Wk #1 Classmate Comment: Nykoll Hyatt

Nykoll's original post:

What's the real deal?

A Fairy(y) Use tale explained it best. The video was to the point but quite disjointed. I guess I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about the copyright issues.  On some level I understand it.  The artists and their management team want all the financial gains that I guess are rightfully theirs.  But as was stated by some in the Good Copy, Bad Copy video, the main people who are sampling and pirating are the artists fans.

These kinds of copyright violations are ways that poor people make money and are able to feed their families.  Why has the law changed from 14 years to 'forever' now anyway? Who is really making the big bucks behind this? Yes, these artists are losing revenue, but why not let others reap a little bit too? I heard something once about Li'l Wayne 'giving' his work away on the Internet, yet he's still making money. If that is the case, then I think there is much more going on.

How can they (the US, it seems) prohibit people in other countries from doing what they are doing? Like Charles Igwe said, "how can you be bigger than me and smaller than me at the same time?"  The article on, 'US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus', clearly shows that there is more to this issue than meets the eyes and the ears.

I don't get the big deal. I kind of understand getting permission to use someone's work before you make it into a money making venture for yourself. But how much would they want from what these fans or poor people are making and, is it only the original artist that these 'entrepreneurs' would have to split the money with?

My Comments:

Hi Nykoll;


Unfortunately, music has become too much of a "business" than "music". The Internet has become a big place where artists can promote their work and still make a profit. The problem is, I think, that record companies are losing their grip on the artist output, without the consent of managers or the record companies. Artists/musicians, can make the record they want, the style or genre of music they like and still get approval by us, the fans. I think that same thing happens with independent filmmakers. They can do great movies or shorts without giving away their rights or a big part of the revenue to the big movie studios. Check on You Tube all the fan based movies. The quality of the image as well as sound and special effects are great.

I think that the extension of copyright law is a way to guarantee that the record companies or film studios can still profit from the musicians/actors/filmmakers for years and years.

Week 1 Reading: Copyright issues parts 1-3: Reflection from a Communications student

This week on our Media Asset Creation class we began with the discussion of Copyrights.  During my Bachelor's Degree in Broadcasting, I took a law class and we discussed the topic of copyrights, especially Media related copyright law.  We covered censorship, trademarks, music and art copyrights.  A lot has changed after that class.  On the "Fairy Tale" video, I saw how, basically, copyright holder (artists) can own the rights of their work, almost forever.  When I took the law class, the artist had the right of their work during their lifetime and 75 or 50 years (depending of the medium, music, paint) after their death.  Now, by the fair use act, works can be used as long it is a short amount of the work that is used for teaching, critique, illustration of a topic.  For me, Fair Use is still a very thin line, in the area of education. What if a movie producer or a musician doesn't want their material use for educational purposes?

In the Good Copy, Bad Copy movie there was an important point that was brought to the topic of the music industry.  If the user pays an "x" amount of dollars for connecting on the internet and download or use the music to their liking, the user will be spending almost the same amount of money that he/she spends on a music store.  Could this mean that the music industry can't control what the public wants, and what musical output they want from their favorite artist?

It's not that artist shouldn't get payed for their artistic output, but we have seen how musicians rebeled against record companies for not allowing them to do the work they want, and now they support the same companies that "restrict" their creativity (does Metallica vs. Napster rings a bell?).  How many musicians "used" part of other musicians' songs/music as a base for their own music?  Let me give you a couple of examples:  the guitar riff at the end of the "Ballad of John & Yoko" by The Beatles, is the same guitar riff of "Lonesome tears of my eyes" by Johnny Burnett. "The old man down the road" from John Fogerty sounds almost the same as "Green River" from Creedence Clearwater Revival, in which Fogerty was a member and main songwriter and which the former members of CCR sued Fogerty for plagiarized himself, but the judge decided in favor of Fogerty after listen him playing both songs with his guitar in court (listen to both songs on the You Tube videos below).  Keith Richards once said that we are like sponges and absorb everything we heard.  Not a direct quote, but if you want to listen to him, I recommend to watch "The History of Rock and Roll: Guitar Heroes".

