Hi

I'm teaching at an highschool and I have to make a simple sound design exercise for a video for my students.
Anyone knows where I can have access to an exercise already prepared?

Thanks!

 

Hi
i remember there was a VST (or maybe it was an application) that had an integrated full course in it. you started with a single oscillator, then slowly you "unlocked" more knobs. it was pretty nice but i can't remember its name. anyone knows?

(also interested in the thread)

 

syntorial

 

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=sound design

They also issue certificate you can use it for your teaching and resume.

 

Teaching is a serious thing, try to transmit your experience to the students, the risk of using a template is to not give much to them thus not really teaching anything.

Nobody expecting an high school student to win a grammy so you have much of freedom.

 

Isn't preparing an exercise yourself for your students part of your job remit? If you are unable to prepare a simple exercise, you will struggle to teach it.

 

cheers!

 

Teaching is different from doing something. It is not easy to teach students in a concise and understandable way. Many people are experts in what they do, but they do not have the ability to teach, because the process of converting what they have learned into a format that can be easily transferred to other people requires teaching techniques.
Many artists and singers may be skilled in their work, but if they are asked to teach others, you will realize that they are not good at it. Because those people cannot think systematically and have jumps in their thinking. These jumps are not readily transferable in teaching work.
It is not right to accuse someone of lack of ability without knowing the teaching process. Once you try to teach what you know to someone who doesn't know anything about it, then you will realize what a crushing blow you have fallen into.

 

Click below for a comprehensive YouTube tutorial.

 

Hello @Andrew Mehldau
If you are teaching high school and need a simple sound design exercise for a video, I hope these websites are helpful for you, free sound and bbc sound effects offer a variety of sound clips you can use. Also; you can try to explore educational platforms like teachers pay teachers and TES, which provide already prepared exercises and lesson plans for sound design.

 

I reckon for beginners the best place to start is FM. Yeah, crazy idea, but subtractive takes a long time to understand and control properly and people can lose interest really quickly...

FM on the other hand, you just throw shit in a bowl and get some mad textures. It happens pretty much instantly.

If you can teach the shaping of basic waves, then expand that into the madness that you get with FM and how easily they can make stuff, you have an instant hit in interest.

Wavetable also makes sense. Something like Serum. Learning Sylenth on the other hand you'll send them to sleep.

 

If you want to get a RANDOM weird sound then FM can help, but not at all if you have to teach beginners the basis of sound creation.

Instead, the simplest way to start with is subtractive synthesis, from basic waveform (square, triangle, etc.) and how the filter changes harmonics within, resonance, ADSR, blahblah.

Syntorial is a great interactive tool, but it can be tedious and frustrating in advanced lessons because for example it requires a refined ear to understand if filter is let's say 60 or 70%

I started to learn basics on a real SH-101 and a Minimoog, it took just few hours to get acquainted with subtractive synthesis.

After, I bought a (then) top of the line advanced FM workstation, the SY99, thinking that I was going to be lost in creating astounding sound, eventually I was so frustrated and just gave up and used it as a preset synth with slight sound modification.

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2024

I'm well aware of the teaching process; I've held presentations for the AES across the world, teaching students, tutors and producers.

However, that is beside the point. You are asking for a pre-prepared exercise. That is not teaching; it is preparing an exercise, which is easy if you know what you're doing. If you cannot explain the principle so that a 5-year-old can understand it, you don't understand it enough yourself (to paraphrase a quote).

If you are unable to prepare an exercise to teach, I would argue that you are not qualified to teach it.

 

I guess the OP means create sound for video, that's also sounddesign. He probably doesn't want to teach synthesis to high school kids.
So if you want to entertain them, get a piece of animation, strip the sound, give them a small sound effect library.
They could use any NLE or DAW that can work with video. It'll be a nice exercise.
Video: use Southpark or something else they know. If you also want to give them historic perspective: Sending met der Maus!