blog & news

Snyder Leads Audio Team On Paul Laurence Dunbar Documentary To Be Broadcast Nationally Across PBS Stations

blog, recording · 2017-02-16

The Ohio University Scripps College of Communication is proud to announce that the “Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask” documentary, a collaborative project between School of Media Arts & Studies faculty and the Central Region Humanities Center at Ohio University, has been accepted by PBS for broadcast by individual stations during Black History Month (February) and National Poetry Month (April).

“Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask,” a 2-hour feature, explores the life and legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who was born in 1872 and died in 1906. Dunbar was the first African-American to achieve national fame as a literary artist. Born to former slaves in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar wrote novels, plays, and essays but is known mainly for poems and short stories expressing black Americans’ voices and the challenges of their lives. He is best remembered for his poem “We Wear the Mask” and for lines from “Sympathy” that became the title of Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Dunbar’s story is also the story of the African American experience around the turn of the century.

The project is a collaboration between two faculty members from the Scripps College of Communication’s School of Media Arts & Studies: Professor Emeritus Joseph Slade, co-producer and executive producer and emeritus director of the Central Region Humanities Center; and Associate Professor Frederick Lewis, writer, director, and co-producer.

Kyle P. Snyder, Lecturer & Outreach Coordinator in the School of Media Arts & Studies, served as Audio Post Production Coordinator & Engineer for “Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask” and led a team of students in the completion of the final deliverables.

More than 25 past and present students from the School of Media Arts & Studies also assisted with archival research, production, post production and musical composition. “No one could make a documentary of this scope without extensive collaboration, and we are grateful for all the help we received,” said Slade. “It has been a long but gratifying experience, especially when we consider the end result.”

The two-hour documentary utilizes narration, sound and music, vintage images and original footage to recount Dunbar’s life in greater detail than in any previous retelling and also includes extensive discussion of his influence on and legacy for contemporary writers, artists, dancers, musicians, scholars, and students.

“Writing a documentary isn’t just writing narration and stringing sound bites together,” said Lewis. “You are writing with words, images, sound effects, music, et cetera. Everything has to work in concert. What I really wanted to develop very carefully was the structure of the documentary–weaving contemporary segments about Dunbar’s legacy in with the archival materials that provide historical context and tell his biography.”

The documentary is the capstone of the Central Region Humanities Center’s Dunbar Project, a series of public and academic events taking place in Ohio and neighboring states since 2004. The Dunbar Project was launched by the CRHC in 2001 with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ohio Humanities. Dr. Judith Yaross Lee, director of the Central Region Humanities Center and Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, has directed the Dunbar Project since its start.

To date, “Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask” is scheduled to air on PBS stations in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, California, and the Virgin Islands. Locally, WOUB will broadcast the documentary on Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 8 p.m.

A free screening will be held at Case Western Reserve University on Thursday, Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. The documentary will also be shown at the Underground Railroad Museum and Freedom Center in Cincinnati on Sat., Feb. 11, at 11 a. m. Additional public screenings are being planned.

Original article by By Claire Berlin

Snyder Contributes Chapter To The Routledge Companion To Music, Technology, And Education

blog · 2017-01-16

The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education is a comprehensive resource, released in December 2016, that draws together burgeoning research on the use of technology in music education around the world. Rather than following a procedural how-to approach, this companion considers technology, musicianship, and pedagogy from a philosophical, theoretical, and empirically-driven perspective, offering an essential overview of current scholarship while providing support for future research. The 37 chapters in this volume consider the major aspects of the use of technology in music education:

Part I. Contexts. Examines the historical and philosophical contexts of technology in music. This section addresses themes such as special education, cognition, experimentation, audience engagement, gender, and information and communication technologies.
Part II. Real Worlds. Discusses real world scenarios that relate to music, technology, and education. Topics such as computers, composition, performance, and the curriculum are covered here.
Part III. Virtual Worlds. Explores the virtual world of learning through our understanding of media, video games, and online collaboration.
Part IV. Developing and Supporting Musicianship. Highlights the framework for providing support and development for teachers, using technology to understand and develop musical understanding.

Kyle P. Snyder is excited to have contributed Chapter 11, Audio and Education, to The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education. In this chapter, Snyder considers the interrelated nature of Music, Technology, and Education within today’s classroom and especially audio engineering curricula. He also considers ways technology is used within audio engineering curricula, research germane to pedagogy and effectiveness, and suggestions for future development with a nod to practical implementation as is the long withstanding heritage of the trade.

