Submitted by iamdan on Thursday, February 9, 2006 - 18:16

playlist

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[Edit: Wow. This is tougher than I thought. Following the 30 second rule really requires some decision making. I'm also wondering about the transitions between talking and music and thinking that it might be a good strategy to have some kind of ambient music layered beneath the whole thing. You might check out The Internet Archive to find some clips that can be used for longer than 30 seconds--these are live recordings, but I think for scholarship they can be worked with.]

I found making my playlist narrative to be quite enjoyable and a bit of a challenge. What struck me was the need to work with so many aspects of the songs. The lyrics, the sounds, the cultural connections. With this in mind, I started thinking about my playlist as its own composition and the ways my commentary might fit into such a composition. The next logical step seems to be to actually put together the pieces of the songs and give voice to the explanations that will help others make sense of them.

So, our next assignment will be to take our playlists and compose an 8-10 minute audio file that uses snippets of songs, lyrics spoken aloud, and your own commentary to either enact the narrative you have set up or to develop an analysis of a theme.

Begin by copying your playlist to a new blog posting. If you do not yet have the lyrics linked to the playlist, add links to them. Next add callouts to the playlist to indicate how you might use the items in your audio file. For instance, mine might look like

[Layer Apocalypse now clip and Jara sample over intro voice]

The story begins in these recent days. The characters referenced in our shared memories. The black center of The Heart of Darkness and the songs of folk found in Jara’s music trick us into thinking these our only our struggles. But the tale leans back, archetypal toward the symbolic scene [play snippet from One Tree Hill] [ Read three lines from the lyrics]

Also, think about which snippets of the songs you might include in the audio file. You may only include 30 seconds of sound, so identify what sections of the song will work best. You can read lyrics for other parts.

Spend the next week revising your playlist into a script that can be used for the creation of the audio file.

In order to work with the audio, you will need to download and install Audacity [Be sure to use the Stable Version]. I will do a demonstration of how to use the program in class, but you may also want to refer to this general tutorial or to this screencast about changing sample rates.

For our in-class experimentation, you may want access to an audio file.

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