Throughout this course, I learned about the properties of sound that explain some of the feelings we have towards objects, interfaces, products among other things.  To expand on this, R. Murray Schafer showed us how the overexposure to the soundscape that exists in large cities can wear us down and allow us to lose our sensitivity to sound (Schafer).  In addition to this, Pierre Schaeffer showed us the similarities in audio experts’ last names… All kidding aside, he showed us how these same sounds that Schaffer was claiming are nothing more than pointless noise, can be used for music, like musique concrete (Kane 15). 

I was also able to learn about how human hearing works, how we can lose it and why it is so important that we protect it even when we’re young.  (Beckstead Week 1)

What I found very interesting was the content on sonic branding and UI sound design.  A field that I learned expands far beyond sound design for apps, such as sound design for cars  (Beckstead Week 7). 

I definitely expect to apply the concepts of sound design and sonic branding in the future as that is one of the areas of audio that interests me the most.  I am especially interested in how the products of the future will sound as we move into an increasingly digitized world. 

The content directly related to my field of study as I came to Ryerson to learn as much about audio as I can.

I think that the overall takeaway from the course is that there is more to sound than just what we hear.  There are a plethora of psychological and physiological effects and potentially consequences of abusing sound (Beckstead Week 2).  Lastly, sound must be respected, which we learned about through UI sound design, if sound is neglected and rushed, it has the potential to ruin an experience with annoying, overbearing sounds (Material Design Editors).

Works Cited

Beckstead, Lori. (2020). RTA907 Week 1,7 . Presentation, Ryerson University.

Kane, Brian. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Material Design Editors. “Applying sound to UI” Material Design Accessed April 11, 2020 from https://material.io/design/sound/applying-sound-to-ui.html#ambient-sounds

Schafer, R. Murray (1977, 1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred Knopf/Randan House. Pp. 71-99

Sound Design for the Car Dashboard of an Electric Car.

• Interactions

• Adjusting climate controls
• Turn signals & Hazard lights
• Multimedia: Music, Radio, Map etc…
• Warnings: Ice, unserviceable items, blind-spot warnings.
• Throttle response: to inform the driver of their throttle input
• Seat heaters, steering wheel heater.
• Lights (High beams)
• Navigation warnings
• Phone notifications
• Parking brake
• Cursor position
• “Gear” shift sound

• The activity is driving and can vary between the time of day/night. Some of the interactions could be location based. For example; using high beams in a remote area. They could be seasonally based such as Ice warnings. The interaction sounds can be varied depending on the time of day such as a more involved soundscape during later parts of the day in order to keep the driver stimulated, should the driver desire to enable this function.
• Feedback
  i. Adjusting climate controls: Different sounds for increasing/decreasing temperature. Unique sounds for seat/steering wheel heaters in order for the driver to recognize them without taking eyes off the road for an extended period of time.
  ii. Turn signal: must maintain a consistency with the way that turn signals sound today in order to not confuse drivers. Sound can be slightly updated but must signal to drivers what’s happening.
  iii. Multimedia: hard sounds for when pressing buttons, long sustained sounds should be avoided to not clutter the sound environment. There is great opportunity here for creativity. Sound design can be used here to really set the soundscape apart as it is not related to the critical operation of the vehicle.
  iv. Warnings: should be slightly abrasive but not startling to get the drivers attention without risking an accident (Material Design Editors).
  v. Throttle: A sound should be associated with the throttle input to allow the driver to accurately modulate how fast/slow they want the car to go. This should function in the same way that an engine tells us how hard we are pushing the car.
  vi. GPS/Nav: less harsh sounds should be used for nav purposes. Short, concise sounds should be used so whatever information they are trying to deliver can be delivered with good efficiency.
  vii. Phone alerts: should mimic what exists in current phone technology so that the driver understands what kind of notifications they are receiving.

• Care should be taken to prioritize how often and important each sound occurs so that a sound that is used often may not become agitating to the driver. (Material Design Editors).