With technologies themselves a primary curricular focus proving to be a powerful platform for study, not just of audio specifically, but of music more generally, the recording studio is itself rewarding musical instrument. It is an instrument well-suited for composing and performing music, individually or in ensemble. It is an interactive environment offering multiple modes of rich user feedback, and several paths for structured and independent exploration and research, across a broad range of musical elements. Relating to music via the multitrack recording studio offers a wealth of opportunities – by doing and through listening – for a rich and rewarding music education.

The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education is designed for undergraduate and post-graduate students, music educators, teacher training specialists, and music education researchers. It serves as an ideal introduction to the issues surrounding technology in music education.

Snyder Featured By Ohio University SMART Lab Profile

blog · 2016-12-06

Ohio University Lecturer and School of Media Arts & Studies Outreach Coordinator Kyle P. Snyder was recently featured by the Scripps College of Communication Social Media Analytics Research Team Lab in a video profile series. The Social Media Analytics Research Team (SMART) was established as an interdisciplinary laboratory to foster and promote cutting-edge research. Founded in 2015, the aim of the SMART Lab is to further enhance the understanding of online user behavior in online communities and predict future outcomes.

Snyder Spearheads RDL Dante Interface & Headphone Amplifier Installation

news · 2016-10-31

As part of a progressive movement to put students ahead of their time with professions in audio engineering and multimedia content creation, Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication incorporated RDL’s TP-HA1A FORMAT-A™ Headphone Amplifier, along with other RDL FORMAT-A and Dante networked audio products, into its new Schoonover Center for Communication.

While the School of Media Arts & Studies (MDIA) at Ohio University is already globally recognized for its diverse programs in the media industries, the Schoonover Center demonstrates forward thinking from the school’s faculty, says Lecturer and Outreach Coordinator Kyle P. Snyder.

“We’re training students for jobs that do not yet exist, but will in 18 months,” he recently stated in an article for ProSoundNetwork.com

Snyder, a systems engineer on the Schoonover Center project, says that they designed the Critical Listening and Post-Production Studio as a facility where students can learn a variety of listening and playback scenarios, both conventional and cutting edge.

Schoonover Center was a multi-year renovation that brought all the schools of Ohio University under the same roof for the first time since 1968. Snyder says they implemented the RDL FORMAT-A/Dante headphone solution, which was “a major upgrade over our previous facility. This new studio allows us to teach updated technology and techniques to students and prepares them for the audio jobs of tomorrow.”

The Schoonover Post-Production and Critical Listening Lab is comprised of the following: a 32-fader Yamaha Nuage control surface (driven by Nuendo and Yamaha interfaces); a Dynaudio BM15A 5.1 surround monitoring array; 22 RDL TP-HA1A stereo headphone amplifiers on student desks; three RU-TPDA FORMAT-A distributors; and an RDL RU-NFDP Dante to FORMAT-A Interface, which connects the headphone amplifiers to the Dante network.

RDL’s FORMAT-A family of products send, receive, and distribute audio and DC power over standard CATx cable and connectors. When combined with RDL FORMAT-A/Dante interface products, all FORMAT-A products may be used as Dante endpoints.

Starting with a “clean slate” when designing the Critical Listening and Post-Production Studio, Snyder says RDL’s products were the obvious choice.

“We were excited by the RDL solution because of its Dante integration, which allowed for seamless connectivity between our 100% Dante room as well as the overall simplicity and ease of installation. We could find no other solution that would afford us the opportunity to run audio over standard Cat 6, which is tremendously easy to terminate compared to soldering endless connections. As we handled facility installation in-house, this ease of deployment was truly critical. Vintage King LA and RDL engineering support both proved tremendously valuable resources throughout the design phase and we’re thrilled with the end result.”

After conducting extensive research, Snyder says they discovered that RDL’s TP-HA1A allows independent monitoring and listening, which they had never seen. “Generally devices like that are completely analog/hardwired and we have to worry about grounding issues, so I love that FORMAT-A uses Standard Cat 6 and would be simple to deploy and repair in our large installation.”

