Music Production, Sound Design & Audio Mixing (Part 2)

 In my last post, I explained how sound waves play a part in sound designing and how understanding some of the properties (Amplitude and Frequency) help with producing music and designing sound. In this post I'll be making a basic explanation of what is used to produce music and each of its functions. Most music nowadays (especially Electronic Music) is produced mainly on the computer, through the use of a software called a Digital Audio Workstation (D.A.W.).

There are various DAWs on the market. An example: Steinberg Cubase - is widely used by professional musicians and music producers - e.g. Hans Zimmer

 A DAW basically allows you to edit, record and mix audio within a single program. It mainly consists of a mixing console, an audio sampler, a sequencer (which is where the digital audio files are sequenced), a piano roll and an audio converter. DAWs are also built to load software synthesizers and effects and are also designed to support MIDI, which is a format of stored instrument data. It doesn't make any sound on it's own and is simply used to trigger or modify sounds. Allowing a musician to create or play music using virtual instruments by using a MIDI keyboard or the piano roll view. Other types of widely used DAWs besides Cubase are Ableton Live, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Apple Logic and Propellerhead Reason, their basic functions are the same. But each one is designed to have a different workflow from one another. My preferred DAW is FL Studio, because of it's rather simple workflow. I'll demonstrate these features and their functions in my presentation.

 Anyway, That is all for this post. Thanks for reading!

- Dareil

Physics of Running (Part III)

My previous post was about pendulums and how they relate to the physics of running. Today, i would be talking about the proper sprinting techniques from head to toe! :) First of all, you have three phases, the starting phase, the acceleration phase and the maximum-speed phase.

The Starting Phase
To be a good sprinter for distances such as 100m, you must be able to have a quick start. To be able to have a quick start, your weight must be equally distributed over your hands and feet. When the gun is shot, your forward leg pushes the ground while straightening the other leg causing your body to be in a striding position. Push hard with both hands and stay in a stride position.

The Acceleration Phase
It is known that all sprinters are given this tip, which is to stay in low stride position for about 20m. After 20m, you should slowly get up into your normal running position. When you are in your normal running position, all you need to do is relax your neck and shoulder muscles and keep your eyes towards the finishing line.

The Maximum-Speed Phase

When running, both your legs should touch your butt, and you should only be running on the balls of your feet. That is when you know that you are using all the energy you have.

Your hands should be swinging up to your shoulder's height and stammering back until your fingers are at your pockets. Your neck, shoulders, and head should still be relaxed with your mouth slightly opened.


Shoulders/Head
Keep your shoulders & head relaxed to avoid lateral rotation. Lateral rotation means to turn away from the midline of the body.

Hips
Keep your body upright. However, allow your hips to rotate as it is a natural thing.

Knees
Allow your knees to push forward and reach up high as this would generate more power. How? It would allow you to have longer strides. Therefore, covering more distance.

Feet
Your foot should be underneath your body, not in front and you should be running with the balls of your feet.

Arms
Your arms should be loose and moving in a 90 degree position. It should swing forward, stopping when your fingertips reach your pockets.

Heels
Heels should not be on the ground when running.

Now, you all know the techniques for sprinting, so you use it for the upcoming sports day!!

Physics of Running (Part II)

Today, i will be talking about the theory of pendulums. As you all know, during running, our legs and arms work as pendulums. How? Let me explain it that to you.

First of all, a pendulum is a weight, hung from a fixed point so that it can swing forward and backward easily like shown in the diagram above. There is an important thing we need to know about pendulums which is, the fact that the mass of the bob does NOT affect the speed of the pendulum. It is the length of the rod that matters most because the shorter the rod, the faster it travels. This is due to the gravitational rate of all objects, which is about 9.8m/s. This means that all objects fall at a speed of 9.8m/s, no matter how much it weighs.

You may be thinking, why would a shorter length make the speed of the pendulum to increase? This is because, a short pendulum has a narrower arc, and is able to convert G.P.E to K.E in a shorter period of time.

Now, lets apply this to your legs.

Imagine your legs as two pendulums. Your feet is the bob and your hip is the pivot. Think about it. If you run with your knees locked, it would be harder than if you ran with your knees bent. The rate of converting G.P.E to K.E is very low because you can't bring your legs up high but with your knees bent, you would be able to bring up your legs much higher to achieve more P.E.

If you look at some of the best sprinter, you would see that they raise their knees up high during a race. This makes them faster.

The Physics Of Ice Skating (Part 3)

In today's blog post, I will be going through several phenomenons that occur during ice skating!

Angular and Linear Momentum

Angular momentum characterizes an object's resistance to change in rotation. The basic idea is the same as with linear momentum, moving objects like to keep moving, and to change their motion we have to apply a force. If no force is present then the momentum does not change. In the case of rotation the force is called torque, applying torque to speed up rotation and decreasing torque to attain a slow rotation. When torque is applied the angular momentum increases. It slows down as time passes due to frictional torque, this is similar to friction in linear momentum. As in the case of ice skating this frictional torque is very little, because of the ice and the thin blades of the skate shoes, the skater is nearly friction less when in contact with the  ice.

Rotational Inertia

For  straight line motion, inertia is referred to as mass. For rotational motion, it's a little more. It's harder to make a given mass rotate around an axis if it is further from the axis than one that it's close to. 

E.G Coin Spinning and Stopping a Turntable Disc

Spinning a smaller coin will result in more spins, which means a faster speed, due to the fast speed it takes longer to fall. However spinning a larger coin will result in less spins and because of the slow momentum it has it loses its rotation around the axis quicker and falls flat much sooner than a smaller coin. Also the bigger coin needs more energy to produce 1 spin as compared to the smaller coin so the bigger coin loses energy at a much faster rate.

Stopping a disc that is being played on a turntable, you will find that it is much easier to stop a disc rotating by placing your finger at the border of the circle, but as you get closer towards the center of the disc it is much harder to stop the rotation, this is because you are moving closer to the rotational axis.

Summary

-Rotational inertia characterizes the resistance to change in rotation

-Torque is the type of force which makes something rotate

-Angular momentum is conserved if there is no net torque on an object. A change in rotational inertia is compensated by a change in rotation speed.

Thanks for reading my final blog post! 

Lightning Physics

This is a continue to my last blog which I had done. So as you all know I have been doing the topic lightning and have been trying a lot of things out and reading and researching more and more as the days go by. So the last time I thougth you guys how to create you own lightning and I wonder how many of you tried it out and if so did it work, i would like to get some feed back on that. 

So actually i dont have a lot to write as I was quite busy studying like Albert Einstein but anyways this is a bit of an interesting thing i would like to share with you my readers:

1. Lightning is a powerful burst of electricity that happens very quickly during a                           thunderstorm.

2. Lightning is caused by an electrical charge in the atmosphere that is unbalanced.

3. The movement of rain and ice inside a thundercloud creates an electrical charge, with the     negative charge (electrons) forming at the bottom of the cloud and the positive charge           (protons) forming at the top.

4. Opposites attract so the negative charge at the bottom of the cloud seeks out a positive         charge to connect with.

5. Lightning can occur inside clouds, between clouds and from clouds to the ground.

6. Around one quarter of lightning is from cloud to ground.

7. When lightning strikes the ground it seeks out the shortest route to something with a             positive charge, this might be a tree, a tall building or if they’re very unlucky, a person.

8. Thousands of people are struck by lightning every year.

9. Direct lightning strikes are usually fatal.

This is all I would share cause i would not want to spoil my presentation.

Thanks for reading.