1

TimmyZhang

Writing 2

WP1

3.18.24

https://www.daaam.info/Downloads/Pdfs/proceedings/proceedings_2020/working_papers/

dpn71055_b_1_Fernando.pdf

Proposal

I chose the topic of the effect of sound engineering on electric guitars so I found an

article that is a research about the effect of different manufacturing parameters around

passive vibration on the different levels of frequency of electric guitars. It is focused on the

area of electric guitar manufacturing and sound design and was published on August 1, 2020.

The audience of the article is mainly the electric guitar manufacturers, and its goal is to help

the electric guitar manufacturers save their time and error in manufacturing and improve the

design to get better sounds. I will translate the research paper into the format of an online

discussion board on electric guitar. The writing convention is very different between

academic papers and online discussion boards. The writing convention for the academic

paper is mostly like an academic use of language with a detailed explanation of the principle

and theory behind scientific data presented and accurate citation of every article that appeared

in the academic paper. It will strictly follow a certain structure of research paper like IMRaD

and usually has a very high word account like 5000 to 10000 words. However, the writing

convention of the online discussion board mostly uses an informal writing style like oral
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speaking and the writers usually directly present the information mixed with personal opinion

without any further explanation. The structure of an online discussion board is arbitrary such

as a few sentences or even bullet points phrasing and usually shows a combination of

fragments of information with only around 50-150 words for each writer in an online

discussion board. Although there seems to be no connection between the genre of the

academic paper and the online discussion board, the content of the acoustic theory of the

electric guitar discussed in the academic paper can be used to solve some practical problems

which usually discussed in the online discussion board. To be more specific, the knowledge

inside the research paper will also help to answer questions about choosing a suitable electric

guitar, which is one of the most popular topics on some online discussion boards of electric

guitars because people will focus on similar manufacturing parameters in the academic article

for comparing different electric guitar. Usually, the audience will mostly be lots of new

beginners of electric guitars who do not own their guitars yet and hope to get suggestions

from other experienced electric guitar players in the online discussion board. The genre of

online discussion is very suitable for this type of audience who lack of professional

knowledge about electric guitar because online discussion boards show information clearly

and vividly without some tedious and complex explanations of scientific principles around

electric guitar which is popular and easy to understand. Furthermore, the online discussion

board usually is a cluster of different writers’ writing on a topic, the new beginners of electric

guitars can quickly gain a variety of views on a topic without doing a lot of research.

Overall, I chose to translate the academic paper into the online discussion board because I

want to try to change some formal and serious styles of writing into some daily and unofficial
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language. I think this progress helps me practice to apply some serious research to solve

practical problems of the public about electric guitars which is meaningful for me. Usually, it

is very difficult for new beginners of electric guitars to gain professional suggestions from

some electric guitar specialty that they really need. I think the genre translation from the

academic paper to the online discussion will actually fill in the gap of the information

exchange between new beginners of electric guitars and professional guitar performers.

Genre translation: online discussion broad

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User A:
Hi, everyone. I am a beginner at electric guitar. I only play it for one month
and I borrow my friend’s guitar for practice. For now, I am considering
buying myself my first electric guitar. I tried to research some information
on the internet but I got really confused because there are a whole bunch of
different settings of electric guitar like the material or thickness of the body..
Could anyone give me a quick explanation of these odd words and how they
affect the sounds of electric guitar?
2024.3.4

User B:
W

well, ignore any information about the shape of the whole in the electric guitar.

That means NOTHING about sounds!

2024.3.5

User C:

Hello A! That’s a really common question for an electric guitar beginner. I struggled with these

worlds too as a beginner before. The most important thing about choosing a guitar is what type of

sound do you want. Do you want a bright sound to play some light music or do you want a very

dark sound to play some hard styles like heavy metal? These things help you locate your choice

from these wired terms, even though you don’t know what exactly it is. Like you mention about the

material. The only things you need to know is, for example, maple body will give you a brighter

sound on playing but polar body will give you a very dark sound!!!
 2024.3.6

User D:
My guitar teacher gave me this list, hope this will help you!

The common physical setting of guitar

Effect the sounds or not? How?

Guitar Neck Yes Thicker neck----brighter

Definition: the long and thin part sound
of guitar Thinner neck---darker sound

Guitar Body Yes Thicker body----brighter

Definition: the round part of sound
guitar with the bridge and pick Thinner body---darker
up sound

2024.3.7

Reflective essay
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During the activity of the genre translation, I transferred an academic paper that talks

about how different manufacturing parameters affect the sound frequency of electric guitar

into an online discussion broad format for answering the question of choosing an electric

guitar for the electric guitar beginner. Although the academic paper and genres I chose do

provide me with some benefits in working on the genre translation such as the academic

paper about the electric guitar provides information clearly by making lots of charts with

enough explanation and the writing style of the online discussion board is close to daily

speaking, the translation still includes a series of processes with a brunch of challenges inside

because there is a huge difference in convention between the academic paper as a very

serious writing style and the online discussion broad as an informal writing style. Around all

the processes, the problems are mostly focused on three major parts: identifying the purpose

of translation, reconsidering the information building with a new audience, and changing

language convention.