The students at Ohio University are “overwhelmingly enthusiastic” about the system integrated within Schoonover Center, Snyder says, and the RDL headphone amplifiers have worked well because “they can live as just another Dante output on our network. Students can listen to work and hear us via talkback provided through the Nuage, which is fantastic, and we can carry on a ‘normal class.’ It’s a fantastic installation and an amazing product.”

Original article by RDL: Radio Design Labs (pdf)

Snyder Presents At Ohio University Library Open Access Publishing Event

news · 2016-10-26

The world of publishing is constantly changing, and in response to that change, OHIO Libraries is hosting a panel discussion on the benefits and challenges of open publishing.

Four OHIO faculty from the departments of math, political science, media arts and studies, and geological sciences will speak at the “Open in action: the practicalities and pitfalls” panel presentation, which will be held on Oct. 26 at 1 p.m. in Alden 319. The panel will give researchers and faculty the opportunity to hear from their colleagues who have successfully published open access resources and learn more about the value of open publishing.

The open access movement promotes access to academic research by freely disseminating ideas and information, often online.

Kyle P. Snyder speaks at the Open in Action faculty panel (John Michael Simpson/ Ohio University Libraries)

“Under the current publication system, sometimes institutions can’t even afford to subscribe to the commercial journals in which their own researchers are published,” said Andrew Stuart, assistant head of reference.

Kelly Broughton, assistant dean for research and education services, said the world of publishing is quickly changing, and open access resources are a response to that change.

“Open access has the potential to change our broken scholarly publishing model—to remove the pay walls from the results of research funded by taxpayers and tuition,” Broughton said. “The only way to really accomplish this is for faculty to be open to new modes of scholarly communication and to test the impact of these modes.”

Jennifer Fredette, assistant professor of political science, will be speaking at the panel about her open licensed publication “Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, Public Identity and the Politics of Citizenship,” which was published through the Temple University Press in 2014. The book is available for free online with a Creative Commons license through Knowledge Unlatched, an organization that works with libraries and publishers to make research more freely available.

“For me, as a scholar, open access is key for knowledge dissemination,” Fredette said. “It’s amazingly useful for me to be able to tell students, colleagues, and people I meet at conferences, ‘Oh yeah, you might want to read my book. It’s free; just Google my name.’ That’s an incredible resource.”

Martin Mohlenkamp, an associate professor of mathematics and another speaker on the panel, has both taught with open resources and co-authored an open access textbook. He has incorporated open resources into his teaching by having his students improve Wikipedia articles on math concepts as class assignments, and he uses the SageMath cloud computing environment in some of his courses. This software allows his students to collaborate with each other on the same programs, even if they are using different computers.

His book “Introduction to Numerical Methods and Matlab Programming for Engineers,” available free online, is used in the MATH 3600 Applied Numerical Methods course. He co-authored the book with Todd Young, who created the Math 3600 course and was able to customize the text for that class. One piece of advice that Mohlenkamp has for researchers who want to look into open publishing is “scratch your own itches.”

“Do something that you’re going to get value out of and you’re going to use so that your own dissatisfaction is fixed,” he said.

Daniel Hembree, associate professor of geological sciences and another panel speaker, serves as a handling editor for Palaeontologica Electronica, an open access journal. He said the journal’s online presence gives researchers the opportunity to include digital features such as animation in their articles, and the journal can also easily publish in full color. Having the journal online has also helped the content reach an international audience.

“There are no publishing costs associated with it. It’s a nice venue for getting research out and making it available globally,” Hembree said.

Kyle P. Snyder, a lecturer in media arts and studies and another panelist, authored the open access book “A Crash Course to Making Your Mark in the Recording Industry.” The publishers, Routledge and Focal Press, partnered with Creative Live to make the book open access, although readers have to provide an email address to download a copy. Snyder not only contributed his own writing but also reached out to other researchers in the field to contribute.

“My goal was to take what I thought was the best information that they had and make it free to audio engineers. If I wrote a basic book right now, what would I want my students to have access to?” he said.

Snyder is also chair of the education committee for the Audio Engineering Society, a professional society devoted to audio technology, and has worked with open publishing in that role.

The Libraries is holding the panel to celebrate Open Access Week, which will be held by SPARC Oct. 24-30 to encourage publishers and universities to increase access to open resources.

The panel is only one of many of the Libraries’ initiatives to increase awareness of open resources, such as the Alt-Textbook initiative, which helped students save money by encouraging faculty to use open access and Library resources rather than textbooks.

