Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

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.

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.

I thought Ira Glass’ advice was really helpful and awesome. I particularly liked what he said about the “importance of abandoning crap.” I think we all consciously know that failure is an important step in creating something great, but it’s lost in practice. I often underestimate just how many awful things I have to write in order to finally come up with something close to decent. He made me feel better about how many times I come up with useless and slightly embarrassing material. It’s all part of the process.

The mention of luck really stuck out to me. It’s not that you randomly get lucky and everything is great; it’s that you’ve done so much work that something great is bound to happen. When an idea isn’t working out, it’s sometimes too easy to abandon it. And then feel like a complete failure. Cry a little. When you pick one good idea out of a thousand mediocre ones, though, you know it’s going to be different. You’ve done all the groundwork and eliminated the lame ones, and now you finally have something to work with.

He also mentioned that coming up with interesting ideas is more than half the battle. This just really resonated with me because I have put off almost all of my projects because I needed more time to get that one perfect idea. I’ve definitely spent more time searching for an idea than it took to actually carry it out, but I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t given myself time to do that. Glass’ advice really helped ground me and make me feel a little bit less crazy. Creative work definitely has its obstacles.