Week 1 - WELCOME!

Instructions and content for week 1. 

Site: Insight2 @ CCSF
Course: BCST-135-831-34965-Audio for the Web-Labrecque-Spring 2014
Book: Week 1 - WELCOME!
Printed by: Martha Raup
Date: Saturday, March 1, 2014, 6:17 PM

Table of contents

Overview for the Week (read this first)

Overview for the Week

Hello and Welcome!

The first week has been created to familiarize you with Insight and the content of this class - BCST135: Audio for the Web.

Our course is designed on a week by week basis. Each week builds on the last. While work is done independently, we move to a new week as a class. The week begins on Mondays at 7am and ends the following Sunday at 11:55pm.

At the beginning of every week, read the Overview for the Week.

Next, click on Tasks for Week 1. Each task pertains to coursework you are assigned and required to complete by the specified due date. Often the tasks will reference handouts or additional materials. The Tasks for Week 1 can be accessed again and again. Click the radio button, "I have completed this task", when you have completed the task. Then scroll to the bottom and click the submit button when you have completed all of the tasks. This will let me know you are up-to-date completing the coursework for the week.

I strongly encourage you to look at the section on the top of the Homepage labeled, Technical Support. Under it you will links to several handouts that may come in handy as our course progresses. Please note that the Help Desk will only support login issues. Students are expected to go to the Insight Homepage or the Technical Support section of the course to trouble-shoot computer issues.

If any information is unclear or you are having difficulty completing a task, please contact me directly via email at dlabrecq@ccsf.edu and put the course # in the subject line: BCST135. It is vital that you understand how Insight works before we actually begin the coursework so you should attend the orientation if you have never used Insight.

Again, welcome to BCST135: Audio for the Web and please let me know if you have any questions!

Tasks for Week 1

1. Read the Introduction to BCST 135. (Overview for the Week)

2.  Listen to my Intro Podcast to you and bookmark this page. After listening, feel free to read "About Me" to get a sense of the person taking you on this fun journey into the world of Audio For The Web.

     Play Audio

3. Read the Introduction to Audio. (Introduction to Audio - A Brief Primer)

4. Read The Process In Creating Audio.

5. Post an introduction of yourself in this first week Forum "Your Favorite Audio Recording". You'll receive 5 points for a more thorough introduction and description of your favorite audio recording which consists of 10 or more lines of information including who you are, your background, a nickname you might like to use, and if you have had any other classes or taken workshops in audio and sound. You'll receive 3 points for 5 - 9 lines of information and 2 points for up to 4 lines of info. (See? The more you write in your description of yourself, the more you'll receive the total points for this week which is 5 points).

6. Read the Week 1 Assignment sheet and discover that there is a way to earn 2 extra points for the week!

Student Learning Outcome for Week 1

This first week focuses on the beginning of the amazing world of audio and more precisely - audio for the web. There are several learning outcomes that you read in the syllabus and as much as we get excited and want to know everything immediately, it's important that you understand some of the basics first.

So, this week will cover the first of the learning outcomes (SLO) in the syllabus:
  1. Describe and analyze the process involved in creating audio.
There is a lot to know and it's really interesting. Let's get started!

Read the overview first.



Introduction to Audio - a Brief Primer

Let's first define the word Audio. If you haven taken a course of any kind relating to the subject of sound, you likely have a good idea of what the word is all about. But, if this is your first time working with recording sound, then it's important to know what the word means. After all, it is the first word of the title of this course, right?

Audio is the the capture and reproduction of sound that occurs naturally. A soundwave or many soundwaves occur in nature or in an acoustic space and to make it audio it must be captured. We use a microphone to capture sound. We can immediately reproduce that sound (or audio) in live music through a PA system or we can record it to any number of mediums so that it can be manipulated, edited, reproduced, and distributed in a number of ways.
The microphone basically captures the sound and converts it into an electrical signal. This is audio. (and there is so much more...)

A basic understanding of the physics of sound is that as molecules are disturbed in air, they cause a sound picked up by our hearing mechanisms - our ears. The molecules vibrate and the frequency at which they vibrate denotes something called a pitch (or a tone which can be made up of several pitches). The human ear can only hear a certain range of pitches, AKA "frequencies" which is exactly connected to how frequently the molecules vibrate in a given second of time.

