Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1335010
34 W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y DB: I was chatting with Mark Ulano CAS about teaching and he posited that you can never be fully educated, and I agree. The day you stop learning is the day you die. Like Matt, I'm thankful to the vendors who gave extended trials (although I wish they would extend it to next semester as well!). As someone who is in a high-risk group, my chair would not entertain my request to teach hybrid classes, so I am online through this academic year. With online teaching, I had previously taught some online classes at CU Denver, but it was not a great experience. The course I taught was required for all music students, and the ones who wanted to be in Recording Arts would take the in-person version, so I wound up with uninterested students for the most part. However, I do believe online education is the future. I look forward to being able to make classes hybrid after the pandemic. I did have to change the syllabus for teaching online, but not as much as I had feared. I do believe that online education has its place, but to truly be a mentor, you have to have one-on-one time with students at the console. On the downside, there were lots of technical issues during the switchover. I had to buy a new computer at my own expense and upgrade our home internet. Those hurdles were a lot worse for students, which we're seeing all over the country at all grade levels. At CU, we have many students from lower income families, some are the first people in their family to go to college. I have students who don't own a computer, or who have to share with family, or they only have a tablet or smartphone. I have students who don't have broadband internet at home and who sit in the parking lot at McDonald's to use the free Wi-Fi for their classes. (Note: Wi-Fi is available on campus, but you must be within proximity.) At the other end of the spectrum, we have students who have already started a home studio. They also had some problems, as many had invested in DAW's other than Pro Tools, which I require for the class as it is still the platform used most frequently on dub stages. With Avid, we chose to have students log in to our network via VPN to use our licenses. This was not popular with students as the learning curve was steep, but it meant access to Pro Tools for all students, even at home. TF: We had to cancel the class during the pandemic. There was no way for the students to complete projects and analyze them online. Do you have any specific techniques you use to open up students' ears to become good listeners? TF: The technique that I was taught was to train myself to listen selectively. Listen to anything—standing on the street, watching a movie, riding a subway, etc.—and try to pick out one sound at a time and follow just that sound for as long as possible ignoring everything else. Also, pay attention when watching movies to how the soundtrack is helping tell the story. MF: Active listening is the key. Think about how we, typically, learn to develop style and technique as musicians. We learn some theory and then listen to things that interest us. We can then analyze—or just feel—what we like about specific songs and, inevitably, those will influence our style because we can understand and evaluate. Same in sound for picture. For instance, I have my students complete a dialogue editing lab that has some, shall we say, "ambitious" edits, missing tone fills, and Franken-bites. Once they 've completed that lab—and fix it after I've given them their sessions back with notes—they then listen to some reality or lifestyle shows and compare that dialogue to a scripted series. They may not have noticed it before, but they certainly now notice phrases being cut, words spliced together, different tonalities, different ambience presence, etc. If they weren't exposed to these elements through class discussion and practice, their ears may not have heard edits so clearly and their skillset would not know how to adjust them. DB: One assignment that I inherited from previous teachers is to ask students to go to a safe outdoor daytime location where they can sit with their eyes closed for at least 10 minutes and simply listen. They then write a list of sounds they heard with a minimum of 10. I also do an emotional exercise, where I ask students to analyze a short script for its emotional content. They then take the emotions and separate them from the film, and list sounds that, for them, represent that emotion. It constantly surprises the students (and me!) how many times a completely wrong sound for a scene can still work emotionally. I spend a lot of time in the first half of the semester watching movie clips and encouraging class discussion on them. I really think that's the best way to develop good ears as a mixer. Listen. To film. To television. Lots of it. " I BELIEVE THE SOCRATIC TEACHING METHOD IS CORRECT: AT SOME POINT, THE EDUCATION MUST COME FROM WITHIN, OR THERE IS NEVER TRUE DISCOVERY. " —DAVID BONDELEVITCH CAS MPSE