those of David Bordwell and Michel Chion. Fred Ginsburg's "The Soundtrack: A Basic Introduction" is a good place to get just what he says, the basics. Another great site for film sound history is based at Middle Tennessee State University. This site also contains some other very good links on film sound formats and other film sound related matters. Worth a visit.The practice of informed listening may require the understanding of some systematic approach to the naming and positioning of sounds. Chion's modes of listening and his characterizations of audio in film provide one such approach. In Chion's scheme of things he talks about the difficulty of accurately describing something like an audio frame. While POV in film is rather easily defined, POA is somewhat (but not impossibly) more problematic because of the lack of a confining reference area such as a frame.
Nature Recording:
Interested in nature recording? Try browsing the Nature Recordist site at NatureSound.org. hosted by Martyn Stewart or Doug Von Gausig's Nature Songs site. Like several other nature recordist sites, these are a mix of commercial and public service interest. They tend to focus mainly on birds and frogs, some of our most vocal neighbors. The Musuem of California has a fabulous web site that takes one on a sound walk across the state. There are techniques in use by nature recordists that certainly apply to documentarians and journalists. Nature recording is admittedly a very specialized area of audio production. . Nevertheless, the tools of nature recording experts can be very useful for documentarians and narrative producers alike. One of the best teachers in the area is Bernie Krause. His Wild Soundscapes book and CD is treasure. Going Wild is a nice technical feature on Krause in Electronic Musician magazine (2003). Well worth the read. Finally, read Virginia Madsen's essay " Notes Toward Sound Ecology in the Garden of Listening " just to keep some of the idealism about natural sounds in perspective.Audio Art:
Arnte's Sound Site is a good general site for sound matters. Rolf Langenbartels has an interesting site called Soundbag in which he presents a new sound art related image every week. The opening page is accompanied by a delightful and peaceful composition by Eric Satie. Not particularly useful for this course but fun anyway. Bill Fontana is one ot the best know audio installation artists. He sometimes works on a scale that most artists just do not think of. Audio art is sometimes thought of in terms of Radio Art, a term widely used elsewhere in the world but not so much in the US. Here is web site for a recent Deep Wireless Conference that gives a good overview of some of the possibilities. Kunstradio (Artradio) is perhaps the premier site for sound art on the "radio"(loosely defined). We will spend some time in class with Kunstradio. Finally, check out Soundsite for an online journal that discusses sound art and much more.
Personal Recorders and Other Equipment:
You will also need access to a good quality portable audio recorder. The Program in Film and Video has a few recorders and microphones available for checkout. Still, it is advisable that you develop some other options for doing field recordings. I strongly recommend that you consider one of the newer solid state recorders if you are thinking about buying a portable recorder of your own.
MiniDisc was for a long time the favored format for this class. It is still viable option but one with some drawbacks. There are a couple of them available for checkout in the FVD office. For more information on MiniDiscs check out the MiniDisc Community Page . This is an incredibly comprehensive site covering any and everything related to MD technology. If you are even mildly interested in MD, go to this page but do not expect to make a quick exit. The newer HiMD recorders from Sony allow uncompressed recordings at CD quality. In addition, they allow the direct digital transfer of recordings without going through an analog mode.
Many of the newer MP3 devices have mic and/or line inputs for recording and a huge storage capacity. Nevertheless, I do not recommend using MP3 recorders (that means iPods too) for this course. The recording quality is simply not good enough for critical listening. If you wish to avoid MD recorders, consider one of the solid state recorders such as the Edirol R1. or the MicroTrack from M-Audio. Just keep in mind that flash memory is still expensive compared to minidiscs. Two recent entry to the solid state recorder market are the Edirol R-09 and the Fostex FR2-LE. These little devices record very high quality uncompressed audio and supports direct USB transfer of files to either MAC or PC with no need to extra software drivers. The Fostex is more expensive but also more robust in lots of ways. New ones are coming on the market everyday.
DAT recorders are no longer supported by the industry. Buy a DAT; buy a dinosaur! Nevertheless, a working one produces excellent recordings.
For a good overview of equipment in general visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site. They are notoriously opposed to MiniDisc recorders but otherwise the site is very useful, especially if your interests lie in nature recording. Transom.org is another place to find some guidance on equipment and lots of other aspects of audio production as well. They post regular updated reviews of newly released recording equipment. The University of Michigan's Matrix oral history site provides another excellent overview or recording equipment. You might also take a look at the Vermont Folklife Center's Audio Field Recording Equipment Guide for another comprehensive overview.
I would also strongly recommend that you consider buying some kind of portable USB mass storage device. The very small keychain devices that hold a Gb or two of data may prove useful in carrying data between workstations in the lab and/or your home computer. You may find such "jumpdrives" or "thumbdrives" useful beyond this course. A 128MB device can hold about eleven minutes of uncompressed high quality stereo audio. They are very reasonably priced these days with the 2Gb devices often going on sale for under $25. Look at the Lexar site for some examples. The power users among you might wish to consider a USB micro hard drive device. Do some shopping. Maybe someplace like I/OMagic will have what you want.
Microphones:
Of course you will need a microphone if you are doing field recording. Again, there are a few available for checkout from Film and Video. For personal purchases, the possibilities are endless and range from the useless to the exquisite. You can even make your own. Your final decision in this matter will depend on what you intend to do in the field. There are a number of online sources of information that can get you started in the research process. Manufacturers such as Crown and Audio-Technica have useful reference pages. We will talk much more about microphones in class.
Headphones:
I do recommend (actually, I insist) that you invest in a pair of good quality headphones. They can make production work much more precise and clean. They are absolutely essential for work in public computer labs even if the workstations do have speakers associated with them. Buy real headphones! Not the little things you stick in your ears to listen to your iPod or "Walkperson". We can discuss some of your options in class but in the interim, do some research. Most of our in-class auditions will be through headphones.
The Headwize page has a good overview of headphone technology . as well as a FAQ page that answers questions about which headphones to buy. You may want to spend some time "listening" to what other people have to say about headphones but ultimately your choice will turn on your own preferences for comfort, acoustic isolation, price, and performance. Headroom is another site that deals with headphones. It is a bit slicker and has a somewhat different approach. It does feature a very compact and helpful set of reviews of headphones by type and intended use.
Most of the work in the Computer Labs will be done using headphones or small tabletop speakers. Nevertheless, headphones are problematic in some ways. Please read the Art of Monitoring and Mixing with Headphones for a good discussion of some of the important considerations. A somewhat more technical discussion is in Thoughts . . Mixing with Headphones .
Sometimes it will be possible to use the "house" monitors in Smith Warehouse but such times will be limited to class time and those times when other people are not working in the space.
Personal Software:
If you have reasonably recent vintage Mac or a PC with a sound card, you can turn it into a very powerful audio workstation with the installation of some inexpensive or free audio software. Consider this if getting to on-campus labs is problematic for you. Check out the following sites and download one or more of the demonstration versions. The fully functional trial versions are free. Here are some links to the software and some tutorials:
Adobe Audition http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html
The BBC site has a good online tutorial for Cool Edit Pro, the former name for Auditon. The program is essentially the same now, just more refined.
Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is a freeware application. It is more than adequate for what most people do in this class. Find a good Audacity tutorial here. Audacity will work on any platform including linux.
If you have access to the PC lab in 106 West Duke, you will find workstations with PC-based Adobe Auditon (formerly known as Cool Edit Pro) and Sound Forge (now a Sony product) installed.
In class we will be working mainly with Sound Track Pro, Audacity, and a couple of other small signal processing applications.