Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

http://soundcloud.com/daniel-golub/audio-essay

My audio essay is meant to inform my listeners of the critical components that comprise my core personality. To this end, I had three longtime friends of mine comment and reflect on some of my more idiosyncratic behaviors given that they [my friends] have long been exposed to such behaviors and have brought them to my attention on countless occasions. They are opinionated enough to offer their own decisive outlooks on what they make and have made of my behaviors. I formatted my audio essay to start with my interactions with friends in freshman year to sophomore year to junior year. Different people with different ways of thinking encountered my antics and me at different times. This can effectively paint trends that persist as will as evolutions, if any that have occurred. My only legitimate problem was recording over background music in Dunkin Donuts with my second guest. I had to lower the volume to make the background noise less conspicuous and the vocals more audible.

I have no intention of tailoring my audio essay to fit the advice / mold offered by Ira Glass. I was not entertained by his audio show and was put off by its format. I did not find much to enjoy or connect with in his commentary on what constitutes good storytelling. I have changed my opinion from what I had wrote in Required Blog Post #6 now that I have had more time to think about it. I have no intentions of establishing a professional work. To me, a professional work follows a set of widely accepted guidelines with slight variations and hints of personal touches. I prefer to break the rules and make my own rules, such as being loose with my material and allowing spontaneity if I think that it will enhance the purpose of my essay. I don’t remember Ira Glass being “brave” or “professional” enough to risk live recording in a public place with background music. From what I remember, he didn’t use music to identify or highlight key traits of his guests or panel of fellow speakers. This project came to me from a spontaneous thought in class and I rolled with it and did what I thought was best. Although I didn’t go along with a demonic voice in my audio essay, I do acknowledge that there are some basic rules that one must follow, such as being easily audible and heard, which I tried my best to do. But once the basic rules are established and followed, I did my project how I felt it should be done, not what Ira Glass thought should be done. I AM…A CULT…OF PERSONALITY!

This girl!

The link is here. [x]

So here’s the story:

I went out and I tried to interview people. I really did. I didn’t have a sign but I put on a big, friendly smile and did my best. The fates were conspiring against me though, I swear it. The forecast was supposed to be sunny skies and a light breeze, when in actuality it was rain and clouds and humidity — essentially, it was the kind of weather that destroy’s people’s good moods. It was also nearing rush hour, and okay, that was poor planning on my part. But still.

Nobody wanted to talk to me! I’ve never felt so ignored in my life. And the people who did talk to me gave me generic answers to my question.  (Which was, just to refresh your memory, ‘what does it mean to be an American?’) It was like my worst nightmare. What was I to do?

I thought some about why I went with that question in the first place — which is because of my fascination with cultural identity, by the way. And somehow that lead to me deciding to interview my mom? My mom, who barely speaks English? Yeah, good thinking Damla. That’s clearly a reasonable thing to do.

So. Now you have nine minutes of me essentially grilling my mother and then going back and commenting on it. I didn’t mean for it to be that long, I swear.

I think for the final I’m going to try the 50 People, 1 Question  again – maybe in Washington Square Park, the NYU kids seem nice – and I’ll bring a sociable, bubbly friend to help me out this time. Hopefully it goes better. If not, then I’ll try to reign in this monster of an audio essay.

(I promise I won’t take it personally if you fall asleep while listening.)

I think my main issue was developing a point that appeals to the audience. I may like this dumb culture stuff, but that doesn’t mean that you guys do. So I guess at some point I’ll probably have to do some major editing à la Ira Glass.

The point of my audio essay is mostly personal. Because my grandfather just passed away, I really wanted to hear some stories about him. But my point can also be more universal. I think that everyone can relate to sharing a special hobby or topic that defines their relationship with someone. To get this point across, I asked my mom to speak about all the stories she remembers that relate to a specific aspect of her relationship with her father. Because she only speaks about the time spent with him on their boat, you get the feeling that they shared a special connection through the time that they spent alone together. I want listeners to reflect on their own private relationships which they reinforce through something special that only has real significance to the parties involved. Though my audio essay is sad because my grandfather is no longer alive, it focuses on all the fun times that my mom remembers having with him so it’s bittersweet.

The two pieces of Glass’s advice which I tried to follow were, firstly, to record anecdotes about my grandfather and my mom on their boat and to make it follow a sequence so it’d be more interesting and would hold the listener’s attention (Part 1, 0:40-2:15). I know that boat stories can be pretty boring, so I thought this would help keep the listener’s interest. I also chose to have my mom speak on this recording because I know that she has a nice voice and is able to sound natural even when she’s being recorded (she actually recorded the “Welcome to…” message for a company she used to work for). Ira Glass says that the most important thing is not to put on a “radio voice” or it’ll sound forced and unnatural (Part 4, 0:15-0:40) and I knew that I could depend on my mom not to do that.