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Green River

John Fogerty: The Old Man Down the Road

As a semi pro musician, I'm not an avid fan of sampling, I feel that "artists" that use sampling don't want to push their creative juices to come up with original music.  On the other hand, it takes a lot of creativity to mix different beats and different samples of music to come up with the re-mixes we heard in parties and on the radio.  It's incredible how in Brazil they come up with these big parties.  "Music producers" in Brazil they create these re-mixes and record them on CD and sell them as a promotion to the big parties they made.

Finally, on the movie side, Nigeria has come up with a smart way of promoting their movie industry.  They can't copy or pirate the productions they do over there, but they can copy all the productions outside of Nigeria.

* Image from: Freeimages.co.uk

BP8_RILS Reflection

Working in Educator Studion to post my RILS was very simple.  It only took a few minutes to fill the spaces with copy and paste and uploading in .pdf format my assessment.  The only thing that I didn't like was that I uploaded two attachments instead of one and I couldn't find a delete attachment button.  The "help" button was unavailable.  Aside from technical issues, Educator Studio is a good resource for students to post their projects, either RILS or Capstone.

BP7_Links to RILS comments

Follow this link to view my comments in Alyson's blog.

Follow this link to view my comments in Rebecca's blog.
Here's the link to her Educator Studio in case it's working.

ETC_Final Project

Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario

 Rodolfo Fernández

Overview:

The purpose of this Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario will be the introduction of a music creation/audio recording web 2.0 tool, in the Introduction to Computers class.  The use of the web 2.0 tool will introduce students to similar applications used in the course of their Associate Degree program.

Target Audience:

• Students in the first year of Recording Engineer associate degree.

Materials:

• Computer with broadband connection.
• FL Studio
• Garage Band

Objectives: At the end of this scenario, the learners will be able to:

• Create a musical piece using Soundation, FL Studio and Garage Band.
• Evaluate and compare the ease of use of Soundation with FL Studio and Garage Band.
• Discuss the application of the web 2.0 tool in class.
• Apply the use of these applications as recording engineers.

Procedure:

• Students will go to the Soundation webpage, http://www.soundation.com/ and create an account.
• Once students’ log in, they will proceed to create a musical piece as they do in FL Studio or Garage Band.  
• If the student has any questions or doubts, they will refer to the “How-to-section”.
• After they finish the musical piece, students will export it to the computer’s desktopin .wav file format

Students will review the Web 2.0 tool in class by:

• Discussing advantages and disadvantages of Soundation to similar program, like Garage Band or FL Studio.
• Use of ease of the web 2.0 tool (Soundation).
• What improvements can be done in Soundation
•  Remind students that they can take their finished jobs on a USB Flahs Drive and use it on other projects.

Web 2.0 Tool:

Soundation is a free online music creation tool.  Users can create music using an online loop library; also, audio editing and effects are features available in the application as exporting to the computer or the Internet.

 Social Participation/Social Learning:

Students will work on their musical creations during class hours for class grade, at the computer lab, during 4 class sessions.  Collaboration will occur by listening and recommend which loops are best to their musical pieces.  Once they finish they will listen to their final product before exporting the project in a .wav file in the computer’s desktop.

Making Connections:

To work efficiently on the project, students will learn how to use keyboard shortcuts, like cut, copy, and paste, select all, etc., since most audio recording/music creation tools used them.  By learning the shortcuts, students can work more efficiently on the programs that they will use throughout their course program.  After they learn how to use the keyboard, students will be introduced to web 2.0 tools, in this case Soundation

Create/Produce:

Students will create a 2-minute musical piece and export it in a .wav format. 

