Contact Info

Snell 180 Tu/Th 12:15 – 1:00 or johndan@clarkson.edu

Labs

To get some hands-on experience, you’ll be assigned to a lab team that will meet once a week with a TA, usually in the WTSC Production Studio in the basement of Hamlin-Powers dorm. The day and time of your weekly meeting will be set once your lab team gets together. More info is available on the Labs page.

Textbooks & Supplies

• Owsinki’s Recording Engineer’s Handbook (2nd Edition). ISBN: 978-1598638677.
• White’s Basic Mixers. ISBN: 978-1860742668. Note: The print version of this is listed as out of stock most places (including the Clarkson bookstore). I recommend you get the Kindle edition. It’s cheap ($6.36) and if you don’ have a Kindle you can get Amazon’s free Kindle Cloud Reader for Windows, OS X, Linux, or iPad.
• A set of decent headphones. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars, but do some research and get a pair of decent headphones. I’m not going to set any ground rules, so if you’re really broke you can just get a cheap pair. But if you’re at all serious about audio (even just as a listener), at some point you’ll want to spring for something better. We’ll do some research during the first week of class to come up with recommendations to fit different budgets.

Grading

Grading for most aspects of the course is straight scale:

90 – 100: A

86 – 100: B+

80 – 85: B

etc.

Late assignments are marked down one, full letter grade per class period late. Some small projects are graded pass/fail and cannot be turned in late.

Attendance

A lot of the course takes place in class, with discussion and tutorials or in teams. You’re allowed to miss three classes, for any reason. If you miss class, you’re still responsible for getting material in on time (and penalized if it’s late) and for getting notes about what was covered in class from one of your peers.

Labs are all required (because they’re all hands-on). If you have to miss your normal lab session, check with the TAs of the other sessions to see if you can attend their session for that week.

Don’t Lie

It should go without saying, but don’t plagiarize. That means if you use someone else’s work as part of your own, you need to let me know what portions you didn’t create. For some projects, I’ll explicitly have you start by sampling someone else’s audio; you’ll need to keep records of what you sampled and where you got it so you can turn that info in with your assignment. If you sample for projects where doing so wasn’t explicitly required, check with me first and remind me where you got the sample when you turn it in. (If an assignment is designed to give you experience in recording audio, for example, I don’t want you to just turn in audio that someone else recorded.)

In general, minor plagiarism will result in your failing that assignment. Larger instances of plagiarism (plagiarizing the majority of a project, for example) will result in either an F grade for the course or having the case referred to Clarkson’s Academic Integrity Committee (with my recommendation that you get an F grade).  You can also appeal any grade to the same committee. On average, I fail one student per year for plagiarism, so these guidelines are not purely hypothetical.