The most important question around identifying the purpose of translation is how to build

the connection of 2 different genres with a similar topic. To solve this question, the article

“Genre in the Wild” gives a useful view on genre. The article introduces the idea called “

genre sets” which means that an individual will incorporate a collection of different genres

for different purposes at a particular role in an environment (Bickmore, 2016). I pick the

topic about the effect of sound engineering on electric guitar. After I only read the academic

paper about the topic, I think the information written by the experts with a series of formulas

and data about the physical change of the material effect on the sounds of electric guitars can

only help to solve the problem for the professional luthier and manufacturer of electric
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guitars. However, After I incorporated the idea of the “ genre sets”, I considered that under

the environment of the subject of music, the role of the knowledge from the sound

engineering experts is not only to provide suggestions to the electrics guitar maker but also to

benefit all the guitar players. The sound effects caused by physical changes in electric

guitars’ material are also very important for picking electric guitars for new guitar players

and information about picking electric guitars is usually on the online discussion broad.

Under this step-by-step thinking process, I finally identified that I wanted to change the

academic paper into an online discussion board with information on the effect of sound

engineering focusing on the new purpose of picking electric guitar.

Under the explanation of process of the identifying the purpose, it is clear to notice that

the audience changes from the professional electric guitar maker to the all-guitar player. To

be more precise, under the purpose of picking the electric guitar, the audience is mainly the

new guitar player because the new players lack knowledge about the parameters of picking an

electric guitar. However, I still got confused about how the change in the audience affect the

translation of the genre. During this time, the article “Ten ways to think about writing”

helped me gain the idea of the effect of changing audience. The article gives a specific

example to explain the effect of changing audience, which is about if someone what to

borrow money, the way of asking the help from friends and the way of asking for help from

parents is different because they want different reasons from you to prove that you need

money (Lowe, 2010). The most vital idea is that if the audience changes, the way of

organizing and showing information must change as well. This reminds me of my genre

translation. When the audience is a professional luthier and they are interested in all the
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complex numbers of data and formulas inside the academic paper but when the audience

becomes the new guitar player, they will only care about the simple conclusion about the

effect of the changing physical condition of the material of electric guitar. Therefore, the next

problem became how to find a simple and literal summary of the results from the big and

thousands of words papers. For this process, the article “Reading Games: Strategies for

Reading Scholarly Sources” works like a tool to help me locate the information. It states that

if you want to quickly understand the result of the academic paper, you should just look at the

abstract part and the conclusion part because they are both parts that conclude the whole

academic paper with a few words (Lowe, 2010). Under that suggestion, I successfully found

the 3 simple results yielded by the article with the incorporation of both the abstract and

conclusion part of the academic article.

After I gain the purpose of transformation and the information for transferring, the final

process is just about writing an online discussion board. However, I still struggle with how to

write a thing that is like a real online discussion board. For this time, I gained the thought

from the article “ Discourses Communities and Communities of Practice”. One of the ideas

the article focuses on is “convention”. It states that every discourse community has its own

conventions of writing like the different wording and ways of organizing and the only way to

write with the same convention is to incorporate and imitate other standard writing inside the

discourses (Johns, 1997). Therefore, I searched on the internet and read lots of real online

discussions broad on the internet and I found that the style of online discussions board is like

introducing the personal situation at first, giving one piece of information at a time, using lots
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of capital words and exclamation point, and using a very normal speaking tone. Then, I

incorporate all the characteristics into my writing of genre translation.

Overall, in my genre translation, I face lots of challenges in the 3 big processes:

identifying the purpose of a new genre, organizing information for a new audience, and

incorporating writing conventions. By referencing the ideas of the readings in class, I can

solve these problems smoothly by actually practicing these ideas in my own reading and

writing process.

Citation:

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems.”

Open English SLCC, Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016,

pressbooks.pub/openenglishatslcc/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Johns, Ann M. "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership,

Conflict,and Diversity." Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies.

Cambridge, New York:Cambridge UP, 1997.51-70. Print.

Lowe, C., & Zemliansky, P. (2010). Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric

Musings for College Writing Students. In Writing Spaces 2. Parlor Press, LLC.

Lowe, C., & Zemliansky, P. (2010). Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly

Sources. In Writing Spaces 2. Parlor Press, LLC.