Blueprint

Blueprint
This is the blueprint document for SoundWiki. Please mark any additions you make with Proposed: so that we can discuss them in either IRC or Discussion before finalizing them. Please do not delete any additions until we have decided as a community that they should be deleted.

Categories
Proposed categories for the wiki. Base categories should be as generalized as possible, encompassing broad aspects of sound design. If categories could possibly count as a subcategory, try to think of what the parent category should be.

Sound Synthesis and Design
Sound design from scratch, or from live source when the original sound is noticeably altered to sound different or artificial, using electronics, software, or some sort of physical means. This category should focus on the methods of using effects to alter sound as opposed to the intended or individual use of the effect. It should also include concise, foolproof mini-tutorials on how to achieve the desired effect, without reference to any specific software package, instead, through references to basic sound effects and other sound design concepts.

Sound Effects
Descriptions and uses of sound effects. This category should focus on the individual or intended use of the effects, while their use in regards to the other categories such as synthesis or mixing and mastering, should be of secondary priority.

Mixing and Mastering
This category should focus on how to get the overall mix of a song or piece sounding how you want it. It will show ways to clean a mix, to make its parts sit in the spectrum as you want, and how to achieve effective use of stereo/surround.

Hardware
This category will deal with all things hardware. From descriptions of types of hardware, to specific details on popular makes/models of equipment, to details on modifications, circuit bending, and nonstandard uses of hardware.

Software
This category will stay away from method, but instead detail types of software and details on specific packages. Operating System or standard specific subcategories will be encouraged.

Instruments
This category will deal with live instruments, and nothing more.

Recording
This category will deal specifically with the process and methods behind achieving a quality recording of live sound, with emphasis on good practice, as opposed to promotion of expensive or popular equipment.

Music Genres
This category will explain as many music genres as possible, with emphasis on the types of sound design that give these genres their trademark sound.

Music Theory
This section will attempt to simplify the concepts of music theory, both basic, and advanced. It will also make reference to more modern concepts that are popular in the corporate music industry, which may not be popular with classically trained musicians, such as "power chords" and "4 on the floor". It will however, stay out of the domain of sound effects, but stick more towards concepts like melody, rhythm, and time signatures.

Sound Physics
This is a category dedicated to the physics of sound. Why does sound work the way it does? How does physicality affect the way we perceive what is essentially vibrating air? How do mathematical anomalies change our method of dealing with these waveforms?

Sound Psychology
The psychology of sound is very important if you are to understand how people will listen to what you create, and how it will affect them.

Song Writing
This section will cover everything from riffs to hooks, from rhyme to meter. It will be closely tied to the Theory section, but should not leak over into it.

Ideas
Ideas that don't fall into the above categories can go here. Think of this as an intellectual sandbox.