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Audacity; Sound On, Sound Off

Welcome to Unit II!

Texts to have read / listened to / watched
Work to have achieved
  • A post to the issue queue, reflecting on what you noticed and wondered in your reading/listening
  • Download and install Audacity
  • Fork and clone the audio narrative repository so you have your own workspace, linked to the others

Welcome back, everyone! To save time, please sit with these groups:

  1. Billy D, Maddie, Morgan, Weini
  2. Carla, Dana, Will L, Yang
  3. Damini, David, Mia, Raegan B
  4. Gavin, Josh, Shreya
  5. Erin, Grace, Hannah, Reagan H

Plan for the day

  1. Sound, space, and attention (10-15 min)
  2. Into Audacity (25-35 min)
  3. Share and Enjoy (5-10 min, but if it’s 1:50, save for later)
  4. Generative writing (10 min, start no later than 1:50)
  5. HW Preview (5 min) EXT? Studio time toward a proposal

1. Sound, space, and attention (5–10 min)

I was reviewing the posts on the forum – lots of great observations there! I’m excited by your excitement about assets and permissions and what that opens up for you… but in terms of getting you ready for the proposal, I want to defer that conversation until Monday. Today, I want to focus on the audio narratives.

Below are a few themes I wanted to highlight. Rather than stand up here and belabor these points, I’d like you to get in groups, read through, and brainstorm some additional examples (or questions or even counterexamples). Take notes in the shared notes doc. Use the letters to focus your note-taking, i.e. Group A come up with examples for idea a, Group B with idea b, etc. When you’ve got some ideas, read through to the other four.

a. Audio becomes immersive by putting us in someone else's head

A number of posts noted the way you felt you were in the coffeeshop, or the jungle, or the apartment making dinner – e.g. that you could locate what was near, far, left, right.

A large part of this stems from how we use our ears to orient ourselves in space as we move through the real world. For example, in "Come Over For Dinner," the sound of the fire alarm starts far on the right, then shifts to be equally weighted between both ears (while getting louder). This gives the impression of turning *toward* the alarm, because it mirrors our usual behavior: when we hear a new sound, we're attuned to turn toward it, which has the effect of balancing it out.[1] (As we do so, other sounds may shift from balanced to peripheral.)

In this sense, our ears essentially occupy the space of the main character's ears. This works best with headphones, of course, but even over speakers relative differences in volume can convey the relative distance of background and foreground events.

b. Continuous background (or recurring foreground) conveys a consistent place

A lot of people praised "Coffee Shop Conversations," noting how quickly the scene is set by the light jazz and steady background conversation. The repeated "How can I help you?" and sounds of liquid pouring reinforce the location as a coffee shop, in particular.

Relatedly, many podcasts and radio shows also use short musical interludes to smooth changes from one "act" or segment to another: the music provides continuity across the gap.

c. Change draws attention

The opposite of the previous point is that abrupt changes in background can be used to create a sense of a scene change, or a jump forward in time. Notice, for example, how the squeaky door conveys movement from outside to inside the house in "A Haunted Halt," or how the coffee shop sounds cut out in "Coffee Shop Conversations" to take us into outer space.

But, more mundanely, incidental sounds like chopping, cash registers, or channels changing, give us a sense of time passing – of something happening. These "events" drew a lot of attention in your comments. And this makes sense: one definition of narrative is interruption of a stable context, and the fallout of that interruption. When sounds recur or extend, they create a stable context, yes – but one we can break. ; )

The flip side of this is that a long time without a change can drain attention: it's often harder to get away with very long clips than with very short ones. (And the same might be said of paragraphs, for what it's worth!)

d. Layering, especially music, contributes to emotional effects

Imagine if the jaunty piano jazz from "Coffee Shop Conversations" was swapped with the low bass drone or skittering background whispers of "A Haunted Halt." We'd feel pretty differently about both scenes!

While not every story needs music – and it might even get in the way of some subtle sound effects - there's a reason it's so common, which is that it's a shortcut for setting mood. Certain genres (like horror and science fiction) also have their own traditional side effects, which become cliché for a reason. Listeners' familiarity with the genre can add further depth if their expectations are fulfilled. ...And then we can thwart them, and get their attention back.

e. Human voices can be clarifying

While it's certainly possible to convey a whole scene with just incidental sounds, if they're distinct enough and combine in ways we expect (e.g. chopping + sizzling = kitchen), having a human present to witness those things in real life would often mean a verbal comment – even if it's just short reactions to things like a sigh or a muttered "ugh, really?" or something as abstract as humming a tune. Not having those traces of human presence can make it harder for listeners to project themselves into the scene.

When it rises to the level of actual speech, though, you gain a whole new dimension of words, which can give listeners additional context clues – from minimal comments to elaborate scripts to outright voiceover narration – that help the array of sonic assets gel into a coherent story.

Questions? Excitements? Incitements?

We can talk about some now, albeit briefly – much to get through today! If it gets to be 1:25, I’ll have to move us on. In that case, though, I’ll look for questions in the google doc and address them there as best I can.

2. Into Audacity (25-35 min)

Now it’s time to play around with those powers!