Surprisingly, the main problem I encountered was the length. Stupid GarageBand! The whole time I was worried that it wouldn’t be long enough until I exported it and realized that it’s actually 13 minutes long instead of 4 minutes, 10 seconds. This might sound really dumb of me but I thought that by “250,” GarageBand meant that it was 250 seconds long and I never thought to actually time it on a clock. When I do my revision, I’ll be more than happy to cut it down as I know that some parts may be boring to people who aren’t in my family. I was just worried that it wouldn’t be long enough. Grrrr…..

My link to SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/pessiagoldberg/my-grandpas-boat/s-JpAiJ

English Audio Essay

Here is a soundcloud link if the other one doesn’t work: http://soundcloud.com/chris1cw/english-audio-essay

At first, I didn’t really know what I wanted my message to be. All I knew was that I wanted to tell something about New York City and how positive it was in my life. After interviewing my dad, I knew that I wanted to avoid clichés and make the Audio-Essay personal to my life. In the end, I chose the point that even though the city can be big and intimidating, it can be as small as your backyard and be used to foster family and friendships if you put in the effort. To show this point, I use the interview with my dad to show how the city has benefitted my family. His anecdotes along with my speech to reinforce what he’s saying both bring the message to the listener. The effect I tried to have on listeners is a reflective one. I want them to look at New York City, Manhattan specifically, and think about how it has helped them in their family life. I want the listener to reflect on all that they have done in Manhattan with family and friends and realize that as distant as a big city may seem, it was very close and personal to them.

Two pieces of Ira Glass’ advice that I tried to follow were the anecdote (0:38 Part 1) and the being tough on myself (2:42 Part 2). Both of these are very important but in different ways. The anecdote is important because it is a good way to keep a listener interested. Personal stories always attract good attention and I tried to follow this by including my dad’s personal stories in the interview. The being tough on myself advice is applied all throughout the draft. I recorded myself over and over again until I sounded decent and kept cutting and editing so that the draft sounded acceptable to me. Being tough made it much more work, but made for a better draft.

Some of the problems I had were with the editing and finding a point. I’m not too familiar with garage band but I’m glad I managed to make my draft sound decent. Finding a point at first was hard but my dad’s interview really helped guide me along the way. Finding a song too was challenging, but in the end I settled with the instrumental from a song “A Song for Mama” by Boyz II Men. The song was a personal family song to them so that fit my theme and the instrumental I think carries my story along well. As I further edit, I think I could improve on transitions between my dad’s interview and my speech between his. I think that by strengthening transitions, the audio essay will be much better.

The First (And Last) C. H. E. R. 104.7 FM Radio Broadcast – Draft

I survived making this project, so that’s really all that should matter.

I’m not sure how my original deviated into this… whatever I made, but I’m strangely attached to the finished product. It’s definitely a more absurd concept/structure than what I was originally planning – mostly because I wanted to make sure the entire point of this project would get across. It’s the same basic idea, but I’m worried I may have altered how the message is getting across, if it’s getting across at all. The point I’m shooting for is along the lines of: “Think about it. If your worst problem is that you have to get up to get your laptop charger, then your life is pretty good. Stop complaining.” I don’t know what drove me to put that sound clip of Cher saying “Snap out of it!” from Moonstruck, but I think I want it to represent an “outside voice,” to the broadcast. The problems are ridiculous when you hear them, so that clip plays a role in reminding people of that – in a way that I really hope makes sense.

The reason behind turning the project into a radio broadcast format came out of Ira Glass’ advice of realizing that a story is “drama,” in Part 4. I know there isn’t a technical storyline to follow, but I wanted to establish characters (Rich Hilton, Stranded Man, Commercial Guy, and even Cher, in a sense,) and have some kind of plot that escalated and made people think. As I was recording, I started to see the potential of Rich Hilton as this apathetic kind of character who really doesn’t care about people’s problems because he’s too busy with his own. Essentially, he’s us, but on a more exaggerated level. “Stranded Guy” is the same way, and the reason their voices sound similar – apart from the obvious – is that I wanted to really drive home the point that a lot of us think this way. First World Country. First World Problems.

Then we come to the stranger parts. The distorted “Believe,” the altered “Snap out of it!” chorus, and Rich’s changing attitude towards these recordings from interested to more or less laughing at them; not to mention the ending music. I honestly can’t explain the definitive reasons why all of those found their way into my piece, but Ira says you have to be determined end ruthless with your work (Part Two), and I just know I can make them fit in amazingly well if I work on it more.

Luckily, I only had minimal trouble when it came to the actual editing of the piece. I’ve used Garageband enough to know how to clip audio pieces together, and once I got into the rhythm of recording a segment, pasting in the little beeps and Chers, adjusting the volume, etc., it was a fairly quick process. It needs work. I should clarify some things, and find ways to make the piece flow better. Or scrap everything and start again. I don’t know, I really like what I have, but I’ll totally understand if the general consensus is that this is a piece of garbage.

