Essay Recording in Sections: NOT a merry, jolly old time. (shrug emoji)

This project was a lesson in time management. I started playing with the Christmas tune two weeks before the assignment was due, breaking it down and making it sound, if possible, even more grating. However, I ended up spending the bulk of my time on this project (longer than I’d like to admit) trying to cut and tighten my piece. It was originally thirteen minutes! Yikes. There was too much that I felt was integral to the story arc, and I was reluctant to cut it out.
I felt that the quality of my first two audio recordings were much better than this one. I recorded this essay as five pieces. Parts 1, 3, 4, and 5 were crisp and clear from my phone to Audacity. However, Track 2 sounded perfectly clear when I was listening to it through Media Player, but when I uploaded it to Audacity, it became clouded and grainy. I didn’t have time to re-record it. When I merged all five pieces, the poor quality and quirks of the second recording really dragged down the other ones. I’ve decided that I really do like recording the session in one take better than in pieces. It took me MUCH longer than I’d anticipated to piece together the different sections, and this meant that my time for working in the music was cut nearly in half. I just ran out of time. I was really upset. I spent nearly six hours on Sunday and five hours on Monday in the library using Audacity, and it still sounded awful.  For my next project, I’m going to try using the microphone in the library. (I know I’ll need to set aside more time to record so I can figure out the fine details.) Worst case scenario, if I botch a sentence or word, I can just re-record that part. I’m not recording in sections again.

As a written piece, I feel my essay is strong. There are memorable moments of strong imagery and wording. When it comes time to revise the piece, I’m going to work on expanding it back to its original length, and really spend time fine-tuning the sound additions. I appreciated the suggestion in class (I forget who made it) to move the disjointed sound earlier in the piece, after “everything went to hell.” I have a lot of ideas on how I can improve my essay; now I just need to do them!

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 6, 2018 at 2:50 PM

    It was me! I made the good suggestion. (Internet points?)

    I think it is a good idea to expand back up to the original length in portfolio; there were off-ramps earlier in this project to maybe tell a different story, but once it became clear that this was the story you were telling, trying to prune it down to fit the brief I felt only ever weakened it.

    On the plus side, these changes to the script necessitate a full rerecording, which will allow you to tackle all of the audio issues. Hopefully after the complexity of the documentary assignment, redoing the Narrative Essay will be a breeze.

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