Sound studio

Work to have done:

Any remaining feedback from last class’s workshop
Work in pursuit of a final soundscape narrative

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 and your instructor 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.

To make this more feasible over Zoom, I’m going to open up the breakout rooms, and set some shared constraints, which I hope will be enabling:

Write down some initial goals for the day in the shared google doc.
I’ll set a work-timer for 20 minutes. Work alone in your group, unless you want to work with me; if so, leave the breakout room and find me in the main room.
At the end of 20 minutes, I’ll set a 5-minute timer. Use this time to unmute and talk to your groupmates about your progress:
At the end of the 5 minutes, we’ll start another 20-minute segment, and repeat.

Why this process?

This process, a modification of the pomodoro technique, has been very helpful to me in my own writing. Pomodoros ("poms" for short) are generally useful for developing a sense of how long things take, and can help some people focus for longer periods of time, by breaking that time down into more manageable increments.

In the original method, you’d spend 25 minutes working and spend the 5 minutes stretching, taking a bathroom break, and generally resetting, so if you need that, please take it. But I’ve also found that spending the 5 minutes with other people who were also just working also helps me develop a sense of accountability and makes me want to do better work, to be worth their time.

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

Consider adding a voiceover.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but as I've puttered around various places by myself in the last week I've noticed that I don't stay silent: I mutter as I putter. Even if it's just short reactions to things I see ("nice!") or read ("really? really."), even if it's not words ("hmm!"), I tend to narrate my day.

All of which is to say, if your soundscape takes your listeners along on a ride inside someone's head, but you haven't yet included any human voices, I'd at least give some thought to whether a word here or there might help.

Even if you're not inside someone's head, note that the voice doesn't have to exist in the same timestream as the events of the narrative! Think about some of the retrospective commentary in the NPR reading I had you do, especially the pieces featuring Steve Inskeep and Robert Siegel. A documentary-style voiceover can help you add context and dynamism to a more strictly chronological draft, and give you an excuse to add layers (including music) that wouldn't have been in the original scene. And you'd still be telling the same narrative!

Consider alignment

If you have a music track, or especially if you have more than one, you might want to time key moments in other tracks so they line up with downbeats. Similarly, you may want to have one sound begin just as another one ends – or, for crossfading, just before the other ends, so as to minimize gaps. These techniques can add a level of polish and intentionality to your soundscape, helping it to feel more like a complete and integral whole.

Consider compression

Silence – and sameness – all sound a lot longer in playback than they do when you're recording them. Two seconds of nothing could be considered a Grand Pause. Feel free to elide some moments in time. If you're worried about signaling how long something takes, consider fading in and fading out a background track to make it clear that we're not in real time. Nothing says you get more points the longer your piece is!

Consider how you'll signal it's over.

Endings are tricky. In an essay, I'd say they usually depend on beginnings: completing some thought you'd left open, or answering a question. In stories, there's often an epiphany (new insight) or a denouement, a return to a previous situation but with the characters' perspectives on it now changed. You can try those things with soundscapes, too, but there are added elements: if you have music, you can make sure to "resolve" back into the root chord, or to complete a rhythmic sequence; if you have an ongoing event, you can fade out; if you have a surprise or joke ending, you can signal intentionality by muting the backgrounds to draw attention to the one track that remains. If you haven't used music, you might fade in a soundtrack at the end, especially as a lead-in to credits (think of podcasts' outro music).

There are lots of ways to do this. But if you're satisfied with the overall shape, endings are one place where you can put a little extra polish in!

Consider adding a title, including in your README.

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, either with or without a cold open?) Note that an updated README is one of the expected elements in the original prompt, so don't forget to replace your placeholders there!

Consider adding a transcript.

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: it's not only more accessible for the temporarily or permanently hearing-impaired, but it also makes your piece easier to search for (and within). For examples of transcripts, you can do a lot worse than NPR's This American Life; see the links on our course Resources page, under Advice and Examples.

Okay, now go to!

I’ll open the breakout rooms. Take a few minutes to set your goals down in the google doc, and then work until I give you the signal (after about 20 minutes).

When you get the signal to take a break, unmute within your breakout group, and talk about what happened:

What do you feel good about?
What challenges came up?
What questions do you have for each other? For me?

You can find me in the main room, or call me in to your breakout room if you have a question in common: just use the “Ask for Help” button () in your meeting menu.

ALT: To get credit for participating asynchronously, please also head into the google doc, whenever your working session falls, and add your goals for the day. Set some timers (in class we did two times 20+5 minutes), and at the end, go back to the doc and reflect / set new goals at the end.

If you need a pomodoro timer, there are tons of free apps out there: I like browser plugins that prevent me from opening tempting sites during the working countdown.

Homework for next time

Complete – at least for now – your soundscape narrative. The deadline is sort of scheduled for Sunday night at 11:59 pm, so you have a little breathing room to work on the reflection before Tuesday… however, especially with Rosh Hashanah taking up a big chunk of that time, I won’t mark you late if you don’t make it before the weekend ends.
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. I cannot open your Audacity file without this!
  - If getting the _data folder into your repo is still giving you trouble, please let me know: I can help.
- 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. :¬)
Before 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 piece of feedback you used (screenshot it and please say how you used it)
- 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 appropriate thread on 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.
Want to see a sample reflection? You could do worse than to look at Fatema Quaid’s notes on “A Haunted Halt” or Hannah Langmead’s on a piece she called “The Burgh to the Big Apple.” (I’ll also link to Tyller Barner’s excellent reflection on “Coffee Shop Conversations,” but it’s important to realize that it’s more than three times the minimum length. That’s not necessary, or expected!)