Acid Day 6

"Welcome to Acid Day 6!" ...nobody really said that at the start of class but it would have been a nice intro, especially if it was said with a super big and official voice (like Mufasa's voice from Lion King or something). :D

Well enough pointless, yet semi-comedic rambling for now, time for the good stuff.

So this session only had two things on the agenda: 1) Lesson on some Basic Engineering Principles (i.e. mixing and mastering) and 2) BTW work time.

But before getting into all of that, Chris made a quick announcement on how well the students did on their Permit Test, with almost 100% of the class passing with a score above 60! The students were also reminded then, however, that the primary focus of the Acid Unit is audio production and that the secondary focus is audio production software (i.e. Sony Acid) ..what a way to re-insure some confidence levels for those who didn't do so well on the Permit Test!

Following the quick announcement, the students were asked to blog about the function of the beatmapper as well as begin their brainstorming for ideas on the they were going to create and produce for their BTW. After the spending a couple minutes on the blogs, the students took a quick Learn@UW quiz and then Chris and Tony got right into the Acid lesson of the day: Basic Engineering pt. 1.

The lesson touched on some mixing and mastering concepts such as volume, equalization, panning, and effects. The students were introduced to things like the volume and pan sliders and envelopes, and they were also given the chance to mess around with the different frequencies of, and add different effects to a track/sound.

Following the lesson, the students where free to do as they pleased for their first 10 minute break, and then once they returned they went to work hard on their 3 challenges for the day which pushed them to really apply what they just were taught about volume, equalization, panning, and effects in the context of mixing and mastering audio.

The remainder of the session was dedicated to the completion of the 3 challenges and although many did not finish all three and they didn't get the chance to work on their BTW's, it was still overall a pretty productive session and I'm sure the students got a lot out of it. It is clear that they are really ready and anxious to begin their BTW's so next session they will definitely get to work on them.