A better post!

Yes that last post was pretty terrible...so here...hopefully is a better one....!

Yes well things have been pretty hectic here, who was it who said doing a PhD was going to be easy?? Well at the moment I am doing tons and tons of reading, but for the first time it is about something I truly love so it isn't a chore at all, which probably explains why I have so much reading, because the more I read, the more there is to read. I am also in the process of developing a couple of pilot questionaires to get out then are try and see what people are thinking about when it comes to sound and soundscapes.

The biggest challenge I have at the moment is to define a 'reseach' question, that is the question which I will try to answer over the next three years in my thesis. It is proving to be very tough. Trying to narrow things down to one particular question which I am going to try and answer (and more importantly no one else has answered!). Currently I just have so many questions that are really motivating me at the moment. Although one in particular is taking the forfront of my thoughts and that is..."Are we only aware of our sound environment when it is annoying us?" That is to say, is a positive soundscape one which we do not conciously notice? That is something I will be looking into. I am also facinated by the cultural differences in soundscapes and how they affect society...and my main thought of the moment has to do with how our perception of sound is influence by the media and does this influence the way we hear things! I will no doubt go in to more depth at a later stage!

Other exciting news is that Absynth 4 has been released! Absynth is without doubt my favourite virtual instrument and whilst I am normally not that excited about upgrades and new versions (because they tend to be bug fixes more than anything else), this version has some really great new features...especially for me are the new effects and the audio mod function which modulates any module using any audio file!

Peace

Neil

Back in Manchester

Hello!

Yes once again it has been a while since the last update. But as always so much has happened and it is a bit of a mission to try and remember and type it all in!

The main thing being that my projects is coming along very nicely, having some great meetings and some great ideas coming up, although I still don't what my 'research' question is going to be and I need to get that figured out by christmas....which is looming very soon!

Thanks to the fabulous Cornerhouse cinema, I have been able to catch up on some great films and some great discussions.

More to come soon!

Neil