Sound studio

Some folks have been asking about this, so I want to make sure I talk about it publicly: if you're using sounds someone else recorded, you do have to include enough information to recover where it came from. What information? Well, see Writer/Designer page 162 for the general case, but the Creative Commons' own recommendations specifically recommends you remember the acronym TASL: Title, Author, Source, License. (If you know a date, I'd add that, too, for TASLD.) That linked CC page also includes a number of examples; let's look at one or two together!

Of particular note: if you're using source material with a Creative Commons license, you do need to specify which license it uses: CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, etc. This is especially important for Share-Alike licenses (CC-BY-SA, etc), because they force you to use the same license and can therefore be in conflict with each other. You can add this information at the end of the audio file, like in Coffee Cart Conversations, or you can use that space after your narrative ends to point listeners toward a text file in your repository.

Note as well that for "Source," a link to the search engine or database that you found it with (e.g. FreeSound) isn't enough: you'll want to point to the specific page for the individual file you're using.

Silence, and sameness, 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 story with words: you wouldn't include every moment, every breath, every footstep; you'd 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!

In retrospect, the examples I gave you included more examples of continuous time unfolding than of sharp jumps. But if you're trying to cover a larger period than four minutes, it may well help to have discrete / abrupt changes of background noise, music, etc, to signal scene changes. (You can sometimes also time these background changes to align with foreground sounds, like doors closing, a coat zipping, etc.)

And if you're worried about signaling how long something takes within a single scene, consider splitting a background track into two clips, sliding one underneath the other, and crossfading from an earlier to a later point in the same track. It works for dialogue as well as music!

Even if your narrative takes place somewhere you wouldn't expect music to actually be audible, a low-key background soundtrack offers a lot of benefits: it covers transitions that would otherwise be silent; it masks differences in background noise across assets and thus helps them seem more like they belong together; and, as we noted when we started this unit, music is great a signaling (or shifting) emotional tone.

Be sure to check out the Sounds and Music section of the Resources page for tips on where to find openly licensed tracks you can use.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but as I've puttered around various places by myself 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 actual words ("hmm."), I tend to narrate my day.

All of which is to say, if your audio narrative 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.) Your narrative, that is, could also have a narrator.

And if you like that idea, but don't want to deal with hearing your own voice recorded, consider swapping scripts with someone else in the class!

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 audio, 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 almost all the backgrounds to draw attention to the one track that 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!

A title can provide a location, a clue, a genre, a commentary; it can make or unmake listener expectations. What will you call your audio narrative? Where will you let listeners know that name? (In the README? In a recorded introduction to the sound file itself, like on a podcast – either with or without a cold open?)