This narrative assignment was much harder than the last. My narrative was never where I wanted it to be in cohesiveness because my narrative would not have made sense without talking about different portions of the same event cycle. This essay involved narrative plus background music and that in and of itself was much more difficult. Before it was just recording our voice reading what we had written, this time we not only had to record but we had to choose music that fit the mood of the narrative, choose where the music should fade in and out and pause to create emphasis. It was a lot of different concepts being mixed together and it required a lot of attention. Personally, I struggled with my narrative due to the way it was organized and keeping everything concise and making sure nothing was too drawn out. Revising my draft, I would pay more attention to the areas I felt were not as concise in the beginning even if it takes me over word limit. There are some areas that might be able to be cut and others that can be extended to make more sense. A good sound story seems to take into consideration of music placement, where it stops and creates emphasis and such. With mine, I didnt put music through the middle portion because I felt it important to emphasize but now that I look back on my own draft compared to others drafts, I have areas in mine where music stops could emphasize certain parts more than having music start or stop there. I did really enjoy this project considering the tough time I had with it. Choosing the music was extremely fun. I liked being able to score my own work and make sure the songs fit the mood I was going for.

Comments

  1. BballengerMarch 2, 2018 at 11:46 AM

    Hi Anne,
    Could you say more about what you mean when you write that your "narrative was never where I wanted it to be in cohesiveness because my narrative would not have made sense without talking about different portions of the same event cycle?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownMarch 3, 2018 at 10:46 AM

      Spit-balling off of this: do you think there is any chance that the reason you felt a need to explain something else in the event cycle is because that was the story that really wanted to be told?

      Delete
  2. MEGAN B.March 2, 2018 at 2:01 PM

    I agree with you that the music added more time to our projects, but we are learning so much. I wish you luck on the final revision.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre

The "Genre in the Wild" article was both interesting and helpful to me in piecing together the experiences I have had this semester as I have moved into a new genre category. I think we all have had to learn to occupy a new genre and identify genre situations as proposed in the article. The first thing that stuck out to me in the article was this quote about genre situation, " The scientist doesn’t have to figure out whether she’ll write a report or if she’d rather write a song lyric. The Supreme Court justice writing for the majority knows that she will not write a haiku. In each instance, the situation calls for a particular genre. The writer in the situation knows this. So the writer takes up the genre and uses it to respond." For this class and the assignments included with it, I have had to compete with years of conditioned formal and critical writing. One of my biggest shifts in this semester was in realizing that the radio essay was at its core storytelling ...
Read more

Audio Ecosystems by Ben Wieland

In thinking about the idea of genres, genre sets, and genre ecosystems, I’d argue that the radio essay is perhaps more mysterious as a genre than some of the more typical, written-style genres out there. Take the doctor’s form used in Bickmore’s article – the fact that it usually asks uniform, consistent questions, and acts as a record for the patient as well as a legal document. Even essays have standardized headings, the typical five-sentence paragraphs, introductions, hooks, conclusions, etc… When we can comment on the merits of these essays, we usually approve of specificity. This concrete example here, or a cited statistic there. Even journalistic genres have very specific rules – the who, what, when, where, and how, for instance. Yet, with the radio essay, it always seemed quite a challenge to nail down the specifics of the genre system. You have the story, the “trouble”, perhaps some music cues, maybe some sound effects if you want. But it’s not required. Even when d...
Read more

My Nonexsistent Friendship with Audacity

Over the course of this semester, I have really enjoyed the assignments we have been given. Writing is one of my favorite things to do and while I would much rather be traveling the world than going to school, this course has provided an enjoyable college experience. The narrative essay was easy for me to come up with ideas for, however, it was a lot more difficult to solidify my choice. I ended up choosing a more personal story because for some reason it is easier for me to write about personal experiences. The only issue that arose while drafting and editing this essay was trying to contain the words in a way that would allow me to stay within the time frame of the audio file. Even after turning the file in via Blackboard, I still have a lot of editing to do if I want the audio to be exactly how I envision it to be. Now, when it comes to Audacity I have spent hours upon hours messing around with the tools and effects to try and gain a better understanding of how the software work...
Read more