Week 2 Reflection on class (Tuesday, 10/12/21)

In this class we covered a bit of history of recording: wax cylinders to vinyl to cassettes to CDs to streaming, analog and digital, and the music concrete movement that began in the 1950s. For me, it was interesting to finally hear the specifics about what qualifies as "high-fidelity" versus "lo-fi", "bits", the fact that "CD-quality" is at least 44K samples per second, and how MP3s condense files to 1/12 of their original size. We did comparative listening to what sounded like an 80s/90s infomercial jingle at various recording quality levels: 44K samples per second, 22K samples per second, 8-bit, and 4-bit. Very informative!

We covered how to use Audacity and SoundCloud for the Musique Concrete project. Like Soundtrap, I found that these platforms are straightforward and non-intimidating. I look forward to starting this project, the variety of sounds is limitless, and it will be my first music concrete creation.  I've performed several works involving prerecorded sounds on cassette (Davidovsky, Cage, and Babbitt) and it was interesting in class to hear more about the process from that time. The ease of manipulating sounds in modern times with a platform like Audacity gives me an appreciation for the painstaking, tedious work composers had to do in the 50s - 70s with manipulating magnetic strips by hand.