One cycle of a sound wave is equal to one cycle per second frequency. 10 cycles per second is another frequency. And 20 cycles per second is when the human ear can actually begin to hear the vibration as a sound. It is the lowest pitch in the ability of a human ear to hear. And you know what's cool? The highest pitch is a similar number times many thousand vibrations. 20,000 cycles per second is the very top of the range of human hearing. So, we're talking some major vibration here - 20,000 times in a given second! No wonder Bob Marley sang so passionately about positive vibrations!

A much easier way to read and write this idea of frequency in a cycle per second came from a German physicist whose name is Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. (No, he's got no connection to the car rental company.) The name, Hertz, is given to the identification of cycle per second.
So, 20 Hertz (or Hz for short) is 20 cycles per second and 100 Hz is 100 cycles per second, etc. When we get to 1,000 or more, we use kHz (kilohertz) so that we don't have long unwieldy numbers.

Do you know what 20Hz - 20kHz is? It's the range of human hearing!
20Hz to about 150Hz is considered the low end (some call it bass).
150Hz - 5kHz is considered the midrange
(all musical instruments fall into this range and some go lower and some higher, but they all contain a major portion of their sound in the "mids")
5kHz - 20kHz is the high end (some call it treble).

So frequency is perceived as pitch and is measured in Hertz.

There is so much more to know about soundwaves and the physics of them which we'll get to when necessary. Suffice it to say that this is important as it leads us back to AUDIO. (I highly suggest taking the BCST120 class - Basic Audio Production as this class goes into some awesome depth about audio and you learn amazing skills in capturing, editing, and reproducing, with all of the hands-on projects.)



The Process in Creating Audio

So, in order to capture sound as described in the previous chapter, you need a microphone, a recording device, and a media format to record to. One of the simplest digital devices on the market today that captures outstanding audio in the most simple fashion is the Zoom H4N 2-track digital recorder.
digital recorder, Zoom H4n, courtesy of reative commons - yearsbestcheapsupply
This device is very sophisticated but so simple to use and it comes with all of the accessories you need to make your recording happen.

So, let's go backwards to forwards for a minute so that you understand the word "media format" that is related to the capture of audio.
Remember the cassette tape? That is an old form of recording media. How about the mini-disc? That is another type of recording media. Each has its limitations which need not be discussed here. But what the current recorders use are two types of media cards:

SDC card, digital media card, secure digital media card CFC, compact flash card, digita media card

The first one is a SD card or in this case a SDHC card. (Most people refer to them simply as SD cards.) This is the type of card used in the Zoom portable audio recorders, many other professional digital audio recorders as well as most of the digital cameras (video included) available at the current time.

The second is a CompactFlash card and is used in many of the professional recorders from the past 7 or so years. It is less common today but some devices still use them and many used recorders that you find may require this type of card. (also known as: CFC for Compact Flash Card)

Something to understand: while these cards can store 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and even more gigabytes of information on them, they are not interchangeable in the recording devices. When you buy a recorder, it is designed to store the data to either one or the other type of media.

Some very high-end digital recorders have a built-in hard drive that you can also store to, but will also store to one of these formats internally as well as a way of having an instant back-up of the files.

The other amazing part of the Zoom H4n recorder are the TWO microphones that are built-in to capture your sound in rich stereo. A microphone is generally mono unless it states that it is a stereo mic. Most professionals use mono microphones, but use TWO when they want to capture stereo sound which best represents the acoustic environment. Remember, we have two ears, one on each side of our head and they hear sound differently because we have our awesome big head in the way, separating them. Well, it's important for a stereo mic to capture the sound the way you would hear it.
Thus:
Zoom H4n microphones, near-coincident stereo pair, courtesy of Creative Commons - Alfonso Armenta The two built-in mics as shown here.
Notice how they are facing partially away from each other to capture the sound to the left and right of the recorder. They are capturing a sound source in the middle as well as to the sides which gives you the sound of the acoustic space along with whatever you focus on in the middle of the two mics...like your VOICE!

OK, this is a lot for the first week, but it's important that you understand what audio is and how you capture it. I showed you the simplest way to capture using a portable digital recorder with everything built in. There is a more complex way that we'll be discovering next week utilizing some of these devices:
podcaster studio, sound for the web, portable recording studio
A laptop with recording software, a separate microphone with cable, and headphones are what you need to do a professional-sounding home podcast which also has a lot more options than just recording to a digital recorder like the Zoom. (Note in this picture that there are some other devices like the turntable which are completely unnecessary, but cool for a DJ podcaster.)