Unit 6

Eastside Audio Blitz Week 1- behind

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The week went by quickly and I have fallen into the behind category. My week 6, 7, and spring break I have charted a little differently as an open course learner than the path of the UMW cohorts in #noir106. That has proven more challenging. I really have to set up my own markers and targets.

First of all – the #noir106 cohorts are rockin! Wow – so many great creations in design and audio. And a huge surge in community connectedness. Usually about week 6 in an online course the wall hits you in the face – but this cohort saw a wall and said ” We are going over it!”

The instructor led sections have required everyone to comment on at least 10 others blogs, soundclouds, flikr etc. as a requirement this week and next. I have done that already and haven’t been tracking where I go. I did some shout outs in my summary of unit 5. Since I am not tracking points – I am skipping the listing this summary – but you should see me on the comment pages. 🙂 Sometimes I spend more time reading and learning from those than doing my own assignments. 🙂

Special thanks to the UMW students who did check out my work and offered suggestions and comments.

I spent the first part of this week viewing others posts and work (M-Tu). I then got caught up with rooting for everyone to find a group and get going on their team work. Watching the process was interesting and it was great to see the increase in connectedness and sharing. By then it was late in the week and I was ignoring audio and spent time on design for the audio.

Again – I am working through this learning to become better skilled to create family stories. In week 5, I chose my Dad as my character to focus on for assignments. The other side road I am taking is that I am not part of a group for a radio show. I did find a #4life group that was taking on open course 106 participants, but I wasn’t sure if my life and schedules would allow me to carry my weight in a group.  So I have decided to create an “audio event” independently that will follow most of the radio show specifics. I also am building it around my goal of family stories.

This week I created my Personalized Learning Path in writing to see if that would help me stay focused on track. It does – but only if I go back to it and use it!

Some of the assignments I completed during this week are: (you can click on the links to see the assignment specifics and process)

A logo for Eastside.

Eastside Logo

A poster to promote and give a visual design to the audio event. This took some time, but I really enjoyed it and I learned many new things. I did put out a version when I hit the wall and didn’t know what to do or what missing. That is the great thing about the online community. Within an hour I had messages and suggestions which were enough to get me to look at things differently and acted as a huge boost in pushing me to go back and improve. It is that balance of independence and community that creates higher outcomes and makes the learning fun and satisfying.

EastsideRadioPoster

Theme song for Eastside.

This poster is part of the package for the audio event – but was done as part of week 5-design.

Poster: Minimal Design

This puts me behind the cohorts. My rational is I will be working on things while they are on spring break – so I have 1.5 days for every day they have to get things done.

On to the next unit/week!

 

Eastside Theme song……well almost

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This is v1.0 of the theme song for Eastside and “Jerry”. It is only version 1.0. I still need to find some sounds to add to the music.

I didn’t have a character or person to focus on the unit right before this one. Others who are on the #noir106 journey established their characters in unit 1. The idea of the character or theme from the beginning makes a lot of sense in traveling this ds106 path.

I began with lots of analyzing where in the time of the life of my Dad the story will take place. I have been lost in 1953-56 high school year books, photo albums and memories. The other wall I kept hitting was whether this is an intro bumper, a theme song, or a promo. Because I am not really doing a radio show I get caught up in radio show focus instead of how I will use these. I will probably still use this theme for part of his story. It has brought to light that what I really need is an intro bumper to tell who the story is about. A next audio assignment will be to do something as an intro bumper.

I could have chosen to do something that was from the late 50’s – but that reminded me of Happy Days (the TV Show) and didn’t seem to fit. My Dad loved music – all kinds. His records and CDS and the music channels on cable, the radio he would set up when we would go on vacation in northern Wisconsin each year.

A mix of all his favorites would probably sound like a strange mix. I decided to stay focused on the Eastside story and him as a handsome young man navigating new adulthood in the late 50’s. Determining what that sound would be had me listening to all sorts of things – and boy can you go on a tangents and find some neat things you weren’t looking for – but they eat up your time!

One of his favorites in music was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I decided to take one of their songs and remix it.

Taste of Honey was the song I chose. I remember it playing on the record player when I was a kid . It was way too peppy and dance like for a theme. I worked with the speed of the clips and slowed them down to get a different sound. I also cut portions out to keep it under 1.5 minutes. In trying to get it to sound like it was one song and not something chopped up, I used WAH WAH to blend sounds, the envelope and lots of adjusting, and fade in and fade out.

Other tools I used were normalize and noise reduction. After the noise reduction, I had to go back and increase the sound decibel. Normalize got rid of the clipping. Noise reduction softened the recording sounds. Increasing the decibel meant I could hear the product without cranking my sound up all the way.

The UNDO command became my best friend  but still turned on me at times! The part I haven’t done is add some other sounds yet. That will be version 1.x-2.

After a good 5 hours of tweaking  – I called it version one.

As for ds106/noir106 I don’t think this hits the targets others are going towards. But for my learning plan, it did keep me in Audacity, in audio editing, and in building that skill and understanding so I am going to call it a success.

 

 

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