• If the car was a sporty, Tesla-esque electric car, the sound design would be sleek, and ominous. “Bubbly” sounds would be avoided because it goes against the physical design of the car and the attitude it brings with it (Material Design Editors). Instead, lower pitched, almost hollow sounds would be used.
• Some of the sounds that could be used can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-486799483/blog-post-5-ui-examples In the clip, examples for the cursor sound, a multimedia sound, and the sound for throttle input can be found in that order.

Works Cited
Material Design Editors. “Applying sound to UI” Material Design Accessed April 11, 2020 from https://material.io/design/sound/applying-sound-to-ui.html#ambient-sounds

Sonic branding for a guitar fuzz pedal.

1. 
   i. Sleek
   ii. Trendy
   iii. Niche
   iv. Unique
   v. Intense
   vi. Attention getting
   vii. Loud
   viii. Inspiring
   ix. Distorted
   x. Professional
2. 
   i. Since the item is a guitar effects pedal, sounds that are associated with it will be guitar playing. However, there is a specific type of guitar playing that is associated with this kind of pedal. This type of pedal is used to create the distorted sounds associated with Jimi Hendrix’s music (Matthies 2015). Therefore, distorted guitar solos, crunchy rhythms will be associated with the pedal.
   ii. Other sounds would be that of a 4 piece rock band: bass guitar, guitar, drum kit, possibly vocals.
   iii. Perhaps a more modern sounding band would be more attractive to potential customers wanting to create a unique sound.
3. 
   i. I would like the consumer to feel how they do when they see their favourite band live, or the feeling they had when they first learned how to play guitar, imagining all the solos they were going to play and how cool they would be/sound.
   ii. I would like them to imagine what it would feel like to play a packed concert, with their screaming lead guitar filling the venue.
   iii. I would like the consumer to play guitar after being inspired by the feeling that the sonic branding gave them. Imagining what their guitar tone would sound like with this new pedal.
4. 
   i. The genres that fit the brand the most would be alternative rock, blues rock, and hard rock. So… rock. Electronic music would be most in-congruent because guitars are not generally featured as the primary instrument in that genre.
5. Mood Board: I recorded a cover of a song by the band Queens of the Stone Age titled “I Never Came”. A selected a portion of the song that features a guitar lead that uses this type of pedal that I think illustrates what kind of music/sound would be featured with this product. The link to the preview of the cover can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-486799483/rta907-blog-4-qotsa-i-never-came-cover-preview

Works Cited
Matthies, Aaron. 2015. “The Ultimate Guide to Jimi Hendrix: Tone, Gear, Effects (Updated 2020)” Guitar Gear Finder. Accessed April 12, 2020 from https://guitargearfinder.com/guides/ultimate-guide-jimi-hendrix-tone-gear-effects/

A topic that has always interested me about radio and podcasting is how radio, despite many calling for its decline over the last couple of decades, still survives and is profitable today.  According to: Substitutability and complementarity of broadcast radio and music streaming services: The millennial perspective, even 94% of millennials still listen to radio each week (Chan-Olmsted et al. 2), a number that was really shocking for me to learn.  I will discuss how radio has enjoyed continued listenership through to today, how podcasting fits in to audio media consumption and the trends that both media are experiencing.

An article that I found useful when making comparisons between the two formats was: Audio and Podcasting Fact Sheet. The article tells the story of radio, which has been stagnant in listenership over the last 10 years: “The audience for terrestrial radio remains steady and high: In 2018, 89% of Americans ages 12 or older listened to terrestrial radio in a given week” (Pew Research Center Editors).  A number that is similar to what was noted in the article mentioned above.  The article also tells the story of podcasting, a format that is showing a substantial increase in popularity over the last decade.  “As of 2019, 51% of Americans ages 12 or older have ever listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital survey data, and 32% have listened to a podcast in the past month, up from 26% in 2018 and just 9% in 2008” (Pew Research Center Editors).  Although these numbers are smaller than that of radio, they have been growing at a rapid rate since podcasting’s inception not too long ago. 

Substitutability and complementarity of broadcast radio and music streaming services: The millennial perspective discusses whether or not online streaming services will replace traditional broadcast radio or compliment it (Chan-Olmsted et al. 3)  The article mentions how radio stations, in order to compete with the rising popularity of streaming services, are starting to create mobile apps to supplement their normal broadcasts.  However the findings are that people still consider radio, and their associated apps, as separate from streaming services (Chan-Olmstead et al. 12,15) The article also finds that millennials consider radio and streaming to compliment each other rather than one substituting the other (Chan-Olmstead et al. 15).

