Thank You Art & Lutherie!

In class this week, we discussed assessment. There are no curricular expectations specific to technology, thus when assessing technology it needs to be assessed in relation to other subjects. We were given the challenge of looking through Ontario curriculum documents in order to gather ideas of how we could assess a Genius hour project. Some connections I found were in the science-technology, literacy, and social studies curriculum documents. The Science and Social Studies documents often discuss the use of technology as part of the inquiry process. In addition, technology use is a significant aspect of the media literacy strand of the literacy curriculum. Although technology and genius hour can be assessed in connection to these subjects, it may be more accurately assessed if one were to pull in other subjects/strands according to each individual student's project. For example, my genius hour project could be assessed using music, math, and literacy expectations.

Colton McMillan. (February 1, 2018).
New Guitar (Photograph).

Speaking of my genius hour project, my new guitar came in this week: my beautiful Art & Lutherie guitar! Do you know what this means?! I was finally able to begin recording! I fiddled around a bit with the focusrite recording equipment and garageband in the Brock makerspace room this week and I got the guitar accompaniment recorded for my song called "Truer Than True". This is one of my favourite songs because I wrote it for my wedding and my husband has been asking me to record it ever since. I was not able to record any vocals this week though because I have been fighting a cold all week, but I really feel like I have begun to make some real progress this week.

That being said, I am not completely satisfied with how my guitar sounds in the recording because it has a sharp, electric sound to it and I don't feel like it captures the warmth of an acoustic guitar. Recording with a mic would be another option, but I decided to take some time this week to research tips and strategies for achieving an authentic acoustic sound with direct recording. I have learned about Visual EQ, which will allow me to filter out certain frequencies. I discovered that learning about how to use visual EQ is a learning curve that would require a whole other project in itself. Thankfully, this site taught me that Garageband has an acoustic guitar preset option that sets the EQ to sound like a clean and clear acoustic guitar. So, next week I plan to play around with the EQ presets to improve the sound of my guitar and continue with the recording stage.

Natalie McMillan. (February 6, 2017) Recording Selfie (Photograph)