How about we use the three-step analysis in order to analyze the relationship between sound and genre? That way, we can navigate our way through Davis, Kozloff, Nordstrom, and your Response Paper 1.2.

We will first listen to two videos. No visuals, that is. Only sound. (Isolating the senses for analysis in this fashion is what Michel Chion refers to as “masking.”) As we listen, we will take careful notes. Active notes through what Les Back and Michael Bull call “agile listening,” which is more than merely “hearing” something. It is, in short, a learned technique.

In your note-taking, you might find R. Murray Schafer‘s “sonographic” tools productive:

• Keynote Sound: backgrounded, fundamental tone against which other sounds are perceived (e.g., the sea)
• Signal Sound: foregrounded sound to which the attention is particularly directed (e.g., a boat whistle)
• Soundmark: a community sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it noticed by people in that community (e.g., church bells)
• The physical characteristics of the sound (i.e., acoustics–tempo, rhythm, pitch, envelope, tone)
• The way in which sounds are perceived (i.e., psychoacoustics)
• The sound’s function and meaning (i.e., social and cultural semiotics and semantics)
• The sound’s emotional or affective qualities (i.e., aesthetics)

Ready to listen?

[Insert sound-time here.]

Now that you’ve listened to each, let’s get into pairs. In your pairs, please review each other’s notes and then produce one analysis of the sounds for each video. The two analyses should be included in a single blog entry (categorized under “Masking”) and each should:

• Introduce what you heard (to the best of your knowledge).
• Explain what you heard (using Schafers terms, if you wish).
• Implicate what you heard in a particular film genre (e.g., horror, comedy, documentary, romance, or action-adventure) and explain your reasoning.

Finished? Now’s let us watch the videos to match sounds with visuals.

As we watch, we might consider the following questions as a class:

• How did the visuals resonate with our analyses?
• How did the visuals dissonate with our analyses?
• How is sound effective in communicating or navigating us through the visual?
• How did the sounds make us feel (with and without the visuals)?
• How did the atmosphere or “soundscape” change once the visual was mapped onto sound?

Ultimately, this exercise should make you more familiar with Outcomes 1 (audience, context, and conventions) and 2 (support and evidence), as well as with the analysis of sound, media, and genre.

As we progress through the workshop, I’m sure questions will pop up. Let’s do our best to address them, k?

Best,

Jentery