Once when Princess Courtney came to visit the Fandom Princess at Mercury, the Princess decided to take her younger sister to see the Phoenix choir in town, as they were one of her favorite choirs to watch and listen to. They took their seats and moments later the candles in the room dimmed. About halfway through the performance, however, one of the phoenixes began to repeat the same note over and over. All of a sudden, the phoenix let out a loud screech, throwing all the other phoenixes off their scale. The performers all looked around in confusion and tried to calm their respective phoenixes down, but they continued to screech and flail around. The Princess exchanged looks with Courtney and the both of them shrugged; they knew that sometimes, sounds and events always didn’t work out how you wanted them to.

Part of this two week assignment, in addition to working diligently on our radio shows, was to do 5 stars worth of audio assignments! Now, we all know that audio hasn’t been my favorite thing about this course, however, I will say that I had a good time coming being able to create different things in Audacity that turned out to be really cool and awesome!

The first audio assignment that I did was called Poetry Reading in which I had to select a poem and read it, making sure that the way I read it told a story. The poem I picked was Roald Dahl’s version of “Cinderella.” This version of the classic fairy tale is not what most people are used to. It makes our protagonist seem like a spoiled brat, our prince not so charming, and you actually feel kind of sorry for the step sisters. Not possible, you may think. But just take a listen and tell me if I’m wrong.

While recording in Audacity, I made sure to change my tonal inflections and pitch of my voice to make sure that the actual story of the poem was recognized, as I believe the meaning in stories and poems can get lost depending on how someone is reading it.

My second audio assignment that I did was A Capella with Yourself. This one was a bit harder because not only did I have to record myself singing (which is not music to anyone’s ears) but I had to make sure that the words that I was singing were matching with what I had previously recorded. I went through a bunch of songs to determine what exactly I wanted to sing as well. First, I thought of doing “Clocks” by Coldplay, my favorite song. But then I realized that I didn’t want to ruin the song for those who hadn’t heard it yet. From there, I turned to a classic: “Music of the Night” as sung by Gerard Butler in The Phantom of the Opera. Well, after recording it five times, I couldn’t get the words to match up exactly right. In the end, I decided on singing a few lines from “Wannabe” by The Spice Girls, because let’s be honest, who doesn’t love the Spice Girls? Right? My best attempt is below, and please don’t judge it based on the singing. I did my best, but there’s a reason I’m an English and Creative Writing major and not a Music one.

With that is the end of all of my audio assignments for the two weeks. Hope you all enjoy them, and that my singing doesn’t scar you for life or anything like that.