Original article by Megan Reed

Snyder Integral to OU Install Of Yamaha Nuage

news · 2016-10-11

Now in his fifth year of teaching in the School of Media Arts & Studies at Ohio University, Lecturer and Outreach Coordinator Kyle P. Snyder has been hard at work with his colleagues Josh Antonuccio, Eddie Ashworth, and Jeff Redefer transforming the Music Production curriculum within Scripps College of Communication to prepare students for real world studio jobs. “What I find most rewarding about working with students in our field is seeing their evolution from day one through graduation,” Snyder says. “It’s tremendously rewarding to see that evolution over our brief four years together, which really gives you a phenomenal glimpse into how big an impact we have upon their careers.”

Snyder’s approach to the school’s studio facilities, is making the biggest impact on outbound students, as he opts for durable gear that allows as many hands on as possible at one time. With this in mind, the OU professor recently worked with Vintage King’s Chris Bolitho and Greg Fraser to bring in a Yamaha Nuage workstation and Nuendo software for a state-of-the-art mixing room. We recently caught up with Kyle Snyder to talk about why he choose this particular desk, how he uses it in tandem with an analog console and what his students think about the work surface.

What influences the decisions you make when purchasing equipment that students will work on?
What’s interesting about purchasing for student use is you certainly want the solution to be intuitive at some level, however, the biggest selling point for me tends to be durability. With the Nuage, we found a solution that was well suited for our needs and happened to be built by Yamaha so I knew it could stand up to the rigors of touring, let alone student use.

In addition to the Nuage, you also have a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 in the school’s studio space. How do you use both work surfaces?
We start students learning on the Rupert Neve 5088 and with the Neve Porticos and then we bring them into here, the Nuage and Nuendo room, which has channel strips built in. That’s a fantastic teaching moment to take students from an analog room through a hybrid mixing room into a completely digital Nuage/Nuendo room that’s backed up with DANTE and show them the way the workflows can work and complement each other.

Talk about the Nuage room’s set-up and how you utilize the desk to teach students?
We [wanted] it to be the best post-production teaching facility that it possibly can. In doing so, we’ve situated the Nuage in the center of the room, sort of like a Hollywood cutting stage with 20-25 seats around it, so faculty can be at the mix position teaching students, but students can be up discussing with faculty how the mix should work. Students can get up and be a part of the mixing process and that’s really powerful.

There are so many options when it comes to digital workstations, how did you come to decide on the Nuage?
In searching for a new control surface, I remembered seeing the Nuage on the AES floor years ago back when it launched. I pulled up the info online and saw we could control Pro Tools and that Nuage was very affordable so it was an easy sell. However, we started to dig into Nuendo since we’d need to run it for the VST connections and we were just blown away by all the features offered by the DAW. Our reaction was that it was, finally, a professional piece of software.

What has been the students’ reaction to working on the desk?
Students have been amazed with how intuitive the control surface is and how flexible the unit is for working. In class we’ll frequently split the desk and have students mixing side by side – it’s a phenomenally effective tool.

If you’re interested in learning more about the install and use of the Yamaha Nuage at Ohio University, check out the video below or read the original post by Vintage King.

Original Article by Vintage King

Snyder Presents at 141st Audio Engineering Society Convention

blog · 2016-09-26

At the 141st Audio Engineering Society Convention hosted in Los Angeles from 28th September – 2nd October 2016, Ohio University Lecturer Kyle P. Snyder presented his peer-reviewed paper, Understanding Project-Based Learning in the Audio Classroom: Using PBL to Facilitate Audio Storytelling.

According to Snyder:

One of the more prevalent buzzwords in education today, project-based learning is a natural fit for the audio engineering classroom. With students that thrive by working toward a common goal or “learning by doing,” this constructivist framework is worth examining as implemented by educators. This paper discusses project-based learning as implemented in an audio engineering classroom to facilitate audio storytelling and provides recommendations for faculty looking to implement project-based learning into their curriculum.

Paper Session Files:

Also at the 141st Convention, Snyder will co-chair MIDI Makes Music, MIDI Makes Money and MIDI Makes Careers! along with the Student, Education, & Careers track which contains dozens of events.

The 141st AES Convention will bring together the world’s largest gathering of audio professionals, offering attendees opportunities to hear from top audio industry figures while also sharing in the latest research and technology information through informative papers, tutorials, workshops and special events.

