Audio.  That word brought with it so much terror and hesitation this week.  To ease my fears, I listened to what professionals  Ira Glass and Jad Abumrad had to say about audio storytelling in terms of what to look for when listening to a broadcast and how there can be a unique connection between the listener and audio host.  In my reaction, I also noted the connection between reading books and listening to audio: the imagination needed to create your own story in your mind.

To get some more practice and examples of audio techniques, I listened to Radio Lab‘s Ghost Stories and the Dissection of Joanna Rosser-Papermaker.  I learned to recognize sound effects more readily and what makes a good audio story.  In my post, I judged Ghost Stories based on what I learned and decided that it was a good audio story, except for that the hosts spoke the entire show, and didn’t allow the sounds to embed themselves into the listener.

The ds106 radio station plays 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  They play live broadcasts, stories, and songs, and post to Twitter to keep the listeners updated on what’s playing.  You can also find out what’s playing by going to the radio stream page.   Unfortunately, I didn’t catch a live broadcast, but I listened to an hour’s worth of radio stories and songs, and I blogged about my experience and thoughts on them.

Not only did we have to learn about audio storytelling, but we had to do our own audio assignments as well.  This was the part I was really dreading.  Up until this, I only had to listen to people talk about audio, but I didn’t have to speak myself.  My first assignment was to create a radio bumper.  My journey to creating my bumper was rocky at first, but it got much smoother once I had recorded my voice once.  It was easy to overcome the nervousness knowing that I could mess up and simply re-record my voice. Below is my very first bumper!

#ds106 Finally finished my radio bumper! Phew! soundcloud.com/lhampson23/sky…

— Lara Hampson (@l_hampson23) February 7, 2013

After breaking the ice by creating a radio bumper, I moved on to the next assignment of creating a story using nothing but sound effects.  After mulling over some ideas, I settled on making a traditional bugs bunny escape story.  Audacity really helped with both of these assignments to make them flow better and sound less amateur.  I  started using Twitter more to publicize my posts.

#ds106 My sound effect story! soundcloud.com/lhampson23/bug…

— Lara Hampson (@l_hampson23) February 8, 2013

Every week, daily creates challenge us to use what we’ve learned to create something unique.  This week, I completed three daily creates.  The first took a bit more time than usual, but it was worth it: Retitle a movie poster to make it more accurate.  I knew immediately that a Disney movie was the way to go, because they’re so easy to make fun of!  Below is my rendition of what The Little Mermaid SHOULD have been called:

The next daily create I chose wasn’t one I would have usually done, but since it was all about audio this week, I wanted to continue the streak: Hum your first musical memory.  My favourite show as a kid was Arthur, so it was obvious to me that I should hum the theme song.  My pitch is a little off, but that’s not really the point eh?

I slipped back into my comfort zone with the third daily create: Create some kind of pattern of things on your desk right now.  The photo is pretty bad, but it gets the point across of what’s found on my desk in a pattern it’s not usually in.

My comment group was much more active this week, but unfortunately, a lot of my group’s work wasn’t posted until this past weekend.  Fairuz made me feel better when she agreed that it’s hard to get assignments to come out the way we want and Dylan assured me that my sound effect story was easy enough to follow.

On the topic of the ds106 radio, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t catch a live broadcast.  Casey wasn’t able to either and we’re both hoping to catch one in the future with more people listening.

This week, I learned to get over my fear of recording audio.  Once I recorded, I didn’t mind it so much and I could have done many more audio assignments (which I’m sure I will!).  I learned to use Twitter to put my posts out there too.  I’m learning to space and time my posts throughout the week so that everything doesn’t build up at once at the end of the week.

#ds106 My view on audio storytelling: ds106.larahampson.com/audio-storytel… @caseyragg @ampersanddragon @fairuzmaggio @dylangott1

— Lara Hampson (@l_hampson23) February 5, 2013