Week 14

For the final week of the project I visited the classroom once again.  Chris and I wanted to build on the activities of Week 13 and create another Keezy soundboard of recorded sound effects, so we used a similar structure.  Again, we began with a critical listening activity.  In the previous week we listened to live sounds outdoors and listed them.  Here, we listened to the composed sound design from an animated video (with the screen turned off!).  Some really interesting observations from the group – we are realising that similar sounds can be made by very different actions.  We get into some chat about how the sounds are made – the action/effort/energy that goes into creating a sound.

Following this, the students were set the task of composing a Keezy sound board on a theme of their choice – e.g. a soundscape – an aural scenario.  I gave some suggestions for what a theme or soundscape could be.  Like the sounds of the kitchen – what sounds happen there?  What about the rainforest?  That’s where this whole thing started right?!  What about the sounds of space?  Why do I always want them to go to space???

Well, after lots of individual deliberations at the desks, each student chose their theme.  Nobody chose space 🙁

The group avoided the abstract and stuck mostly to everyday scenarios.

Again, I emphasised non-literal annotation for describing the sounds – instead of drawing a picture of a dog, try to draw what it ‘sounds’ like.  Some success here with examples of repetitive lines for repetitive sounds, and scribble textures.  But mostly we still stick to figurative drawings and word labels.  Sometimes we use letters to notate with onomatopoeia (“ZZZZZZZZ”).  Big thumbs up!

After sounds were decided and annotated in image/text we spent a good amount of time on recording session.  Kevin is getting musical with his playback and Erin is being very adept with the Keezy interface – recording and rerecording takes with a nice attention to detail.  We are thinking more and more about timing, volume and repetition.  Kevin becomes recording engineer for Sarah and it now feels like sound is putty in the hands of these students.

 

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *