Week 8: Sound Media Summary

This course, overall, was one tremendous experience for me, in both educational and ​entertainment purposes. For starters, I definitely did learn a lot, and my knowledge on sound media as a whole is much higher now than it was prior to taking this course. For starters, I learned a lot about how complicated the world's philosophy on sound is, and how it can be viewed through so many different perspectives. Specifically, I learned so much about soundwalks, podcasting, the sound of films, user interfaces, and sound design.

Furthermore, I intend to apply many of the concepts learned in this course for my future projects, courses, and endeavours. For example, if I ever decide to do a podcast or a talk show, I will definitely make sure to apply at least some of the concepts I learned in this course on the subject to it. For example, I would definitely aspire to do one like the one starring Whitney Cummings, Good for You. I learned from her how a talk show host can be informative and funny simultaneously, as well as how they can have the joke be on their guests but still make them laugh. She taught me a lot about how one can display satirical humour that's funny, and at the same time, does not offend people, which is an excellent skill for one to have. In addition, if I were ever designing the soundtrack for a film that I or someone else were making, I would definitely follow Randy Thom's philosophy on "designing the film on the basis of the sound." I think that advice is excellent, and I further agree with him that the scores of the Star Wars films by John Williams are just brilliant, and I, too, wish that all filmmakers aspired to make soundtracks like those. These are the main concepts that I intend to apply to my future courses, endeavours, and projects.

The content of this course tied into my program and area of study in many different ways. For starters, my program is RTA New Media, and this course is an RTA core elective, so it already was right up my alley just for being one of the core electives of my program. In addition, I have always had a tremendous interest in sound as a whole, so I realized that studying the media of it would intrigue me deeply. In addition, because RTA104: Intro to Sound Production is one of the mandatory courses for all RTA students who are in first year, it is unanimous that sound is meant to play a big part in my program. I guess you could say that one key difference between this course and my program is that this program focuses a lot on journalism, and while journalism is part of FCAD, it is a whole different department than RTA, and in fact, the students in RTA and Journalism share a friendly rivalry, so there definitely is a difference between both departments. These are all the commonalities, intersections, similarities, and differences between this course and my program/area of study.

Lastly, there are a few key takeaways ​from this course that are key for me to remember overall. First of all, there are the ones that I previously mentioned above. Secondly, there are the ones that were stated by R. Murray Schafer and Pierre Schaeffer in their books known as The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment, along with the book that was written about Pierre by Brian Kane, known as Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. ​While these two gentlemen may take a much more philosophical approach to sound media than other people like Randy Thom, their theories are stil brilliant, especially Schafer's theory philosophy on the sound disturbances that the industrial revolution brought to this planet, along with Schaeffer having an ultraconservative diagnosis on modern music. These are pretty much all the key takeaways from this course.

Contributing to this blog has been one amazing experience for me, and it is disappointing that it must now come to an end. However, if I ever end up having the time in the future, I could potentially start it up again, and maybe write about things that the public requests. Thank you, and I wish everyone luck on their future endeavours for sound media and more!
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Work Cited:

1. Cummings, Whitney. “Ep #1: DAN LEVY | Good For You Podcast with Whitney Cummings.” Whitney Cummings: Good for You, Royal Oak Music Theatre, 6 Nov. 2019. 

2. Kane, Brian. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press, 2016.

3. Williams, John. Lucas, George. Star Wars; Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment: United States, 1977. 

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