Blog Post 2 - The 'secret language' of Sound engineering

1. What are three of your favorite words or terms from the 'secret language' of your discipline, and why are you drawn to them, or why are they important to your discipline? Help the rest of the class by explaining what they mean to you, to your discipline, and why they are significant.

Acoustics:

Definition -  the properties or qualities of a room or building that determine how sound is transmitted in it. I think acoustics is one of the most overlooked thing in the audio industry at times. Many times people underestimate the effect that a room can have on sound and focus on buying good speakers rather than treating a room well. Acoustics still has a lot of room for exploration and to me, it’s a very fascinating aspect of sound.

Soldering: Soldering is such an important skill that allows you to make connections and much more with wires and joints etc. It is so vital when you are working with electronics and building equipment.

Kick: As a child, kicking was my favorite action because I like playing soccer. Coming to college, I have never referred to the bass drum as kick before. Well, kick refers to the bass drum in the music world and now, when people refer to the kick I know what they are talking about. Cool huh?

2. Conversely, people outside of the group can tend to reduce the inherent richness and diversity of a discipline by using an unfair condensation of one or two words to describe the totality of the group, or by misusing or misunderstanding these terms.  What is the outsider description of your discipline, or a term that people use to describe your discipline that you find to be most inaccurate, reductionist or plain wrong?

DJ: More than half the times when I tell people that I’m a sound engineering major, they would reply with a sentence or a question that contains the word DJ in it. NOT ALL SOUND ENGINEERS ARE DJs!!!!!! There is so much more to the sound world than being a DJ, but I could see how some people might only relate to the ‘sound world’ or care about the sound in a DJ setting.