Philosophy on Learning Audio

I’ve been a student as well as a teacher in recent years, which really got me thinking about Audio Education.

Some of the subjects I was learning were brand new to me, as perhaps Audio is to you.

Some of them I found a little difficult and for some, the ‘Aha!’ moment didn’t come straight away.

This got me thinking on how we learn - particularly in relation to Audio.

The 70-20-10 Model is a commonly used idea within eduction.

It suggests that individuals obtain 70% of their knowledge from experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and only 10% from formal educational events.

10% isn’t a great batting average really , is it ? - so we need to improve that if we can at all.

Firstly I think that we need to make the subject ‘smaller’ and more manageable, if possible - Audio and Music are huge intertwined subjects and one could spend years studying them. A day never passes without me learning something.

With that in mind, we split the subject in two - the ‘Technical’ and the ‘Creative’.

If we focus on the ‘Technical’ recording process it becomes much more manageable .

That is not to ignore the creative, but just ‘postpone’ it to further down the line - one absolutely needs to know how to record and use your DAW - it’s the foundation of all to follow.

For this initial course, a song could be 8 bars - in this context, it doesn’t really matter !

The course aims to get you recording – you can focus on the creative in your own time.

The other thread in the course is that all this information is already out there, whether on the thousands of YouTube videos , Podcasts, Published Articles or even Social Media posts, it’s all out there - so why not use the good ones to help learning ?

Let’s use this ‘Mega Internet Encyclopaedia’ in a useful way. Allow me to pick the parts that I believe explain an idea well.

Now, we’ve agreed to cover a ‘certain amount’ of information and use the ‘internet’ as a visual tool to help explain ideas.

The structure of the current DAW course offered is such that it references Videos . With those as a basis, we work through them, step by step - spending the time needed to establish the principles.  

The advantage of this way of working is that YouTube is always available as a reference , plus I offer documents that reference the videos , essentially a synopsis of the key points within the videos. We work through the videos as a class .

Then you put what we’ve just learned into practice.

You are encouraged to repeat what you’ve learned in your own time and with the help of the class documents as a reminder.

Students are finding this approach beneficial already - in fact one student mentioned that he has made more progress in a few weeks than a year he spent on another course.

To my mind it would be foolish to ignore the ‘Net as part of this process.

These classes really are the foundation of everything !