In today’s media-saturated environment, listening can be a lost art. This exercise will familiarize you with some basic digital audio editing, but also require you to step outside your routine to pay attention to the world around you.
- Find a place, ideally outdoors, where you can stand or sit away from screens and other distractions.
- Using your phone’s voice recorder (Voice Memos on iPhone, Recorder on most Android phones) or another audio capture device, record 5 minutes of ambient sound. You must not check your phone, talk to others, or do anything but listen during this uninterrupted period. (Five minutes may not seem like a long time, but if you’re used to multitasking it can seem like an eternity!)
- Transfer the recording from your phone to your computer. From an iPhone, the easiest way is Share > AirDrop; from Android, share it to Google Drive or email it to yourself.
- Use free audio converter like FreeConvert.com to convert your file (eg, an .m4a) to an .mp3 format and export it to your hard drive.
- Using a free tool like Audacity or ocenaudio, open your .mp3 file and choose approximately 10 seconds of audio for an audio loop. Use the techniques shown in class to blend the beginning and end to create an audio loop. Your goal is to choose start and end points so the listener will find it hard to tell where the loop begins and ends. You may also want to adjust the amplitude or otherwise edit the waveform, but try to stay faithful to the original sound. (See the FAQ for a video tutorial.)
- Copy-paste three or more of these loops end-to-end until you have a track that is 30-90 seconds in total.
- Export this as a .wav or .mp3 file.
- Start a WordPress post entitled something like Task 10: Mary Gonzalez. Upload your loop by clicking Add Media and explain anything you heard that you may not have noticed before. Be sure to add the Task 10 category.
- Add a photo of your recording location, hidden behind a clickable heading as explained below.
Suggestions
- If your recording from Monday’s in-class listening walk was five uninterrupted minutes, you may use it.
- Don’t choose your room in a dorm or frat. (A boiler room in the basement might be suitable though.)
- If you have earbuds (good) or headphones (better), listen to your recording live while wearing them. You will be surprised at how much it helps you focus on the sound.
- Consider editing the volume at the beginning and ending of your sound file so that there is a gentle onset and conclusion.
- Feel free to apply your audio editor’s equalizer and other editing techniques to enhance or suppress certain parts of the sound. When you do, try not to alter the original so much as to bring out aspects of the sound that might otherwise be hidden.
Add a hidden photo to your post
- Select the
Codetab. - Paste the following code at bottom.
- Back in the Visual tab, select the word IMAGE.
- Choose Add Media and place your photo there.
<details> <summary>Click for recording location</summary> IMAGE </details>
⚠️ The photo will still be visible in edit mode, but once you Preview or Publish your post it should disappear until the heading is clicked.
FAQ
What’s the grading rubric?
| You recorded five minutes of ambient sound and posted a 30–90 second track | 0–10 |
| You edited your recording into a seamless loop | 0–10 |
| You described the place and what you heard that you hadn’t noticed before | 0–10 |
| You added a photo of your recording location, hidden behind a clickable heading | 0–10 |
| Something in your recording or description is thoughtful or imaginative | 0–10 |
Your grade is the total of all points times 2, for a possible maximum of 100%.
Each week that this task is late subtracts 10 points from this total grade.
How do I make an audio loop?
This series of tutorials shows you how to make a seamless audio loop from a track or loop a selection using the free Audacity editor.
Can I see a model answer?
As one example for reference, here’s a sample A+ assignment. Your submission may look quite different and still get a good grade if you follow the rubric.