Draft Audio Story

The audio assignment has been the most stressful for me so far. In the end, I had imagined it to be more of a problem for me than it actually was and placed myself under an unnecessary time crunch.

The main area I was avoiding is that my voice has never recorded well, sounding much softer than it does in person. I have to consciously lower my pitch in order to sound clear. However, that clarity is mitigated because I have a difficult time not running words together when talking on a script. I also have a difficult time pronouncing words that I can normally say without a problem. (On my recording it is noticeable that I have a hard time with “visualization”.)

The best solution would have been to record someone else reading my script, but I mistakenly avoided the assignment until that was not an option.

My original idea was to do an interview story in which I presented the imaginary company Mindfully Practical as a new enterprise. I had a difficult time scripting the interview, so at the last minute I changed it to be an interview of someone from the company’s target market, to be used in a presentation to show investors that there is a demand for Mindfully Practical. A friend of mine played the role of a local business owner and I was the interviewer. I love my friend, but with both of our speaking difficulties this did not sound much like a real interview. My final decision was to do a single-person podcast that Mindfully Practical would share with their clients/customers. This meant that I had to record myself.

I chose a format that I have heard on other podcasts and You-Tube channels in which a list is presented. My idea was that this would provide a natural way to incorporate background music as I transition between each numbered item. It has a beginning introduction, middle technique list, and very quick ending comment as I was running out of time.

I used the Smart Recorder app on my cell phone to record a continuous piece of me reciting the entire podcast script. I then used the Razor tool to cut out some unnatural pauses and filler words. Sometimes the recording sounds as though I cut the segment too early but it is actually the odd way in which I ended the sentence (such as when I say “chin up”).

For the background music, I found free music licensed under a creative commons license on the website freemusicarchive.org. I chose to use “There Is Always A Reason” by artist Borrtex.

On a second track in my multi-track file, I used the razor tool to cut a piece of music which I made louder for an introduction and transition piece between the numbers. I used a fade in and out on these segments. Then I added a third track in which I placed the remaining segments of the music to start and end with my talking. I reduced the volume to negative 22 so that it would not drown out my voice.

Lastly, I was happy to discover that I could select the recording type as “Dialogue” on the clips of my talking and then select Enhance Voice: Female. This greatly improved the problem of my voice recording too softly and made the recording much clearer.

Overall, I think that my draft turned out pretty good considering how nervous I was for it.