From reading these two articles, I learned how successful radio still is.  Previously, I thought radio would have been in a much steeper decline compared to what the facts show.  As someone who consumes both radio and podcasts, I believe that they serve a purpose in their own way.  In my own experience, similar to what was said in class, I tend to look to radio for general news that may concern the local population, and for podcasts I tend to seek out whatever niche interests I have.  In this regard I hope that radio and streaming continue to grow, complement each other and improve going forward.

Works Cited

Chan-Olmsted, Sylvia, et al. “Substitutability and Complementarity of Broadcast Radio and Music Streaming Services: The Millennial Perspective.” Mobile Media & Communication, Sept. 2019, doi:10.1177/2050157919856647.

Pew Research Center Editors. “Audio and Podcasting Fact Sheet” Pew Research Center Journalism and Media, July 9, 2019. https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/audio-and-podcasting/

R. Murray Schafer and Pierre Schaeffer are both deeply passionate about sound and how they shape the word around them.  However, as mentioned in class, their opinions on what makes a sound desirable are fundamentally different.  While reading Brian Kane’s Pierre Schaeffer, the Sound Object, and the Acousmatic Reduction, I began to understand what Schaeffer was aiming to accomplish with his “musique concrete” (Kane 15).  To understand why he was creating this music, his ideas on the “sound object” (Kane 15) must be considered.  An interesting quote from the chapter is “Repeat the same sound fragment twice: there is no longer event, but music” (Kane 16).  I think that this is an important statement for understanding Michel Chion’s “Reduced Listening” (Chion 29). By taking away the original context of where the sound came from, the listener can now appreciate the sound for what it is composed of, the presence and lack of presence of audible frequencies, a skill that would require training to be done properly according to Kane (Kane 17).

R. Murray Schafer on the other hand believes that the sound of industry and transportation, essentially what makes up Pierre Schaeffer’s music is noise that must be removed in order to appreciate the sound of the world.  Schafer says: “Ultimately the throb of the machine began to intoxicate man everywhere with its incessant vibrations” (Schafer 74).  The way Schafer talks about man made sounds definitely gives the impression they bother him a lot and that he doesn’t think that beauty can be found in what some might consider noise.  Francisco López has this to say on the topic: “The ‘tuning’ is basically a ‘silencing’, as if ‘noisy’ were an evil condition in itself” (López).   

I think that there is value in both ideas.  I believe that an oversaturation of noise can cause people to ignore its existence; for example, when someone stops hearing a clock tick after sitting in a room with it for a while.  Not only that but an over exposure to noise can cause permanent hearing damage, impairing our ability to appreciate the finer details of sound (Beckstead, Week 2).  That being said, as Schaeffer would believe, there are qualities of “noise” that are very interesting and in some ways are pleasing to the ear (Kane 15). In conclusion I agree more with Pierre Schaeffer because I do not think that the solution to noise is simply to silence it but find ways to adapt and create something meaningful, the way an artist would when creating a mural.

Works Cited

Beckstead, Lori. (2020). RTA907 Week 2. Presentation, Ryerson University.

Chion, Michel. Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 25-30

Kane, Brian. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.

López, Francisco. “Schizophonia vs l’Objet Sonore: Soundscapes and Artistic Freedom.” Franciscolopez.net, http://www.franciscolopez.net/schizo.html

Schafer, R. Murray (1977, 1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred Knopf/Randan House. Pp. 71-99

­­­Part 1

The first of Schafer’s concepts that I would like to discuss is how man made sound, that which is found in urban areas affects human life, and the life of the environment that the urban area exists in.  Schafer talks about how when people who lived in rural areas migrated to the big cities to find work during the industrial revolution, the working conditions that they were used to back home were much different from the new long work days and factories that were able to run all day long (Schafer 72).  This is something that I haven’t considered before.  Living in a city for my whole life, no matter the time of day, there is always light in the streets and work can always be done whereas before the industrial revolution, when the sun went down, the work would stop and it would be time to rest. I can only imagine the toll this change took on the workers. 

