Sorry, that title was a bit tacky. But it seems perfect for this weekly summary which is all about audio week, and what a week it was! I was cordially introduced to Audio, and we hit it off right away. This princess has invited audio to my kingdom so we can hang out together sometime. However, the princess almost banished her computer this weekend. Yes that’s right. My computer was most certainly the villain this week (go figure it always seems to be).

Once again, we had a lot of different things to listen to and watch this week in order to get a better idea of audio storytelling, and I am glad that I watched these before doing my assignments this week. Last week I made the mistake of watching the videos after I did the assignments, and I really regretted it. So this week I did a bit of thinking about audio storytelling and hearing from the professionals of Ira Glass and Jad Abumrad. Essentially what I got from the various videos that we needed to watch is that radio storytelling requires a constant chatter, and it needs to be elaborate in order to reach the reader. But another thing that helped support me throughout the week is knowing that at times I may fail, but everything will be alright and as long as I get back to the swing of things, I will have success. I go into a lot more detail in my Radio Ruminations post from earlier this week which shows my reflections right after watching it.

Also early on in the the week on Monday I got to listen to this semester’s first ds106 radio show. I am not going to lie, and the idea of radio really intimidates me, but after listening to the cohosts of the show perform with such ease, I know that it won’t be too long before I too become a master of the radio. Unfortunately, I had a firedrill so I relied on listening to the rest of the archive in order to hear the parts that I missed. Overall it was a whole new experience of interacting via twitter into a radio show, and you can see my tweets and full opinion on the broadcast in my summary of my experience.

Later on the in the week, I listened to This American Life radio show, episode 484 entitled Doppelganers. This was one of the first times that I was really focusing on the how rather than just the what. And yet again I wished that I listened to these earlier in the week. I have grown up listening to the radio, but never focus on the techniques that they may use since it’s usually just morning talk shows. However, the world of radio storytelling is very intricate and this episode gave me a good look at two very different stories that were told in two very different ways. The first story, about the possibility of restaurants using friend bung instead of friend calamari, was told in more of a news like manner and then moved into an experiment that got the audience rooting for the underdog somehow. The second story, which was about the parallelism between a life in the streets and a life in combat, was extremely raw and was told as it by the two subjects of focus. The minor detail of music emphasized the rawness of the stories and had me wanting to hear more. To see more details about how these two stories were told, please feel free to read it here!

Now I had all of the knowledge of how to tell an audio story, and it was my turn to finally apply that knowledge. Audacity certainly became my new best friend, and my computer soon became my enemy. Wednesday I have no classes so I usually dedicate it purely to ds106 until I have to go work my two jobs. However, I had no Internet Connection for almost 4 hours, and recording sounds for my project in a public place would be distracting background noise. Once I finally had Internet access, I found out that my computer charger was broken and my battery was almost dead. Very frustrated, I just called it a day and let Thursday take care of the rest. The first assignment I decided to tackle was creating a ds106 radio bumper. I knew right away that I wanted to do a sports theme because I love sports and my only audio background has to deal with my job at the athletics department. So I went into Audacity and created three layers, one of my voice, one of the Charge song, and one of a crowd cheering in the background. Despite having a song playing, I found the crowd to make the scene a lot more realistic, and in my blog post about these you can even hear the different between having a crowd and not having a crowd! Here is my final product, with the crowd:

The second assignment, was about creating a story all made out of sound effects. This one I struggled with coming up with an idea more than actually executing the idea. I originally wanted to do a scene out of a Disney movie, but then decided to tell my own story. I ended up telling my story of my frustration with my computer battery charger breaking. I figure out it’s broken and make a trip to Best Buy and come back home only to realize that I bought the wrong one! Sure it was frustrating at the time, but at least now I can look back and laugh at myself for being a total ditz at Best Buy. To hear my story, as well as see what my Audacity layers looked like, check out my blog post about my trip to Best Buy. If you are tired of reading though, simply just listen right here.

Now to probably my favorite part of the week, like almost every week, the daily creates. I’m not sure what it is, but I like the challenge and the freedom to be as expressive as you want, and it also seems like that’s when most of my work is shown. This week I wanted to extend my horizons and try to do different kinds of daily creates, so I did a writing one, a photography one, and an audio one. My writing one was to create an acrostic poem about what you were wearing, and I chose to do a tiara (I never leave home without it). Next I mastered GIMP when I retitled Sleeping Beauty to be something more accurate. And lastly, I introduced myself into the audio world by humming The Itsy Bitsy Spider over Soundcloud. This week I posted all of my daily creates into one jumbo post (not anywhere close to as jumbo as this one), which I probably will stick to individual posts later on for these creates, however here is the jumbotron of all daily creates.

Finally it’s comment time! I must say, it is always a relaxing day in ds106-ville when I get to just sit back relax and read what my fellow group memebers have done. And I feel like every week I will be blown away with what they do. It’s hard to critique their work because it really is so great! I love how they take their own interpretations of the assignments and make it truly their own. I get bummed out because I wish that I post things from this week up earlier so that they could see what I have been up to during this week to get feedback on that. However, it always is reassuring to see that I am heading on the right track and actually making stories that people do enjoy! Who would have thought this math major had it in her? I think after looking at people’s blogs I want to really stun people next week and “bend the rules” a little bit and get creative. That’s one of my goals for sure!

Finally, this week has been certainly up and down. After lots of computer problems that delayed me, I can say that I really am starting to get the hang of the whole class as a whole. It certainly is a lot of work, but I do believe that I am up for the challenge. I was shocked with how simply Audacity made different things, and I was relieved and a whole lot less intimidated. The thing that I am really looking forward to is to start putting everything together to tell on seriously epic tale! Storytelling can be done with just the simplest things, but when all of them are put together, I’m sure it creates magic!

Thanks for reading!

Princess Karissa