Ira Glass Part One:

Ira Glass’ part one on storytelling brought up a major point about half way through about the concept of creating “bait” for the listener/viewer.  The significant point he made was that even within what he considers a boring background story, that the story still managed to have a bait factor in order to draw in the listener, and how it is necessary that with the use of bait, then you have to make sure you answer the question in order to keep the audience intrigued.

Part II:

For part two of Glass’ discussion on storytelling, he starts off with a key point on how difficult and oftentimes overlooked it is to actually find a compelling story, arguing that it’s harder and more time consuming to find a story rather than producing it.  I feel like this is incredibly important to note because too much I feel like people stretch to make a story seem better than it is, rather than just letting it happen in its natural form.  He goes on to further explain how in order for something to be really good, it is a necessity to be “really tough” on the story, from eliminating any boring filler in the story, while also be willing to expect failure.

“How Radio Creates Empathy”

Jad Abumrad’s discussion on radio brought up the significant point of “co-authorship” and how although radio, in contrast to TV, does not portray a direct visual image, it allows the listener to work with the audio in order to form their own image.  He argues that there is more of a connected feeling between the speaker and the listener in radio, because they work together to achieve the desired picture, whereas TV is more of a passive connection due to the fact that it is displaying everything already for the viewer, eliminating any opportunity to create your own imagery.

Listening to Stories:

Getting Away With It

The part that stuck out to me the most throughout the stories was how background noise is used to convey a certain picture, theme, or feeling.  I specifically like the story about people cheating or “getting away with it” and how the background noise gave it such a casual feeling.  It caught me by surprise because it seemed to make light of a wrongful act, while taking the opportunity to point out how common getting away with something is.

Back in high school, I took Electronic Music in order to get my arts credit and this segment reminded me exactly of that class, as one of our assignments was to record someone telling a story and set it to music.  Obviously, at the time, I was very amateur and just used GarageBand in order to complete the assignment, not sure exactly what program they used to collaborate these stories with music but it was really done well as everything flowed perfectly.

PS- The story of the guy lying to his parents and family about graduating from college is one of the more ballsy lies I’ve ever heard.

Radio Bumper:

Alright, so pretty fun project done right there, as I mentioned above I have minimal experience with GarageBand, although it still counts.  But yeah, I fooled around with the program a bit, trying a few different things out, still couldn’t quite remember everything like cutting clips and whatnot but I think that it worked out fine.

Sound Effect Story:

So the story I tried to tell was of someone first driving a car.  I tried to have the excitement and emotion build up at first with just a simple background noise playing, and as soon as the driver settles in it starts to pick up as everything is going along well.  However, at the end, after everything is going smoothly and the driver is doing fine, the dramatic piano shows him either getting in an accident or getting pulled over, just anything that changed the former mood of enjoyment and energy.

Daily Creates:

Acrostic Poem

Just bought a pair of Sperry’s the other day, so the assignment seemed perfectly applicable.  Never heard of an acrostic poem before but the website was more than useful in explaining what it is and how to make one.

Create some kind of pattern

Now this was a fairly boring one just cause I never have anything on my desk so I kinda had to push my limits and reach over to my nightstand too.  It’s supposed to look like the two wooden figures are playing each other in a board game of some sort set up by the cardboard box in the middle.

Hum First Musical Memory

First musical memory was the birthday song.  However, I tried to hum my whole name for the “happy birthdayyy to (insert name)” but it oddly enough came up sounding like the classic “Mr.President” but oh well, guess it could be worse.

Weekly Reflection:

Well, two firsts for me this week: making an audio clipping, and uploading a daily create to Flickr.  Now the main reason I never did one of the Flickr assignments was cause I didn’t really know how/care know how cause I’ve never been a person for pictures.  But as I was recommended by one of my classmates to download the Flickr app on my iPhone, it makes it much easier.  Now the soundcloud part I’m a little unsure of if it actually worked but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.  I used GarageBand, but I didn’t know how to upload it directly to soundcloud so I exported it to iTunes, and then grabbed it from there, but it didn’t come out as an .mp3 file, but an .aif so hopefully that works alright.