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Sound studio

Work to have done:

Plan for the day:

Today is all about working on your individual projects! Mix sounds, apply effects, watch relevant tutorials. I know your lives are busy; take advantage of this dedicated time free from other distractions and obligations to move your piece forward.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that you’re working in a shared space, in a studio. If you have questions, or you want feedback on something, you have your classmates, your instructor, and your TA on-hand. Try not to monopolize anyone’s time, but do be open to the possibility of getting farther together than you could on your own.

A few seeds of ideas I want to plant, having listened through as much as I could:

Consider titles A title can provide a location, a clue, a genre, a commentary; it can make or unmake listener expectations. What will you call your soundscape narrative? Where will you let listeners know that name? (In the README? In a recorded introduction to the sound file itself?)
Consider volume. Many of you are doing smart work to differentiate foreground sounds from background, in part through "ducking" the background to a lower volume while keeping the sound going to provide depth. On the foreground side, one risk of recording original sounds is overloading the microphone, such that you get a kind of crackle or squeal as the sound level exceeds what the system can handle. If you notice this happening – you can look for places where the waveform hits the top of the track, or where the volume goes into the red – try Effects > Clip Fix, which should give you a little more room.
Consider transcripts. If you're working off of a script, as a number of you seem to be, please do consider turning it into a readable transcript you can place alongside the sound file. See my email for examples of what this might look like, thanks to This American Life.
Consider citation. If you're using sounds someone else recorded, be sure to include enough information to recover where it came from. (See Writer/Designer page 162, and the Creative Commons' own recommendations.) Note that any kind of CC-BY license requires you to say who made the source, not just say that it has a CC-BY license. (Nor is it enough to give a link to the search engine that you found it with.) You can add the information in text alongside the soundscape, or in the soundscape itself, or both!

Okay, now go to!

Homework for next time

  • By 11:59pm on Sunday, September 22, complete – at least for now – your soundscape narrative. Your repository (on GitHub or in a Box folder shared to me) should include:
    • Your most up-to-date layered Audacity project file (.aup)
    • The _data folder associated with that Audacity project
    • A series, now, of screenshots showing your Audacity project in progress. (Think about what moments are worth remembering as you go: where did you level up, or realize something, or get stuck?)
    • An updated ASSETS.md (or CREDITS.md) file reflecting what you actually used, including documentation of any outside sources and your permission to use them (e.g. explicit licenses like CC, or fair use)
    • An updated README.md file introducing your soundscape narrative to a new audience. Give your piece a title! Make it something to live beyond this assignment, if you can. :¬)
  • By Tuesday’s class, write a prose reflection that incorporates images from your feedback and screenshots of your Audacity project. As explained in the soundscape prompt, this should include:
    • At least 500 words
    • Your own assessment of how you met the baseline criteria and goals for the unit, as well as any aspirational criteria as appropriate
    • At least one photograph of a notecard with feedback you used (and please say how)
    • At least one or two screenshots of your work in progress (ideally, related to the discussion in the previous two bullets)
  • Post your reflection to the course site’s Issue queue, to make it easier to embed images.
    • If you want to then copy the source code into a file in your repo called reflections.md, I won’t stop you!
    • If you feel strongly that you’d rather keep your reflection private, you can email it to me instead. But my default assumption is that we learn from each other as much as from ourselves, so I hope you can find a way to write publicly about your experience with this project.