You will each contribute 20 individual sounds to our classes’ sound file. Begin collecting these sounds by the 2nd week of class as you will need to input them into the system on a weekly basis. Each week we will play these sounds and speculate on these sounds and what their meanings may be. As well, you will keep a written journal of these sounds with a simple description of why you recorded them and what they mean to you.
Due to storage limitations, try to keep these sounds under 30 seconds. 24 students multiplied by 20 sounds have potential to take up some server space. Carrie will be in charge of helping you manage filing your sounds onto your home directory and onto the proper server. When you play sounds in class, try to have them as pure as natural. IE, if they are in WAV format, wait to convert them into MP3s until after the class has heard them. In the end, all sounds will need to be converted to MP3s for storage on the web.
As well, you will need some form of removable storage, CD, DVD, Zipdisc to store your sounds and final projects onto. Get these now. See Carrie or another staff member for help with this.
I hope you will find a balance between recorded libraries, web-retrieved and in-field recorded sounds. In effect, you will be creating a convergent media sound fx / noise / sound-file database for use in all convergent media courses. Remember this and have some fun.
All sounds will be played at the beginning of every Thursdays class. Your sound journal will be due at the end of the semester when all 20 sounds are gathered. However, when you are discussing your sounds with the class, you will be discussing what is in your journal. Keep that in mind and don’t wait until the end of the semester to write down your descriptions. It is quite possible that you may not remember the significance of a particular sound.