Later on, Schafer discusses how by the 1900s, people had become accustomed to the new soundscape they lived in, the industrial sounds, merging with nature (Schafer 74).  I think that by now in major urban areas, there are very rarely sounds of nature beyond the odd bird chirp.  The sound of public transit and the immense traffic that uses the city’s streets are so overpowering that it is all that can be heard.  I find that when I do have the opportunity to travel anywhere beyond the city’s limits, my mood improves very quickly as my ears finally have the opportunity to rest, and then listen.

The third concept worth noting is the connection between noise and our health.  According to Schafer, excessive noise has been known to cause deafness since 1831 (Schafer 75) and goes on to mention how hearing loss prevention in the work place was only seriously considered in most countries in 1970 (Schafer 76).  As discussed in class, people are reluctant to protect their hearing.  Few people that I know wear hearing protection when going to concerts and fewer wore hearing protection at the auto garage I worked in.  Perhaps it is because hearing is less precise than vision and it is harder to quantify how much of it is damaged when we go to concerts and such, but regardless it is just as important as our other senses and is something that cannot be fixed to the same degree as vision with glasses.  It seems the trend of people ignoring hearing damage has existed for a long time according to this chapter.

Part 2

A sound (or sounds) that is above you: Light Aircraft overflying the city.

A sound (or sounds) that is below you: The rumble of heavy traffic.

A sound (or sounds) that moves from left to right (and/or right to left): Cars passing by and people’s footsteps.

A sound (or sounds) that has a repetitive rhythm:  People’s footsteps

The loudest sound you heard: Emergency vehicle sirens

The quietest sound you heard: Zipper from someone’s backpack

A sound (or sounds) that was present the whole time you were listening: Building ventilation system exhaust

A sound (or sounds) that happened only once: Small aircraft overflying the city

A sound (or sounds) that started off loud and got quieter (and/or vice-versa): Emergency vehicle siren

The most pleasant sound you heard. Why? Bird chirping.  Because it was one of the few sounds that weren’t man made throughout the exercise.

The most unpleasant sound you heard. Why? Gravel Truck passing by.  Because of where I live I hear traffic 24/7 and large trucks tend to be the loudest.

1.  Since I did this exercise outside as opposed to the first time where I did it inside the RCC, I discovered that there was much more depth to the sounds that I was hearing.  By this I mean that the sounds were augmented much more due to their proximity to me.  For example, someone walking at the furthest end of the RCC can only bounce off so many walls in the short time it takes to reach my ears whereas the sound of the light aircraft I heard fly over my head at 2000 feet was able to travel a much farther distance resulting in only a portion of its original frequencies to possess the energy to reach the ground and because of its volume, bounced off of every surface, building, car etc. around me before reaching my ears.  Therefor the change in what I heard versus the sound at the origin was much larger than anything I heard while sitting inside of the RCC.  Because there were people walking by just like the first exercise, I was also hearing very direct sounds, so the depth of the soundscape was much greater during the second exercise.
2. I found that the vast majority of my listening was causal. I would hear something, identify it and write it down, I guess I was so focused on the task to identify the sounds that I heard that I neglected to do much semantic or reduced listening (Chion 25-30).  I did my most semantic listening when I heard people’s conversation because the time it takes to identify speech as coming from a human is almost negligible and we immediately listen for meaning.  I did do some reduced listening when I heard the plane fly over, listening for the quality of the sound, how much of which frequencies were present.
3. The concept I would like to relate is noise and health.  As discussed in part one, being shrouded in the noise of a city can be damaging to our hearing Schafer 75).  While sitting outside, I heard many people having to shout their conversations because of their proximity to traffic.  Not only can this volume be damaging to our ears but the energy required to constantly converse at a volume to compete with the sounds of construction can be an exhausting task.  Sometimes I can hear and feel the strain in my own voice after talking with someone for an extended period of time downtown.

Works Cited

Chion, Michel. Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 25-30

Schafer, R. Murray (1977, 1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred Knopf/Randan House. Pp. 71-99