Sounds like a plan: New audio courses focus on modern tech tools

Photo: Audio is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of multimedia production, says Bob Egan.

So the mobile game you’ve just developed looks great. But how does it sound?

Audio is a crucial component of any game, app or video project, but it’s often treated as an afterthought, if it’s considered at all.

Two American-born music-industry veterans who now happen to live in Waterloo Region are setting out to change all that through an innovative education program at the soon-to-launch Kitchener Studio Project (KSP).

“Watch The Shining with the sound off and it’s not a very scary movie at all; it’s some kid riding his bike around a hotel,” says Bob Egan, who has developed the program with David Gray. “But as soon as you put the sound on, it tells you what to feel.”

Egan, a Chicago-area native and former Wilco member who plays steel guitar for Blue Rodeo, has teamed up with Gray, a Houston-raised producer, musician and academic, to create three new courses for the program, which will be offered by Conestoga College at KSP.

Gray’s experience includes a stint in Los Angeles working as an assistant to superstar producer Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Beastie Boys) and on movie soundtracks; three years studying drumming technique in New Orleans; and ethnomusicology studies at York University in Toronto, where he is completing his PhD dissertation on Daniel Lanois, a Canadian producer renowned for his work with U2, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel and others.

Gray, who, like Egan, now lives in downtown Kitchener, will teach the hands-on courses using readily available software popular on today’s mobile computing devices.

To seed interest in the courses, two open houses will be held in the coming days – one this Saturday, Nov. 30 from noon to 3 p.m., and another on Wednesday, Dec. 3 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Admission is free, but participants need to register in advance.

The three courses to be discussed at the open houses are designed for people looking to improve their recording, mixing and business skills, or seeking a career in digital audio and music production, Egan says.

The driving force behind them is the idea that “video equals audio, visual equals sound,” he says. “These are two of our greatest senses, and the importance of audio cannot be underestimated.”

While Egan and Gray hope to attract as diverse a cohort as possible, they feel the courses will be particularly relevant to the tech community, in which good audio is essential to how users experience games, apps, video and websites.

“If you’re creating anything that has a visual component to it, we feel there should be an audio component to it,” Egan says. “And if you can work your way around developing an app, or work your way around a laptop or a computer, you can create audio.”

The first of the three courses is in 21^st century recording and audio technology, which “teaches you how to create audio on a laptop or an iPad, using Garage Band and Aria, two very common apps,” Egan says. This includes a grounding in microphone and equalization techniques.

The second course looks at the essentials of mixing, using Avid’s Pro Tools software.

The way a piece of audio should be mixed depends on how it will be experienced, Egan says.

“Is this audio going to be heard on a phone? Is it going to be heard on computer speakers? In headphones? On a television? You have to mix for the end result.”

The third course is an introduction to electroacoustic music, or music created “in the box” – meaning on a tablet, laptop or other device.

“This is so prevalent in current and modern music,” Egan says. “It started out with people like Brian Eno and John Cage, and has now progressed to Teebs or Deadmau5 or DJ Shadow, people like this.”

Electroacoustic music is “creating beats, it’s finding sounds, it’s creating orchestrations, it’s creating moods and shadows and emotions, all within a box.”

The courses themselves will be condensed and highly practical, Egan says.

“Instead of talking about mixing, you’re actually going to be mixing…and instead of talking about how to record and track, you’re actually going to be recording and tracking, which is unlike a lot of courses,” he says. “They’re not chalk-and-talks; they are experiential.”

More information about the open houses and courses is available on the registration page.