November

Articles Update! (recent articles published by Butler Productions)

Posted In: Band Management, Career Building, Marketing & Promotion, Recording, Uncategorized by claybutlermusic

Greetings!

I wanted to make you all aware of some new articles that we’ve published elsewhere on the ‘net. Here’s a list of the most recent ones:

Other non-music related stuff:

Don’t forget to tell your friends and bookmark! As always, comments are welcome. Happy reading!

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July

Acoustic Treatment in the Classroom

Posted In: For Educators, Uncategorized by christinabutler

Are recording studios the only place for acoustic treatments?

Yes.

No, really. If the answer was “yes,” this would be a very short post! One place that benefits from acoustic treatments, but is often overlooked, is a classroom. Many classrooms have tile floors and hard surface walls (concrete block, etc.). Classrooms have desks, with large flat hard tops, and podiums, with more large flat hard tops. All of these surfaces are reflective. More reflective surfaces magnify extraneous noise and make intended speech less distinguishable. The presence of sound absorptive materials helps to alleviate these issues.

I personally became aware of the need for treatments in my room when I spoke from my podium one day… and my voice boomed back at me. My voice came back to my face, NOT to my students’ faces (much less their ears)! If you think about all of the lecturing and dropping of books on the floor, that’s a lots of noise to bounce around in a hard walled, flat surface filled room. More than this, imagine how distracting these noises are to students, especially students with exceptionalities. That sound my pen made when it hit the tile floor, resonates and is magnified in the classroom. Some may not consciously notice it, but it may greatly interfere with some students’ learning environments.

While teachers can spruce up their rooms with table cloths, thick curtains, and rugs, these decorative items also help absorb the sound that’s bouncing around the room (and your students’ heads). In many rooms, however, this is not enough. In larger rooms, carpeting the entire room and adding treatments over bulletin boards to absorb sound, would help greatly. The larger/thicker the absorptive material becomes, the more potential it has to deal with lower frequencies (while still helping out with higher ones). Thick padded chairs work nicely for this. Cylindrical “broadband” treatments (i.e. absorbing frequencies from low to high) for corners in addition decorative absorptive wall panels are also commercially available from companies like Auralex and Sonex, but there are great, inexpensive do-it-yourself options as well (just Google “DIY Acoustic Treatment”).

Imagine having a room that is filled with students learning and collaborating, instead of just booming noise. Imagine if these treatments were used in larger areas of the school building, the cafeterias and the gyms. Would it be easier to hear during awards ceremonies? Would lunch be easier to digest when you don’t have a headache?

Yes.

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