Exploring Audio

Our next exciting assignment (since we have wrapped up photography) was to explore audio a little bit using a program called Audacity and a site called SoundCloud. This is a completely new area for me, and I was pretty excited to play with audio editing. First, we were required to conduct an interview with a fellow classmate that was in the area of five minutes. We were then to post this raw interview with no editing to our blog. In the next blog, we are to post a shorter, edited version of the file.

My interview partner was Keavy Ferrall, who just happened to like music….a lot! She graciously answered my questions about her hobby of music and was very laid back. We used a digital recorder, went to a quiet room and conducted our interviews. I have to say it was very different to interview someone with a digital recorder. The technology was an added step in the process of interviewing, and it was difficult to “forget” it was there and really relax. It was hard not to fidget or talk more too. It was great in the aspect of catching everything the person said, so nothing was left out. The audio recorder’s presence also made me feel like I needed to annunciate more and speak clearly so my voice could be understood. Overall, I really thought having the recorder there was interesting and helpful in several ways.

As far as being the one interviewed, I really did not mind. I really had to remind myself to speak clearly and concisely to make the recording good quality, but it did not make me uncomfortable. I only hoped my partner was relaxed and that the recorder did not make her nervous, which it did not seem to.

From this experience, I have learned that audio recording an interview is not always easy. One really must find a quiet place with little ambient noise  and really make the interviewee feel comfortable around the device. These two tasks are not always easy, as I found out. I really enjoyed playing with the device, challenging myself with audio and learning about audio in general. It’s not something I have been exposed to much, so that was really neat. My least enjoyable part of this experience was having to hear my own voice on the recorder and knowing it will be posted for all to listen to. I don’t particularly like my voice on recording (who really does?), but I think it will be interesting to see what Keavy does with the interview.

One thing I wish I would have done differently in my interview with Keavy was that I wish I would have asked better questions. Although I prepared with at least five different questions, I still feel like my questions did not really help move her story along. I am happy to  have this experience and look forward to working on that in the future. Now, let’s get down to editing! Look for the edited interview/profile story in my next blog. Below is my raw file.