I’d have to say this assignment was probably the most detailed and involved that I have done in years… in any class. It definitely had its ups and down. I think it was a little more difficult and time-consuming than my group had anticipated. Although it did take some time to brainstorm our ideas and lines for the script, that was the easy part. It was the recording that brought on difficulty.

My group and I ended up using two different laptops to record our radio show because we thought it would be easier… we were wrong. When it came time to edit the pieces of the show, we had to cut and paste different audio parts in Audacity, which was a complete pain. We constantly had to mess with the timing, the echos, the sound quality, etc. Additionally, editing the pieces of the show on two different laptops also caused volume differences. Therefore, we had to amplify and de-amplify everything in Audacity until we got the volumes of the different pieces as close as we could without drowning out the background noise. The editing/pasting everything together is definitely what took us countless hours to do. Granted, we made it more difficult than it had to be, but we thought it would be easier at the time, and much better for the sound quality of our voices. Let’s just say we’ll all know better if we ever have to do another audio project.

On a brighter note, the actual recording was really fun, in my opinion. I think that part went fairly smoothly for my group. We treated it as if we were having a conversation on a real radio show, which made it easier to get through. It also definitely helped keep the show from sounding too scripted. We also had quite a few entertaining bloopers, which were great to go back and listen to. Plus, they made good clips for “The Making Of.”

I think the part that I enjoyed the most was adding the music and sound effects to the show. Up until we started doing Audio in DS106, I was completely oblivious. I had no idea of the different capabilities of Audacity, let alone the different sound effects/music I could just find online and import. It was amazing! I had so much to choose from. I think that’s what also made some of the editing so time-consuming; I couldn’t stop adding and messing with different sounds and music. I feel like I learned so much just by experimenting with Audacity.

All in all, I think this was a successful assignment. We worked hard, we were efficient, I made a new friend, and I learned quite a bit.