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Tag: Coursera

Taking a Coursera Class: Survey in Music Technology

I’ve been taking this course now for about three weeks, and it’s already filled in a few gaps in my knowledge of audio processing. For instance, I was always fuzzy on the physics and psychoacoustics of sound – now I’ve got a “less clueless” level of knowledge.

I’m also less afraid of MIDI than I was before. Setting up connections to hardware and/or software was, and is, still a little bit of a pain, but it’s getting easier.

The course has also forced me to learn a new Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) – Reaper. I’m running it on a Windows machine because it’s easier to do it that way. For the sake of the class, I want to spend time learning the tool instead of how to make it work in my other environments. I’ll run it in Linux and Mac OS X eventually – just not yet. I’ve also got a Mac Mini my brother-in-law gave me, but I haven’t taken the time to get comfortable with that system.

My first assignment is due by the end of this weekend, and I’ve chosen to use this as an opportunity to revisit an old project. I’m going to do a new recording of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, by T.S, Eliot. I really like this poem, and it was among the first pieces I uploaded to SoundCloud. Here’s the first version:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/27485009″ params=”color=00cc11&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

This time, I feel I’m relying more on my own musical compositon chops. Here’s how I’m starting:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173747350″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]

The assignment constrains the length of the piece (60 to 120 seconds) so the reading will only cover the first section. I’ll post the completed assignment to this article once it’s done.

UPDATE: Here’s the completed assignment:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/174026783″ params=”color=00cc11&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

I’m pleased  with how it came out. Now to finish the rest of the poem…

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