Snyder Featured By Yamaha Pro Audio / Steinberg Interview

blog · 2016-09-05

Ohio University Lecturer Kyle P. Snyder was recently featured by Yamaha Commercial Audio and Steinberg in an interview detailing the new Ohio University School of Media Arts & Studies and Scripps College of Communication post-production studio. The interview is now on SYNC: SteinbergYamahaNetworkChannel.

Snyder Featured By Mix Magzine & Others For Design Of MDIA Post Production & Critical Listening Studio

blog · 2016-09-04

Preparing audio engineers and content creators is key to the curriculum at Ohio University’s (Athens, Ohio) Scripps College ofCommunication, School of Media Arts & Studies (MDIA). And now, thanks to pro audio supplier Vintage King L.A. and Yamaha Professional Audio Steinberg staff, the school now houses a 32-fader NUAGE DAW advanced audio post-production system in their Steven L. Schoonover Post-Production andCritical Listening Lab with a companion classroom containing 30-plus seats of Nuendo 7.1. The college also boasts a second 16-fader NUAGE system in theirImmersive Media Initiative facilities.

Kyle P. Snyder, Lecturer and Outreach Coordinator within theSchool of Media Arts & Studies who has a long history of system design,initially began to research a new state-of-the art system, one that was more appropriate for an educational environment than their previous system and one that could handle the ever-increasing influx of students within the music production curriculum. “Looking around initially at other controllers that would work with ProTools, I stumbled upon NUAGE which remembered from when it was first launched at AES by Yamaha,” states Snyder. “It had a great presence,and I thought it would be a very interesting work surface though I was concerned about its reliance upon Nuendo. However, as I continued my research it became evident that the most important decision was our software platform for teaching. We made the decision that adopting Nuendo as an editing platform,which isn’t necessarily normative but is absolutely the superior tool was the way to go. This allows us to focus more on technique, backed up by the trademark Yamaha stability that NUAGE brings to the table.”

The facility also houses a Dynaudio BM15A 5.1 surround-monitoring array, featuring nine Foley pits, an ADR stage, projection capabilities for post-production mixing, and more. The MDIA Sound Studios offer a Rupert NeveDesigns 5088 analog-centric music recording and mixing studio with tracking rooms alongside two other control rooms, including the brand new post/listening lab and a mixing/mastering facility.

Snyder said the Yamaha Steinberg sales representative offered to send over a demo system and came out to assist with their tech expertise when necessary. “I was blown away by how easy it was to set up,” Snyder says. “Just knowing things were going to work easily was critically important. With the help of a few students, we set up the NUAGE demo unit within 5 minutes. The system is a game changer for post sessions making them very easy. I was very impressed with how Yamaha and Steinberg developed the system. Working with everyone at Yamaha has made it so much easier and helped us through the transition process. This is the kind of corporate support you just don’t see often.”

The 16-fader NUAGE system is installed as part of the ImmersiveMedia Initiative (IMI) within Ohio University’s Game Research and ImmersiveDesign (GRID) Lab. The IMI was created for students to produce game and virtual reality content. These same students are also shooting video in 360—they have already produced a 16-minute short film–using green screen for motion capture,and more. “There is absolutely no better software for creating audio for virtual and augmented reality than Nuendo,” notes Snyder.

In both the large lab and singular studio, Nuendo works nicely;several students can be in front of the system in the studio and with the added Nuendo seats, the others can work over the network down in the classroom lab and send their part of projects into the studio, adding in vocals, dialogue,and sound effects. The class as a whole can be working on different projects through to the final mix stage, thanks to the Nuendo network.

With their critical listening classes, Snyder said faculty are very excited about the capabilities of the system and can feed RDL Format-A viaDante right out to every desk. Using Radio Design Labs RDL TP-HA1A stereo headphone amplifiers for personal listening purposes, classes can listen via their own headphones and playback from NUAGE via headphone amps at their own pace. “NUAGE is very much what previous products we’ve owned were trying to achieve, so we are really proud to finally be able to offer this superb monitoring and networking environment to our students with our new Dante systems.NUAGE with Nuendo work extremely well, very seamless. It’s really something else.”

Article originally published by Mix Magazine. Similar stories can be seen at Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Yamaha Pro Audio,ProSoundWeb, ProSoundNetwork, and Sports Video Group.