Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

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.

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.

audio essay draft

Making a radio show is really hard. Aside from the recording and finding the clips that are relevant, the actual editing is a killer. I really invested a lot of time in this project, and im still not happy with it. I have a newfound respect for Ira Glass.

The point of my radio show is that Americans are conflicted, and it is very clear in this election season. They are not sure what they want, and the candidates are able to manipulate voters by saying what people want to hear. I have made a sort of satire of this in my radio show. I hope it is funny and makes my listeners laugh as they reflect upon the points being raised. I also wanted to give the effect of an actual radio show, so I put in some commercials to make this show seem legitimate.

Two pieces of advice I payed special attention to while making my radio show are:

“You actually have to set aside as much time for the looking for stories [as for editing your story]”(Part 2, 36 seconds in), and

“What your making is not that great… but you can tell that its still sort of crappy…. the most important thing to do is to do a lot of work. Make deadlines for yourself. “(Part 3, 1 minute in).

I found both of these insights to be true. Firstly, deciding what to make my show about took as long as editing it. And second, I am definitely able to tell that my work is still sort of crappy. But I wont give up- I will continue to draft this piece untill the revision is due, and i hope it will get better.

I think my main struggles in making this show are due to lack of experience, and i hope that it will get better in time and practice.

Dear Listener,

For our Audio Essay we decided to do a spin on the Letters segment we listened to in class; instead of just reading a variety of interesting letters for entertainment value, we chose three letters from the Letters of Note website and took turns reading (either the entire letter or parts of the letter) aloud in two different tones. Our aim, aside from entertaining our audience with witty letters, is to show the audience how the tone of the speaker determines the effect and mood of the letter. For example, when speaker 1 reads a letter in a joking tone and speaker 2 reads the same letter in a serious tone, the effect in completely different-, even though the words of the letter have not changed.

The point that we are trying to covey is that our voices and how we choose to use them can be incredibly powerful. We encourage our listeners to recognize the power of their voices and to use them for constructive purposes. We want our listeners to walk away motivated and empowered to use their voices to make a difference, especially in election season. To get our point across to our listeners, we used mood-appropriate music and explained our purpose at the end of the Audio Essay.

We chose to focus on Ira Glass’s advice about using an anecdote and a moment of reflection (part 1). We use an anecdote-or a sequence of actions-as an introduction to our segment in order to captivate the listeners; we briefly describe how we came up with our idea and how we found our letters. At the end of our segment, we have a moment of reflection and explain to the listeners the point of listening to our segment in a broader sense; we reflect on how our segment demonstrates the power of an individual to use his/her voice in a constructive way. Both of these tools are important because they give our segment structure, meaning, and entertainment value. We also chose to focus on Glass’s advice about the importance of “abandoning crap” (part 2, 1:50). Glass stresses the need to be selective and ruthless to get something really good. We had to follow this advice when narrowing down the letters we included to 3 instead of 4 and when deciding what sound effects or comments to include in general.

Our main problems arose in the editing process. Both of us have little experience with Garageband and other editing software. We envisioned our Audio Essay to sound more professional and crafted, but we obviously couldn’t get it to sound perfect. We also struggled a little bit with making our tones sound varied when we took turns reading the letters, since we are not professional actors, but we recorded it a few times until we were satisfied with the results.

For all you Redditors out there, Ira Glass is doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit tomorrow starting at 12pm! Might be some interesting tidbits when it comes out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/ (Look under “Upcoming AMAs”)

For my audio essay project, I plan to ask some serious questions about the upcoming presidential election. And the point i plan to highlight is that most people have no idea why they’re voting for a specific candidate, or even what positions that candidate holds on many matters.

I have invented a new position, called Executive Vice President, or the presidents left hand man. He is being interviewed on my radio show about his position and what his job will be. Granted, it is a little ridiculous, but i hope that it will be funny as well as thought provoking. I hope people consider the deeper points i am trying to make even though i dont plan to explicitly state them in the interest of keeping the tone light.

I will use GarageBand to edit the interview and put in background noises and make the voices of callers sound a little different.

My only concern is that it should make sense and not be confusing to the listener.

“Why are you wearing what you’re wearing?”

I plan to follow the “One Question” format for my audio-essay. I will not be doing much speaking in my audio-essay. I plan to ask students from a bunch of schools at my dorm, along with local workers in the dorm’s neighborhood, why they chose their clothes. As I’m a firm believer that the clothing we wear expresses our personalities and moods, I feel that the responses will be expository of the overall feeling of life at the dorm and in the surrounding area.

I’m particularly curious to see what kind of responses I will get out of the students in fashion-related majors, which there are many of at the dorm. (We share the building with LIM College, among others.)

I think most segments will be on the shorter side- 10-15 seconds- but I will also include longer ones if I feel that they’re significant. I will be using the camera on my phone to record the segments, and will be stringing them together on my Mac, probably in iMovie. I will need someone to help me record responses, though I think it should be pretty easy to find volunteers for this. I plan to gauge the overall feel of the responses when choosing music to play in the video’s background.

I think that I may change my “one question” to something more specific, like “Why did you choose those shoes?”. I think that it might be necessary to streamline the results to one thing that is more relatable, but I also don’t wont to narrow the question too much that I won’t expose very little about life by my dorm.