Soundseeing Tour
Assignment
A soundseeing tour uses audio and theatre of the mind (a technique popular in 1930's - 50's radio dramas) to paint a picture in the listener's head. They incorporate narra!on and ambient sounds, where appropriate, to illustrate the sites as the author is experiencing them.
Visit a loca!on of your choice and create an audio tour of the loca!on, perhaps a short hike, a trip to your local market or a gallery in museum. To recieve full credit for this achievement, the submission should include the following:
- An introducion
- The tour should be narrated
- The tour must be at least 2 minutes long.
Learning/Experience¶
It was fun collecting sounds for this project. Normally I'm just a passive person in many public areas, but collecting sounds made me feel more active. The collection of sounds was very organic. I did not try to push any boundaries and kept it simple. Just exploring what a sound seeing tour might be, and maybe later push further and experiment more.
Within Audition, I learned a new effect that heals sound. Very useful for eliminating background noise, mouth noise, or breathing. I also explored manipulating the spectral map to attempt to fix wind noise, this did not work. Some sort of microphone wind blocker is needed.
When producing this media, I first edited the sound scene. Then, while listening to the recording, I recorded the narration in one take.
Tools¶
- iPhone 12 mini
- Adobe Audition
Successes¶
I transitioned through seven audio clips, each independently captured over two days. Most days were breezy. Surprisingly the majority of the audio was not affected. Adobe Audition did most of the heavy lifting in the transitional fades, but I think they sound cohesive. As if they are one clip.
I kept the narration simple and recorded it in one live take. I planned for simple narration and was thinking of letting the ambient sounds take over. It might be effective, it might not, but it was my first sound-seeing experiment.
Struggles¶
My narration lacks pazzazz. That's okay though and gives me a place to build from in the future. I could see where creating creative copy might bolster the sound seeing tour.
Attributions¶
- none