Working with Sound

Getting Started

We're going to hit the ground running by doing a quick exercise before you are presented with more of the deeper workshop content. For this exercise and exercise four, you are going to need to record yourself reading a text, the idea being that it is something you can record yourself saying more than once. I recommend a poem, a paragraph from a novel, part of a speech, song lyrics, whatever you want. For example, I chose Wallace Stevens' poem “The Snowman” when designing the exercise and it took me about forty seconds to read out loud.

Exercise One:

To conduct this exercise you need to download and install Audacity.

Download Audacity

Now you are going to do a quick recording of you reading the text you have chosen. The following video will take you through the recording process. In the Recording Channel dropdown menu, choose mono unless you know you are using a stereo mic (read more). If, when setting up Audacity, you have plugged in a mic that does not appear, restart the application. Mics that are plugged in after the app is launched won’t show in the dropdown menu. 

MS Windows note: Audacity suggest the following for setting up the inputs and outputs: Where on a Mac it says, "Core Audio," select "MME." If using a built-in mic, select "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input" and "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output" for the mic input and playback output (read more).
 
For now, put your recording aside. We’ll get back to that later. Let’s think more about sound...

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