Photo of the officeholders and students at the meeting.
The meeting started today with an introduction of our officeholders and an outline of what AES is and what the roles are as officeholders. The current president is stepping down and so the student chapter is looking to expand the team. After this, there was a group icebreaker and then announcements of the events and groups listed above.
Following this, the group watches and discussed Realistic v Stylistic sound design. Starting with the iconic designs of Fight Club, focusing specifically on the incredibly styled punches of the fight scenes: the best-loved design was how the designers filled a chicken carcass with walnuts and then layered it over the stereotypical celery crunch to get that jarring and realistic punch noise. The following video focused on the film design of Quentin Tarantino, again focusing on violence as the centerpiece of sound design. The exaggeration of stylistic sounds to accent the pain of a protagonist versus an antagonist is used to reinforce the sense of justice in the film. In addition to this, the level of realism Fight Club is honored for may not actually be desirable for every film. Kill Bill was the most used example for stylistic sound design and pointing out the dramatics contribution to the overall film was responded to with a lot excitement.
The following presentation was by AES member James who gave a tour of Reason. He was been using it for the past 20 years and was very knowledgeable on the design, workflow, and features of Reason. The beginning of the presentation was focusing on The Rack view and the drum options. Every plug-in he showed is default included in Reason, in fact, many uses who started and stayed on Reason don't really experience "plug-ins" so much as the standard, and powerful, default options within Reason. Maelstrom is the most powerful synth displayed containing: 3 oscillators, 2 filters, a massive modulation bay. Another highlighted plug-in was the guitar option which required very little guitar knowledge but will produce good sounds regardless. In addition to this, every plug-in has a backside option to view the connectivity which is one of the most notable features of Reason. Players are another feature, which is the shortcut for knowing music theory and by grabbing a "scale/chord" you can hit on key and play them with only one finger and one key. "
The reason to use reason is that it is amazing for experimentation!"
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