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Sound studio

Work to have done:

Plan for the day:

  1. A groupwork studio process to try
  2. Some revision-oriented notes for the whole class
  3. Studio time!
  4. Exit note

1. A groupwork studio process to try

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:

  1. I’ll ask you to jot down some initial goals for the day in the shared google doc.
  2. I’ll set a work-timer for 20 minutes. During these 20 minutes, work alone in the main room, unless you want to work with me; if so, hit me up in the chat and we can join a breakout room.
  3. At the end of 20 minutes, I’ll open all the regular rooms, and set a 5-minute timer. Use this time to unmute and talk to your groupmates about your progress.
  4. At the end of the 5 minutes, we’ll start another 20-minute segment, and repeat.
Why this process?

This interval-based process, a modification of the pomodoro technique, has been very helpful to me in my own work. 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 kind of break, please take it. But I’ve also found that spending the 5 minutes with other people who were also just working helps me develop a sense of accountability – it makes me want to do better work, to be worth their time. (It also builds camaraderie. :)

If it doesn’t work, no sweat; we don’t have to do it again. But I want to at least introduce it, so you can see whether it might help you.

2. Some revision-oriented notes for the whole class

A few seeds of ideas I want to plant, having listened through as much as I could. In recognition of everyone’s working at different speeds, I’m going to leave these unexpanded for now; you can, if you want, spend part of your first pom looking through them.

(I do suggest reading through them at least once before you finalize your project.)

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.

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. Or this more recent example, from an episode of the New York Times' podcast, "The Daily" (note how the interviewer just adds commentary right over the top of his interview, which auto-ducks out of and back into focus):

Excerpt from "The $2.7 Billion Case Against Fox News," Feb 5, 2021. Fair use. Hosted by Ben Smith; follow link for full credits.

Realism doesn't have to mean real time.

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. Think about how you would write a scene with words: you don't include every moment, every breath, every footstep; you just say, "The doorbell rang, and she opened the door." Similarly, in movies or TV, frequent cuts from one shot to another are the rule, and long takes are the exception. Feel free to elide some moments in time!

If you're worried about signaling how long something takes, consider fading out a background track and fading right back in to a later point in that track.

Aim to blend at most entrances and exits.

Sometimes, you really do want a sound to enter suddenly: a jump-scare, a bolt of lightning, a phone ringing. But more often, you want the new sound to feel like it's part of the same scene. Sounds recorded in different places have different levels of background hum, which can make their entrances and exits feel more intrusive. You can mask this with fade-ins/outs, or try to remove the background.

If you want to use music or another kind of background sound to cover transitions, try overlapping the fade-in with the existing scene so as to minimize dead air: at a low volume, the effect will be a more seamless / integrated transition. (See e.g. Tori's project, 0:48-1:00 and 1:54-2:11.)

Differentiate using volume and left/right pan... but don't overdo it.

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. Similarly, many of you are doing smart work using left/right channels to differentiate speakers (see especially in Patrick's piece) or to move things around the landscape (see especially 0:56-1:08 in Caela's.)

If you haven't yet tried either, go for it! The left/right channels are visible in the left of any track, as long as it's opened high enough; and you can adjust the overall volume with the gain slider also located there. Alternately, you can use the Envelope Tool to reversibly change volume for just part of the track.

Two caveats: First, if you're listening to someone way off to your left, you'll probably turn to face them, at least part of the way. So probably you don't need to go all the way to 100% left or 100% right when positioning human voices: try 50% and fine-tune from there.

Second, 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. This can especially happen as you layer these sounds together. If you notice the waveform hitting the top of the track, or the overall volume going into the red, you're "clipping" part of your sound. Try Effects > Clip Fix, which should give you a little more room.

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 all but one track to focus attention on what remains.

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!

3. Okay, now go to!

  1. Jot down some initial goals for the day in the shared google doc.
  2. I’ll set a work-timer for 20 minutes. Work solo, unless you want to work with me; if so, let me know in the chat and I can meet you in a breakout room.
  3. At the end of 20 minutes, I’ll open all the breakout rooms and set a 5-minute timer. Use this time to unmute and talk to your groupmates about your progress.
  4. At the end of the 5 minutes, we’ll start another 20-minute segment, and repeat.
Don't forget to save and commit as you go!
If you're participating asynchronously, please do add your goals and exit notes to the google doc to get credit for full attendance; I also recommend trying the pomodoro technique (25 minutes on, 5 minutes' break).

Homework for next time

  • By 11:59pm on Sunday, but definitely by Tuesday, aim to 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 screenshot of 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.
  • Want to see a sample reflection? You could do worse than to look at Fatema Quaid’s notes on “A Haunted Halt” or Tyller Barner’s on “Coffee Shop Conversations.” (I would point out, though, that Barner’s is more than three times the minimum length. That’s not necessary, or expected! But you can treat that as a maximal vision of what you might include.)