Just for today’s exercise, I’ll ask you all to work with the same materials. In the audio-narrative-2025spring repository that you forked and cloned[2], you’ll find a folder labeled “in-class-exercise.” That folder contains:

  • Two short recordings of people reading Harvard Sentences, sentences designed to have a mix of phonetic sounds similar to English in general.
  • A handful of instrumental tracks I found on CCmixter, a site for sharing music with explicit permission to use and (often) modify.
  • The full credits for these sound files, in the file CREDITS.md. (NB: you can rename this file README.md and it’ll display within the folder without messing up your repository’s root README.)
Your task for the next 20 minutes or so is to try mixing, matching, splitting, sliding, realigning, and otherwise messing around with these tracks.
  1. To get started, use File > Import > Audio... to pull in an mp3 from the in-class-activity folder (or just drag and drop; that works, too).
  2. Play with the strategies from the start of class: how does the mood change as you change the soundtrack? The left/right mix? The alignment? The tempo?
  3. Experiment with what tools the context menus and track menus afford you: what does Audacity expect you to want to do, based on what it makes readily available?
  4. Play with the Effects menus: some good starting points include fade in/out, repeat, change tempo, delay, low pass filter. Check the "manage" button in Effects dialog boxes to see if there are any presets to try, or the ? button to learn more about that particular effect.
  5. Try splitting the speech at moments of silence to extract individual words, using Edit > Clip Boundaries > Split (or Split New). (NB: we can also have some fun with reordering the words, but please don't abuse this power to spread disinformation!)
  6. etc
NB: For this activity, headphones will help you isolate your Audacity playback from each other.

The tutorial I asked you to watch for homework should have given you the overview you need to jump in and get editing, but do call me in if you have questions!

EXT?: Audacity is complex enough that I’m really expecting you can fill the time here without an EXT: there are dozens of automatic effects, each with their own options and help pages! But if you’re really happy with what you’ve achieved, go ahead and save the project, then mute the current music and add a different soundtrack. How does that shift your perception of the edits you’d already made? What else does it make you want to try?

3. Share and Enjoy (5-10 min)

I’d love to hear some of these, if time allows! I do want to make sure we have time for the generative writing activity, though, which I must start around 1:50 to minimize rushing.

If you’re happy with your project, maybe you’re ready to commit and push?

4. Generative loop writing

As you know, a project proposal is due by next class; it should include some basic premise of your narrative; some sense of setting; a link to your project repository; and a table of potential assets like the one you read about in Writer/Designer.

To help you get there, I’d like to spend the remainder of our in-class time using writing – some listing and looping – as a way to get your ideas flowing. As I ask the following questions, pause and reach out with your feelings until you sense an answer, or more than one, and then write down whatever comes. I won’t collect these, so they’re private to you. But I hope you’ll find them useful for getting to something shareable, moving forward.

  1. In the process of writing with sound, you're going to spend a big chunk of time listening and relistening and looping, so you want to pick a place you're likely to enjoy hanging out in.

    What places (physical, virtual, or imaginary) come to mind as energizing for you to unpack into layers, and reassemble? In other words: within what soundscapes might you anchor your narrative? Make a list. Anything you're forgetting?

  2. Choosing one item from your list you could work with for now, ask yourself: How would you represent that environment sonically?
    • e.g. What sounds are relatively stable, or sustained, in that place?
    • e.g. What incidental, or foreground, sounds do you associate with that place?
  3. Still in the same environment: What kinds of stories happen there? Again, make a list.
  4. Look over your list of stories, and ask yourself: which of these could you reasonably tell within a few minutes? which are long enough to tell for a few minutes?
  5. Choosing one story to work with for now – you can always come back to other items on the list over the weekend – ask yourself:
    • What are the pieces of this story? What are the actions, structures, or sequences?
    • How would you represent each action for audio? What sounds, signals, or setups could help a listening audience know what was happening?
EXT: Studio time

If we have somehow have more time left in class, go ahead and start writing up your proposal – or start testing the feasibility of what you want to propose, e.g. by searching for sounds you think you'll need, or opening further Audacity tutorials.

If we get up to this step, please go to the bottom of our shared notes doc, bit.ly/cdm2025spring-notes, to let me know what you're working on. When we're done, you can come back to the doc and update with your progress / goals for your next working session.

Homework for next time

The main writing assignment for the weekend is to post a proposal for your audio narrative by Sunday night.

  • This should include (1) some basic premise of your narrative; (2) some sense of setting; (3) a link to your repository; and (4) a prospective assets chart as per Writer/Designer p. 232: a preliminary list of sound assets you might want to include.
  • To encourage cross-pollination, I’d like you to post these to the issue queue; you’ll see a new forum for this purpose.
    • That said, you can also save it in your repository, because why not? I recommend using a .md file to give you full formatting options, including tables. Your README.md file is a good option, or you could make a separate credits.md if you prefer.
  • If you’re feeling stuck on what to propose, see the “parachute prompts” at the bottom of the project assignment.

You also have some reading:

  • If you haven’t yet looked at the chapter from Writer/Designer (Ball, Sheppard, and Arola, eds) on sources and credits, please read it before writing your proposal. The Touchpoints may prove helfpul to you in thinking about what you’ll need for your proposed project, and increasingly so as we move forward from desired assets to actual assets. A digital copy is available through Pitt Libraries.
  • I’d also like you to read the following advice on sound recording, listening to the embedded clips:
  • Have you seen our plentiful Resources page? You’ll likely want to at least skim both the free/licensed sounds and music section and the audio-unit-specific advice and examples.
  • EXT: Finally, I have some optional further readings on Creative Commons and Fair Use. If Ball et al. struck a chord with you, here’s where to read on!
    • 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.
    • 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.

[1] Later, I'll remind you from this same principle that two speakers are unlikely to be at 100% left or 100% right; even if you're walking between them, you'll probably turn at least partway toward them while they're talking. Try 60% and see how it goes.

[2] If you didn't yet do this, call me over and I'll help you get set up!