Forum 3: Audio Story Components

James Last

BACKGROUND MUSIC
The background music I have chosen for this podcast is a traditional orchestra piece composed by Sir Edward Elgar around the year 1905.  Pomp and Circumstance, informally known as the "graduation song" is a beautifully crafted, emotionally charged piece, that brings the audience back in time to the day of their High School/ College graduation.

The purpose of using this piece is to mirror the overall theme of education that runs throughout my podcast. The irony, which I believes makes it effective, is that the happiness and nostalgia associated with this song is contrasted by the grotesque and controversial question: Do you even need a college education any more?



 NOISE
The first part of this recording is of me talking with a large amount of audio noise. As you will notice, the majority of this noise comes from a large outdoor fan.  The second part of this video, which is separated by a snap, is a continuation of the same recording, accept this time, with noise reduction.

Overall, I believe that the noise reduction worked poorly.  And that is okay. I could have recorded in a different location where there was much less background noise but I decided to use this recording with the intent of testing the limitations of Adobe Audition. When using any kind of software, no matter what for, it is important to know the limitations of the software. By understanding that noise reduction can only filter out so much, it allows me to be more mindful of what shooting locations are good and which ones aren't justifiable at all.  Of Course, some of this might be user error, but given the amount of noise present in this video, I am doubtful of that. That's not to say that the noise reduction worked terribly. If I were to put music in the background, this noise reduced piece might work fine.
EFFECT
The first portion of this audio track has no effect. This is to give a frame of reference for the rest of the recording. After establishing the original sound of my voice, I added the pitch shift effect. I did this to deepen the sound of my voice. In addition, I used a mutiband compressor to boost the lows of my voice and to quiet down the highs. Lastly, to finalize this effect, I applied a hard limiter to eliminate peaks and normalized my audio. The purpose of this effect is to change the natural sound of my voice, and to give it a deeper, more powerful, sound. Of course it doesn't sound anything like my voice, but when coupled with music and the right topic it can add a lot to the story.

The Second affect I applied to this audio track was an Echo effect. This is a fairly straight forward effect to add in Audition, and I use it to fade into my interviewees answer (which is demonstrated in the recording). If I actually wanted to use this in my podcast, I would want to work with the effect to make it sound more personable and less machine like.





 FOLEY
I recorded a variety of sounds to be used in my Foley sound effects. The order of sounds and purposes are listed in order of appearance: turning pages in a textbook (to replicate the sound of computer solitaire dealing a deck), a car door closing, a door being electronically unlocked and opened, me walking in the pine needles (which sounds like the noise it makes when you walk in Minecraft), scraping my phone case on a brick wall (which sounds like noise distortion/ loud speaker/ explosion/ avalanche/ ext), a car engine rev (because America), and lastly the sound of a zipper.

My personal favorite is the sound effects of turning pages in a book. It's just a very dynamic, versatile, and satisfying sound. I also like the sound effect of scraping my microphone along a wall. It could be used in a variety of ways. Lastly, the sound of me walking in pine needles could certainly be used for a variety of applications and has a very scratchy sound. It also sounds a little like walking in snow... which could be a helpful sound effect when you live in the south.







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