I’d apologize for the overwhelming Cher-ness of this, but I knew I had to include her somehow, and she ended up becoming my muse for the entire piece.

My overall piece was an incredibly rough draft. At the last minute I wasn’t able to record with the person who I was supposed to record with. Instead, I needed to compensate with writing in more for me to say and to develop a full essay, and include my point without an example of a conversation that I had originally planned out in my proposal.

The main point of my audio essay evolved from different perspectives on relationship start ups, to what it means to be in a committed from a young one’s perspective. A lot of people say “oh, you’re wrong, you have yet to live life, you don’t know what love and commitment truly is.” However, I’m the one who’s seen divorces go through, or marriage grow stale or shatter. I wasn’t able to find a sound that suited my voice. The topic became quite dreary quite quickly. I was able to follow through with an original idea, following suit with Glass’s advice on choosing an interesting topic, spending as much time on choosing the topic than editing and revising the piece (Part 2, 0:36). It is a youthful rebellion against “mature” opinion of young love and relationships. Although we are sinking into a declining age of higher divorce rates and speed dating (that goes hand in hand with instantaneous text break ups), there are individuals that go counter current; I wanted my piece to discuss that a little bit. Another piece of advice that I found myself trying to fulfill while recording my voice was to make it genuinely mine, rather than mimicking the tones I’ve heard on radio. My voice simply isn’t an ideal voice for radio, and I simply have to live with that. But as Glass said in Part 4, 0:58, the more we are actually our own selves, the better off we are. I needed to allow myself to pace the way I wanted, rather than speeding up and slowing down as I’ve heard on the radio before, creating enthusiasm when I didn’t genuinely feel it myself. It allowed me to not be as wordy as I was in the beginning.

For the revision, I have a lot of work cut out for me. I want to search more for a song/sound that would accompany my voice and my topic complimentarily. I need to test out what it would be like if I could record Edward’s voice as well, rather than just sticking to my makeshift essay revision audio file. If it flies better than my draft, then I’ll keep and revise that to become my final piece. If I stick with this file, I’ll need to outline on my script areas that need greater enthusiasm and emphasis with my voice, as well as conclude in a finer and cleaner manner.

My Project

http://soundcloud.com/joseph-maugeri/audio-draft-project2

Well hopefully the project uploaded. It took me about 25 minutes just to figure out how to save it correctly.

The point of this audio project is different than the one that I proposed in class. I interviewed people with my original question, but it did not work out at all until I asked my Mom. Even though she didn’t entirely answer the question as intended, I tried to make it work. The project turned more into a “Story Pitched by our Parents.” It portrays why people remember certain things. It can be because the certain memory sparks an emotion, whether it is a good or a bad emotion is dependent on the specific memory. But, memories are powerful and can be forgotten about until a certain trigger is induced. Then, once the memory is retrieved, some of the same emotions are felt again. I found that very interesting. Also, I hope the story from my mom gives people a few laughs. I hope you all get it, it took me a second to understand when I first heard it. It’ll probably be pretty awkward if I have to explain…

I focused on the idea that one must ‘kill a bad project.’ Even though I did end up asking the same question to my mother, the project went in a totally different direction than expected. (Part 1) Another piece of advice was to ‘talk like yourself.’ (Part 4) It was hard to talk like myself when there is a microphone in your face, but I tried. It helped that I did not entirely follow my script, I used it more as a reference for talking points rather than a script. It helped the fluidity of my speech, but of course it can be improved. It was hard to get the sentences to flow when I was speaking though, I probably recorded the same thing about 15 times and just picked the best one. Plus, I don’t have the best radio voice but I did my best.

Another thing is, I am not an expert with GarageBand. I figured out the gist of it, but my skills can use improvement. Getting the music to be the correct volume and some fading issues arose, but I smoothed it out the best I could. The biggest problem was recording the many people that I interviewed, just to delete it all. It was frustrating that no one gave a decent answer, guess that’s the price you pay for doing a ‘Fifty People One Question.’

I know I’ll be doing a lot of editing, but hopefully the content is decent. Maybe I can re-record some of the parts again, or learn to edit it better. We’ll see.

I’m going to post a link to soundcloud because my project wound up exceeding the limit for upload size! :O

Here’s my draft!

Editing this had to have been one of the most exhausting, tedious things I’ve ever done. Getting the audio cues to come in at the time that I wanted them too was just about impossible. Also, it sounded so much better when I was editing it in GarageBand than when I uploaded it to Soundcloud. Hopefully I can improve the audio quality for the final piece. I also want to improve the transitions between the different audio clips, and also improve the transitions in volume, so it sounds less choppy.

