Radio Bumper
This was fun, yet time-consuming. Audio is a lot of tweaking and eventually you still don’t think it is exactly as you thought you wanted it.
I chose a favorite artist, Steve Earle and his song Satellite Radio to take some of the runs from it. I used the sound from YouTube – but one version of the bumper I completed came up with copyright infringement on Soundcloud. Time for me to go back and check fair use and copyright language.
When I started I thought I might go the #noir route. Searching for different music I ended up the Getty site. I even registered. Must have been the late night hour that I wasn’t thinking clearly. After finding some really killer tracks I wanted to explore and use I went to check out. Wasn’t thinking these were pay for files and filled out the license use forms. Was I surprised! If I would have completed the transaction my bill would have been $8900. HA!! Yep – not for me. Disappointed. But it did force me to re-think and find something and I am glad Steve Earle came to mind.
This version may disappear as well – but we will see. If so – I just can’t share officially my assignment, but the activity helped me in working on using Audacity again.
I did this assignment after a Sound Effects Story I called Winter Wreck, so was feeling more comfortable again with Audacity. SO GLAD I finally remembered to use the space bar for playing clips! One of the many useful time savers that can make you feel like a pro.
This clip only ended up consisting of two layers. The content of the song fit in well and I just needed to get ds106 radio into it somehow. I hate listening to my voice! Looking back at transcripts, a college professor identified my voice as didactic. Funny that person probably still does not realize how that was not helpful feedback. So – it was time to figure out how to alter my voice. I opened several tracks with the same recorded phrase and just started applying effects. Came up with some good sounding ones, but not necessarily right for this until I hit on one. The preview sound option is critical – but you can spend a long time changing things back and forth. I could have kept going and trying more -but it is the hazard of any of this creative work – when is it enough and when to accept and move on. I accepted and moved on.
Lessons learned (or re-learned!):
- Save often – my workstation froze up and lost about an hour’s worth of work. The lucky thing- Audacity recovered the file but better to be safe than sorry in the future.
- Before finalizing make a duplicate project. This helps in case it doesn’t export correctly, you forget to close a track you didn’t want – or missing selecting all the tracks you did want.
- Review copyright use and find the correct versions of things to use.
