Subject: Re: infamous 'SSS' experiment
From: Rosemary Mountain (mountain@vax2.concordia.ca)
Date: Wed Jan 10 2001 - 13:14:48 EST
OK, I was hoping that Kevin Austin would answer this, as he has the
full historical background, but I'll trust him to append the
necessary info.....
The "SSS" assignment is 1/3 rd of the studio component work of the
Concordia 1st-year electroacoustic programme. I believe the idea was
suggested by someone else; whether it has been implemented anywhere
else I do not know.
The students are required, in the first assignment, to record a
couple of sentences, in mono, onto 1/4" tape. They then listen to
the sentences and discover where the "S" sounds are. (As Matt points
out, this does not always correlate with the written "S", which often
sounds like a "Z", and conversely it can be heard where there is no
written "S", such as in "fox".) The student then has to splice out
the "S" sounds, and splice all the "S"s into a group. The
assignments are then played in class. Since the work is done on one
channel, any "s"s which are inadvertently turned upside-down /
backwards during the last stage will appear on the "other" speaker.
The assignment is accompanied with an introduction to the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which of course should match
the sound. The student must write out the sentences in IPA symbols
as well.
The second assignment is to repeat the same procedure using software
on the computer (currently SoundEdit16).
Having lived through two years of "s" assignments now, I can say that
I am really impressed with it. It combines all kinds of techniques
(recording, splicing, etc.), gives an historical perspective, trains
the ear really fast (or at least reveals the kind of listening we
expect them to develop), and as you can tell, has a lasting effect on
the lucky sods who went through it all......
rm
>With all due respect, and not to sound grumpy... but this inside
>joke on an email list is getting annoying.
>
>Sam Hamm
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b27 : Wed Jun 11 2003 - 13:06:43 EDT