Sound studio

We talked a bit about this at the start of the unit: the idea that (a) if you're using Creative Commons assets, you're required to attribute them to a source, and (b) that such attribution ideally includes Title, Author, Source, and License, or TASL. (If you know a date, I'd add that, too, for TASLD.) And most of you are doing a great job of listing those things in a file in your repo! Nice. Just remember 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.

But now imagine you send your mp3 to someone outside of the class. Does it contain all those references? Probably not. Does it contain a spoken tag letting people know where to find the file with all those references? Maybe not yet. But it probably should.

A lot of the podcasts I listen to end with a sign-off: often, some kind of theme music, and a voice saying who played what role. Often they'll say who wrote the theme music, as well. You can use this same space to say, "For a full list of sources and attributions, please see github dot com slash [your username here] slash audio hyphen narrative hyphen 2025 spring."

Sounds recorded in different places often 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 you can try to remove the background.

Two options there: you can use Audacity's Noise Reduction effect (which is easiest if you recorded an extra second or two of "silence" before each take), or you can try to use the Spectral View to snip out particular pitches at particular times. Luckily, these are the first two tips in Mike Russell's "10 Powerful Tips Every Audacity User Should Know". Well worth your time!

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. (If you're not, but you want to, look for it under Effects > Volume and Compression > Auto Duck.) But sometimes, there's just too much sound to hear clearly.

On the foreground side, 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. If you notice this happening in one or two specific spots – you can look for places where the waveform hits the top of the track, or where the volume goes into the red – try Effects > Clip Fix, which should give you a little more room.

If each individual track is fine, and it's just the sum total mix that puts it over the top, you can apply a Limiter effect to the master track and it will auto-adjust the overall volume to a manageable level. Click the Effects button at the left of any track; you should see Master at the bottom.

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 at signaling (or shifting) emotional tone. And it doesn't have to be obtrusive: in most movies, you notice it more when there isn't music playing than when there is.

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, including some databases (such as the YouTube Audio Library) where you can search by mood.

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. Or maybe the words are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDEceUWSCIY>only thought, not spoken aloud

Note as well 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 any of these ideas, but don't want to deal with hearing your own voice played back, consider swapping scripts with someone else in the class!