Recording With Audio

Re-examine what you’re listening to

Stories are more like a string of beads than a tapestry, ensure that there’s a space for people to breathe, rising and falling in intensity. A piece should prepare you for the end of its story, and a bad audio piece will often abruptly end. You can take a lot from a tone of voice. The way your voice reacts in different scenarios, (eg Hallways, bathroom, outside, in car etc) is relevant to an audio essay. Take fully into consideration the huge variation of inflections in the voice. It’s important to take into account how the sound is Mediated, as sound is very clearly different depending on whether its recorded on a cassette, or a CD, or Vinyl etc.

Listening to this example of a radio story, the combinations of sound include the scribbling of a piece of paper, cars driving, etc. As well as music to fit the scene.

An Interesting piece of audio was following a young girl grow from being a baby into a young woman called Nancy Schwartz, it contained a piece of audio of each every few years of her life, learning how to talk, and growing into a young woman with a distinct way of talking and articulation.

Siobhan Mchugh example: ‘Jan Gaham’ The audio is full of white noise, but the audio is still easily heard. The story depicts a man in war and his legs blew off, and as the girl cradling his torso and head as he slowly died pretending to be the wife that the man mistook her for. The audio depicts her experience talking about that with the man’s wife.

CBC Radio: The Wire ‘intro’ is crammed with heaps of different subject matter in sound, combining a bunch of little musical clips initially, but then Gymnopedie is set to a beat and played in the background of a bunch of “um’s” and “ah’s” Music can be very overdone, and it is important to have areas in an audio essay that use the effects of silence. Music slowed down can create a “new, secret story”

Don’t try to use numbers in sound

Adding sounds to the actions that the narrator is describing works well

Red hot Tips for making a Radio Show

• Movement: Movement is the thing that makes a sound
• When Editing, work with what you’ve got, rather than what you could’ve got
• Begin with the strongest most interesting parts, and then try to find audio that can come from that.
• Start with the sound followed by the voice describing it. (eg- Sound of a train whizzing past, and then have the narrator talking about a train halfway through)
• When Mixing, make sure that it’s well levelled, and there’s not a huge change in volume throughout the piece.