Assessment:

See the rubric below

RILS Rubric
	Excellent	Good	Average	Poor
Musical creation	Student create and edit an original 2 min. musical piece, using volume changes and effects and export it to .wav format	Student create and edit an original 2 min. musical piece and export it to a .wav format	Student only created 1 min. musical piece. No editing, volume changes or effects, but export it to a .wav format	Student did not create a musical piece.
Evaluation and comparison of Web 2.0 tool with other applications	Student made a deep evaluation on the use of the web 2.0 tool and detailed the difference to other applications	Student made a deep evaluation on the use of the web 2.0 tool, but made gave a general comparison to other applications	Student only evaluate on the web 2.0 tool, but did not gave any comparison to other applications	Student did not evaluate the web 2.0 tool, nor other applications
Discussion in class	Student presents the musical piece and gives a detailed explanation creation process in class	Student presents the musical piece in class and gives a general explanation creation process in class	Student presents the musical piece, but does not give an explanation of creation process in class.	Student did not present musical piece in class.
Applications	Student gave thoughtful suggestions and recommendations to classmates of the web 2.0 tool used in class	Student gave general suggestions and recommendations to classmates of the web 2.0 tool used in class.	Student gave general recommendations to classmates the web 2.0 tool used in class	No recommendations

Reflection:

Students:

Students will deliver a written reflection that describes their impression of learning about Web 2.0 Tools in class and what topics can be modified or eliminate in the Introduction to Computers course.

      Teacher:

The teacher will make a reflection based on students’ feedback.  This reflection will also include technical mishaps during the learning scenario and present them to professors and faculty director.

Press this link for my RILS in Educator Studio

PE5_Soundation

Mixing your audio tracks is one of the toughest moments in the music recording process.  Volume and balance are amongst the most important part of mixing.  Musical Instruments must be balanced in the right or left channels, for the listener to hear them and not get lost in the mix.  Rhythm guitars could get lost in the mix if they are not separate in the mix.  For this post I create a funky rhythm piece featuring bass, drums and two rhythm guitars.  When I finished, the track sounded like this:

If you have external speakers on your computer, you will hear that the guitar tracks are on the center, mix with the bass and drums.  Although you can hear them well, you can't distinguish the nuances or extra notes that each rhythm guitar has.  To balance the guitars, I turn the pan control to the left and to the right.

Once I placed the guitars on the left and right channels, the music track sounded like this:

To finish my mix I decided to add a fade in at the beginning of song (or melody, if you prefer).  I added de fade in the master channel so it won't interfered with my instruments.  To add a master channel, simply go to "view" and choose "Show Master Channel".  Once the master channel appears on the bottom left of your screen, press the black button where it says "Display off" and choose volume.  Click on the timeline and a line will appear.  Click on the yellow line and "dots" will show up on the yellow line, with this dots you can move them up or down to control the volume as you can see here:

If you are not satisfied with the fade effect, you can still work on it until is done the way you want it.  After finish with the fade, go to "File" and choose "Mixdown" and choose "save as .wav" or "Publish and share".  For my RILS project, my students will export to .wav, for them to keep as part of their portfolio that will deliver at the end of the semester.

Hope you enjoy this demonstration!!!!

PE4_Soundation

For my RILS project I chose Soundation as the Web 2.0 Tool that my students will use to create their musical pieces, using the free online sound library that comes in the application.  As I mentioned in my BP_3 Sondation post, this application is a "Garage Band" type of application that can be used to create, record and mix music or background sounds for video productions.

For this post I decided to not to use the drum tracks that are already in the application.  Soundation lets the user create their own drum tracks by adding an instrument channel to the interface.  This channel will be identified a blue color.

Once the track is created, a small window will appear on screen.  In this window, the user can modified the volume, pitch and time duration  of the drum sounds, like snare, bass drum, hi hat, etc.

                   

To create the drum tracks the user will double click in the timeline area and a small window with a piano keyboard on the left side will appear.  By clicking on the keys, the user will listen to the drum sounds and write the "notes" on the small window with a pencil icon that can be clicked on the top part of the window.

For this blog, I programmed a straight 4/4 beat that sounds like this:

After I finished with my drum track to add more, but instead of writing the notes, I've just copy and paste the track that I already made.  To add a little depth to the drum track, I added a reverb effect.  Reverb can be found on the top part of the instrument/audio channel on the left part of the screen.

Here's the final product.  For my next post, I'll show you a couple of techniques for a good mixdown with Soundation.  Enjoy!!!