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Sound, Space, and Audacity

Texts to have listened to: “Coffee Shop Conversations”, “Day In: Day Out”, “A Haunted Halt”, “Expedition to Planets Unknown”, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica.

Work to have achieved:

Plan for the day

  1. Sound and space (10 min)
  2. Audacity Demo (10 min)
  3. Audacity Play Time (25-35 min)
  4. Share and Enjoy (10ish min)
  5. HW Preview (5 min)

1. Sound and Space: Takeaways from listening (5 min)

Lots of great comments on the forum: about music as setting emotion, about continuity and contrast, about silence and volume. Here are my highlights:

Soundtrack sets the emotional tone A fun example: an anxious arrival, remastered vs original
Continuous background conveys place and time Think of the hubbub of conversation in the coffee shop scene, or the road noise in Breaking Bad – but think also of the abrupt cuts in the background of "Day In: Day Out," which convey a jump from one place to another.
Repetition is okay. Repetition with variation is even better. One definition of narrative is the interruption of a stable context – and the consequences of that interruption. When sounds recur, it creates a stable context. So we can break it.
Contrasting sound draws attention Think of dripping sinks or broken glass – in contrast to continuous drones. Think also of how, in Battlestar Galactica, the prolonged ambient sound with no contrast makes it seem like nothing is happening.
Layers do a lot of work Several people pointed out the way these things work best in concert with one another: ambient sound plus background music plus incidentals are what make it immersive.

2. Audacity Demo (10 min)

Luckily, Audacity is made for layering!

We’re all going to work with the same materials: a couple of spoken tracks I pulled off of C-Span and a couple of instrumental tracks I found on CCmixter. I’ll do a quick walkthrough of some basic editing features in Audacity, then I’ll give you time to play around solo for a little bit and see what you can make, even in just a few minutes!

In the soundscape2020fall repository that you cloned last time, you’ll find a folder labeled “in-class activity.” That folder contains:

I’ll play around with these first, and then it’s your turn.

A more substantial introduction is available at the Audacity Tour Guide, so please review that if you find yourself stuck! (Google is also your friend, of course.)

Import. Tracks.

Visual rendering of sound.

Select tool; zoom tool.

Play a loop. Zoom. Selection adjust. Add label at selection.

Time shift tool.

Split vs. split new. Mute/solo tracks.

Copy/Paste.

Works like you’d expect it should.

Effects.

There are lots. Some good ones to start with: Fade in / out; change tempo; auto duck.

3. Audacity Play Time (25-35 min)

Your turn! Play around with the impact of different musical selections and alignments. Try splitting the speech at the pauses to extract individual words.

(NB: we can have some fun with reordering the words, but please don’t push those to GitHub: we don’t need any more fake news circulating!)

I’ll open up the breakout rooms, so you can consult with each other in parallel. Call me if you need me! Otherwise, I’ll float.

If your computer can't handle both Zoom and Audacity, it's okay (not ideal, but okay) to drop out of the call for a few minutes while you're working. But do set a timer, so you can check back in after about 20 minutes.

4. Share and Enjoy (10+ min)

Let’s hear a few! Anybody have a clip they’re excited to share?

5. HW Preview (5 min)

HW for next time:

  • As predicted last class, I’m asking you to read the following advice on sound recording, listening to the embedded clips:
  • After thinking about the advice, take a listening tour around your local soundscape, inside or outside or some combination. (Bring your mask where appropriate.) Take a mental note of what you hear: What are the continuous sounds in this space? Are they distinctive, or fairly generic? What are the incidental sounds that contrast with the background ambiance?
  • Try making a few recordings of your surroundings. (The resources page has a link to recommended smartphone apps for occasional recording.) Listen back. Do they sound like you expected? Why or why not?

Looking forward:

The main writing assignment for the week is to post a proposal for your soundscape narrative by next Tuesday, including a preliminary chart of sound assets you might want to include.
  • The term “asset” comes from a reading assignment from the book Writer/Designer (Ball, Sheppard, and Arola, eds). A scan of the relevant chapter is posted to Box; please read it before writing your proposal. If you don’t have time now, it’s fine to do it over the weekend.
    • Optionally, you can also read through a short four-page webcomic explaining how Creative Commons (CC) licenses get attached to copyrightable materials, and how easily CC materials can be included and/or remixed in further creations… with, at a minimum, attribution. The subject is covered in Writer/Designer, but the comic is cute.
    • Even more optionally, you can read the Stanford Overview of Fair Use, which you can find in a series of four webpages beginning at fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/. This text, despite being called an overview, is really a more in-depth understanding of fair use than the brief introduction in Writer/Designer. If Ball et al. struck a chord with you, here’s where to read on!