Week 1: Audio Engineering | Chapter 1: Sound & Hearing - Posted on 2015-09-17 by Brandon Davidge

Well this week was the first week of class for myself, starting with the online textbook chapter of Sound & Hearing. The in class session, along with the online textbook were both very informing, and exceeded expetations as far as my overall thoughts with the Recording Connection school. Usually I have a hard time retaining knowledge when it comes to reading, however the way the chapter was worded made it easy for me to relate to and fully understand. One thing that made the online textbook more enjoyable to read were the photos and videos applied with the differenct sections of the chapter. I frequently used the highlighting tools along with the bookmarking tool for certain subjects that I wanted to keep in mind for the hands on aspect of things such as mixing and mastering etc. As far as the actual learning this week, I was very intrigued with how the human body portrays sound and how sound actually works. Understanding that sound is essentially vibrations, and that our ears pickup these by vibrations by thousands of tiny hairs that sway back and forth. There was the technical side of the chapter as far as how our ears are designed to absorb sound in different ways, along with the mystery of how the human brain recieves the signal further apst the smallest organ in our body called the cochlea. Learning the history behind the labeling of wave forms along with how they had achieved such knowledge from different testing etc (Fletcher-Munson test). Overall the online experience has been very interesting and informing and ive already gained a tremendous amount of knowledge as far as sound and hearing when it comes to music. For the in class one on one session, i was anxious to start as you are in a real professional studio and are infront of actual mixing boards and other sorts of equipment that i'll begin to use. Lionel, my mentor, was extremely kind and informing as far further explaing key points of the chapter that are more frequently used within audio engineering and producing. I already feel confident that ill be involved with sessions soon enough as soon as I gain enough knowledge to actually contribute to a professional session. Overall everythings was very good and im looking forward to my second week of learning!