Week 2 - MUED4002

Straight into class this week, we were given 10 minutes to set up a microphone and a microphone stand. Once this was done, we had to successfully connect this to laptop and record through Soundtrap. This allowed us to test the microphone currently set up, seeing how much background noise got through, and seeing how the microphone sounds up close and far away from the vocalist. We immediately saw this in action, as we had to adjust the volume of both recorded tracks, so that the whole recording sounded balanced. This was our first recording, a mock-up of a podcast with an introductory jingle.

Once this was recorded, we then created a quick loop track, which we accompanied with beat-boxing we recorded. More technical difficulties ensued, however this eventually meant we learnt about how gain worked, as well as how finicky Soundtrap can be with input sources. This was what we recorded.

Finally, we switched microphones and recorded with the Snowball Microphone, which we compared with the previous recordings. We also tested which points of the microphone picked up sound the most, which you can hear here.

Overall, this lesson served as an introduction to setting up and using various types of microphones, as well as learning about the terminology and technical aspects of recording sound. While I took Entertainment in Years 11 and 12, I have pretty much forgotten majority of the course work, so this will hopefully serve as a reminder of the content I had learnt previously, as well as maybe learning about the content in a new way.