Forum Sem 2 Week 1

Upon searching for Listening i found that that a good percentage of the hits were about communication and learning to be a good social listener. Which, at first, i thought was quite abstract from what i was searching for. But in actual fact a lot of these websites' advice could be applied to Listening to music. Engaging with other people and being genuinely interested is a metaphor for paying attention to what is being played and devoting your time to the one activity of listening to the music. It also tells us to look at the music (or rather listen to the music) in context. Genuinely interested is an interesting phrase. Being genuinely interested in what somebody has to say is a lot like listening to and engaging in music. Although we may not agree with what everybody has to say, it is polite and expected to at least act interested. The same applies to listening, having an understanding of the context (i.e. time, place, social context, composer style, influences etc...) gives us a deeper understanding and hopefully an appreciation for the piece. I know this may seem obvious, but the idea of music as a language is really amplified by these concepts. Listening to music (or perhaps writing music) as a conversation between either instruments, sections or the composer with the listener gives added appreciation for the pieces listened. I know I've heard this from many a music appreciator, but I've never actually looked at it from this perspective. Music, writing, playing and listening follows (or to the appreciator should follow) polite social conventions of conversation. Actually listening to music, or devoting time to listening is the polite way of engaging with music.

References:

Whittington, Stephen. Lecture. "Listening." 13/7/08/ Adelaide University.

http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm

AA2 Sem 2 Week 1 Intro to Sound Design

Battlezone was released in 1980 as was designed by Atari. It used vector graphics. The sound board used was Atari's own POKEY Audio which was designed by Doug Neubauer. The POKEY sound board has 4 audio channels which was a revolution of the time, allowing polyphony for games. In the case of Battlezone you can clearly hear the 8 and or 16 bit sound (as the POKEY can have either 8bit or 16bit channels). The tank noises and shooting are clearly a noise generator through a high pass filter. The radar blips and victory music are realised through square tones. Other sounds that warn of approaching enemys are square tones through relatively slow frequency modulation.



References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. "Intro into Sound Design." Adelaide University. 31/7/08

McDonald, Glenn. 2002, A brief timeline of Video Game Music, 2007,
http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/vg_music/.

Video game music, 2007, 2007, .