As I mentioned in class, the point of my piece is to evoke a sort of nostalgia, or a longing in my audience. I want to take them back to their special place as I describe mine. The biggest choice I made to evoke this kind of feeling is the song choice. “Home” sets an incredible mood for a story like this. I also tried to pick the stories and aspects of Frost Valley that set it apart and made it so unusual. By picking more unique characteristics regarding the camp to idealize it, I hope I was able to make it more appealing to the casual listener. I want them to believe that I am genuine in my emotional investment in Frost Valley, so they will think of a place they’re emotionally invested in.

The first piece of advice I took from Ira Glass was in Part 3, in the very beginning. He says that at the beginning, you probably have good taste, but the work you’re making isn’t living up to that taste. He also said that a lot of people quit at this juncture. I find this advice extremely important because I’ma complete beginner in this, we’re all complete beginners. In my mind, I have a grand scheme of exactly how everything is going to play out and how people are going to love it. But in reality, I know that things are probably not going to turn out exactly the way I want them too. It’s important to realize that the beginning comes with a lot of struggles and bumps in the road, where you know you can do better, but you don’t know exactly how you can make yourself do better. This advice was something I followed throughout my piece, particularly in the opening of my piece, in the volume adjustments of the song, and the closing. I spent hours working on these parts, totally unsure of their quality. As Ira says, I know it can be better, and it frustrated me. But I also know this is just a draft, so I’ll be patient with it and accept that it isn’t ideal yet. The OTHER piece of Glas advice I followed was in Part 4, in which he urged us to “talk like ourselves.” I tried to let my natural emotion emerge in my piece. I talked about other people, and I talked about the place, and I drew on my memories and my feelings to let my passion emerge in my voice. At times, I chuckled, or I laughed. I also found myself talking more quietly and comfortingly at the end for some reason. I didn’t try to talk like a tour guide or like a young camper. I just let my emotions come out in my voice.

In my audio essay, I tried to get the point across that everyone has terrible moments. Throughout my essay, I used examples to show that people’s worst moments are often specific instances from their lives rather than days where everything seemed to go wrong. This is probably because on one of those days where everything seems to go wrong, people fail to put their whole lives in perspective. So, when I interviewed people, many were able to reflect on their past experiences and truly say what moments were the worst for them. I tried to make my audio essay funny and heartfelt by using examples that were embrassing and ones that were sorrowful. In doing this, I also used two different songs with different tones that separated the more lighthearted interviews from the sad ones.

The pieces of Ira Glass’ advice that I tried to follow were “having a moment of reflection” (Part 1, 3:20) and “abandoning crap” (Part 2, 1:51). I tried to incorporate moments of reflection at the beginning and end of my project when I introduced my project and when I noted that all the interviews consisted of specific moments of emotion. I tried to “abandon the crap” in my project by changing my proposal slightly. I intended to also ask people what could have made their day better but I realized eventually this would not help because many people could not answer that question and those that did simply wished that their unfortunate moments hadn’t happened. I also scrapped some of the interviews that were not as engaging or came out terribly either because of sound quality or the person’s voice. These pieces of advice were important because without my moment of reflection, I feel the point of my audio essay would have been lost and without abandoning the crap I received, my essay would have been more cluttered.

The problems I had while drafting my essay were mostly technical. I had some issues with the quality of some of my recordings and how to change things in GarageBand like slowing down tracks or lowering the volume but I managed to figure out what to do after searching online for a while.

DRAFT: Ideas

The point of my essay is that good ideas aren’t easy to come across. They are a combined effort and take time to grow. The “aha!” moment is the exception, rather than the rule when it comes to such ideas. To get my point across, I decided to kill the “50 People, 1 Question,” idea and to script something instead. After a lot of consideration, I decided that the best way to get to my point was to simply say it.  I scripted what I was going to say because I wanted my essay to flow smoothly, so I could record it in one segment. I didn’t intend to have a specific effect on the listener, so much as I wanted to make them think about where ideas come from and to come away with that little nugget of thought.

The first piece of advice from Ira Glass that I focused on was, “Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.” (Part 1)  And to be honest, my proposal was exactly that. It was a cute idea, or so I thought, but it really wasn’t going anywhere. So I killed it, took it’s core and went a completely different direction.  The second piece of advice I took was “you have to set aside just as much time looking for stories” as you spend telling them. (Part 2) And I did just that. I spent about 95% of my time refining my story and what exactly I want to say and the other 5% actually recording and editing the piece. For my first draft, I think I have a solid foundation but I would like to make a stronger point or to further develop my piece because I have this gut feeling that something is missing but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps the class will be able to help. Also I’m not sure if it’s lacking in the music/special effects department. I wanted to keep it clean but not make it too boring. And do I need a better introduction? I wasn’t sure if I should just start or introduce myself first…. I decided to just start.