Audio as a medium for art is very overlooked. Going into this unit, I myself only thought of it as a way to tell written stories using things like book recordings and music lyrics. However, I learned that audio storytelling is a form of art with its own rules and benefits in this unit.
Resources from Ira Glass
This post explains more about Ira Glass’s advice for audio storytellers and my thoughts on his advice. All of this advice was new to me, but I found that a lot of the elements that Glass talks about are similar to elements in other forms of storytelling. Audio storytelling uses balance, emphasis, and cutting in its own way, but the general idea of them are similar to those used in written stories, design stories, and visual stories. For example, written stories may require a balance of descriptions and action while audio stories may require a balance of anecdotes and reflections. Both require balancing opposing elements for a good story, but they do so in different ways.
Audio Storytelling in Spooked
Within this post, I apply Ira Glass’s advice to the use of audio storytelling in Spooked: the Fog and my thoughts on it. This podcast episode is a great example of audio storytelling used well. The episode uses techniques of audio storytelling in order to create tension and fear in the horror podcast. The podcast is not perfect; there are flaws in the transitions and flow of the second narrator, but overall, it uses the aspects of audio well to serve the narrative.
My Audio Stories
Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Voice” (3 stars): Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch is an important feminist fairy tale adaptation. Follow me as I think about and read this work in the an academic context.
A Show Gone Wrong (3 stars): This is a story told in sound effects. Try to figure out the story and then read the imagined narrative.
Breakup Imminent (3 stars): An adult posts to her social media about the actions of her roommate. This is a story told in only a few words and a song.
Hiding in the Shadows (4 stars): This spooky story follows what a suspenseful tale built on the imagined noises we hear in our houses.
My Life in Songs (2 stars): Follow me in history as I make a playlist of songs I have related to in my history.
Summary and Reflection on Resources
This unit was very new to me. I know a little bit about flow and rhythm in words because of my work in critiquing written writing, but overall, the concept of audio storytelling was new to me. I learned in this unit how audio can be used to enhance a story in unique ways that no other medium can.
I learned that audio as a medium is a great way to affect emotions. In the same way that colors in design have emotional connotations to them, certain kinds of audio also have connotations to them that create emotion. For example, slower audio is going to sound calmer or scarier whereas fast audio is going to sound panicked or energetic. Using these sound cues effectively can add to the tone of an audio story. A horror piece that has fast, energetic background music is going to sound off because the tones of the two parts don’t match up.
As well, I learned that audio can enhance oral storytelling. Making sound effects that match up with the words spoken in oral stories can grab the attention of the audience more, and it can emphasize certain parts of the story. By adding the sound effect of a door locking when I speak about entering a room, I can make that action seem very important.
No part of this unit was harder than I thought that it would be as it was learning concepts, but it was easier than I thought to apply Glass’s concepts to the podcast episode. Many of the concepts were easy to understand and were similar to concepts in other forms of storytelling which made it easy and enjoyable to apply them to the podcast episode. I found it interesting in particular to look at how audio creates tone and tension. As a writer, tone and tension tend to be created by word choice and pacing, so it was interesting for me to see how a similar choice and pacing can be applied to audio to create similar effects.
I also enjoyed listening to Ira Glass’s advice. I love to learn, so it was fun to learn about an art form that I knew only a little about. Ira Glass was also very beginner-friendly in his speech which didn’t make it feel like he was talking down to the listener. I find that for myself and others, someone talking down to beginners because they don’t know better is a disincentive to continuing to learn, so I think that Glass did great to make people want to learn audio storytelling.
The transitions in the podcast were very irritating, however. As a writer, I know that if you don’t apply transitions between ideas well, the audience can get confused. More importantly, however, it irritated me as an autistic person. My brain makes connections easily and very quickly. That can lead people to be confused how I got from talking about a book I like to the horrors of mulch. If even I, someone who makes connections easily, was startled by the lack of transition in the podcast, it is safe to say that the transitions had problems in the podcast.
Summary and Reflection on My Stories
Going into making these audio stories, I already had experience in Audacity, the audio program that I used to create these stories. I also had experience from learning about audio (see the rest of this summary post). Overall, however, I did not have much experience in audio storytelling. I really enjoyed making these audio stories despite that!
In creating “Breakup Imminent,” I learned how to make audio that sounds distant and muffled. As well, another technique I learned is how to make sounds come out of one speaker more than the other. I really like this technique because it made it a lot easier to differentiate who was talking in dialogue.
None of the techniques were particularly hard to use or understand. However, it was hard to find a song for the “Breakup Imminent” story that fit my idea and also was creative commons. I immediately thought of “Should’ve Said No” by Taylor Swift, but that would not be good to use for copyright as whether it fell under fair use would be dubious. I am glad that I found a song that fit well enough and also would allow me to alter it and be considered fair use.
It was easier than I thought it would be to make a story using sound effects. I expected it to be hard to find sound effects to fit the purpose of my narrative idea. It was easier than expected, however, because of freesound.org. The website makes it easy and quick to find sound effects that one can use. I used the website exclusively for “A Show Gone Wrong.”
I did not enjoy recording Donoghue’s work. I find it hard to speak clearly which is necessary for recording narration of written work. I solved that issue, however, by recording two takes of every line I read. That way, I had two opportunities to get the line correctly. I also had a pause between each line to cut up my one recording more easily.
I really enjoyed making “My Life in Songs.” It did not require me to create any new audio, but it was a nice way to reminisce on my life and my listening history. The piece I enjoyed making the most after that was “A Show Gone Wrong.” I found it fun to test out different sound effects to find the one that fit my vision the best.
Conclusion
Overall, this unit was new information to me. Audio is an often-overlooked aspect of storytelling that is fundamental to the structure of any kind of multimedia story. It creates tension, tone, and pacing, and if we ignore it, then there is a large chance that our multimedia projects will suffer for it. That suffering could be through giving the opposite tone of your project or through missing out on a key element to drive your story along. My audio stories tended to focus on how sound is portrayed in space through audio effects. I do not create many multimedia stories currently, but when I do, I know that I will pay attention to the audio in them.
Do you think that audio is a crucial component of multimedia stories? What do you like or dislike about audio stories? Is there an audio story you really enjoyed and why? Please let me know in the comments!
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