2-18

By listening to my peers' audio essays, I really learned more about the power of sound. An entire story can be transformed by its soundtrack; this fact has compelled me to be more intentional with the way I use sound in my project.

As I revise my audio essay, I aim to smooth out my transitions by manipulating both sound and silence. For example, there are points in my essay where the switch between points feel broken due to an awkward duration of pauses. Additionally, I plan on adding sounds and adjusting volume appropriately so that there is greater understanding of the atmosphere that I describe in my story. When revising the content of my audio essay, I aim to cut down on "fluff" and other details in order to improve concision. I plan on also adding more insightful analogies within my writing to make the piece more meaningful as a whole. I hope to bring in insights on my culture along with the message that I send in my rough draft.

After listening to other people's audio essays, I have many ideas about how I should change mine. I think my essay could include more description to make it a full sensory experience for the listener. I also had trouble finding good audio clips, so I need to go back and replace some sounds with better ones that sound more like what I actually heard. I plan to make the transitions in my essay smoother, so it does not seem like I am just bouncing around to different ideas. 

Listening to other people's audio essays has given me a lot of ideas about elements to add or change about my own. I definitely want to go back and work on my transitions and shorten some of the clips that I used to make the piece flow better. I may also change one completely and replace one with my own description of the issue. I also want to explore my topic more deeply and add more detail to make it more impactful and illustrate my point more clearly. Overall, I want to make the listening experience more immersive and more impactful and engaging for the listener for the final draft. 

After listening to some of the other people's audio essays, I feel inspired to test out methods others have used to incorporate sound in their projects. Some people included audio clips of music to provide a break from narration, which I found to work well. There were projects that had even pacing and even distribution of sound effects, too.

One thing I plan to work on is to make use of pauses in narration and silence/light background sounds to maintain a steady and calmer flow to the project. I also want to find other audio clips to include and provide a contrast with the narration I currently have. I might adjust and add more sound effects in areas that seem more empty with narration only. In general, I noticed differences in sound quality of the narration in projects, so I want to go back and check that my voice recordings are clear and consistent, as well as that the background sounds are not overbearing in comparison to the narration. 

After listening to my peers' audio essays, I have decided that I want to change my topic. I realized that the reason why I was having such a difficult time producing good content and saying something meaningful was because I didn't actually care about what I was talking about. I picked headphones because I thought it would be a good idea to choose something related to sound, but in actuality, it was pretty difficult because I'm not a huge fan of music, so I felt no substantial connection to my topic.

After listening to my peers' audio essays, I have decided that three major components of my audio essay that I plan to revise include: improving the quality of audio clips that I got from other people, adding a couple more background sounds (zipping up backpacks, talking by the door, etc.), and adding background music to a couple of my essay passages. I am also going to rerecord a couple of my own audio clips to make those better quality as well. I like the way my essay currently flows, but also think it sounds slightly repetitive and there are some segments of it that can be deleted to make it shorter and quicker to the point. 

After listening to some of my peers audio essays, I gained greater insight on how I want to revise my own. I plan to be more intentional in moments of silence and maybe change the level of volume of some of the ambient noises to add more depth. I also plan to find more specific noises to be more punctual. I will also try to sharpen the quality of sound for my project as a whole. 

After listening to a variety of audio essays, I've learned a great deal about the effect of background noise/music. In preparing my own essay, I was a little nervous about layering background music and my own narration, for fear of confusion/difficulty in following the essay. However, after listening to others', I heard how effective background noise/music could be in setting the tone for the story. Underneath the narration and in pauses, it works well as transition, but also as continuity. On the other hand, I also learned that background noise can be distracting, even if it's a simple whir encountered while recording.

In revising my own piece, I want to provide more continuity with some element of background noise and create smoother transitions between thoughts/segments. I also want to trim down my rather lengthy essay, in order to be as succinct and effective as possible. I listened to quite a few shorter audio essays that were brilliant at delivering their point in under 4 minutes, and I think I need to take a step back from mine and fine-tune its message for optimal impact.

First and foremost, our classmate's audio essays turned out great! The five that I listened to all made effective use of the elements of their podcast, and listening to the essays was a great learning experience for me.

One of the main things I took away from my classmate's audio essay was utilizing silence. In my audio essay, the sounds play nonstop. Other than pausing briefly between paragraphs to catch my breath, I never paused while narrating. Some of the podcasts I viewed used silence as a tool. By inserting a section of silence, it gave listeners time to gather their thoughts and/or digest information that had just been presented. As I edit, I will make sure to insert pauses in the audio.

After listening to my classmates audio essays I'm realizing some ideas I'd like to incorporate into my own. I really enjoyed the way some people started out their essay with a quote or a speech of some sort and I think that would be a powerful way to start mine. Additionally, I really liked how some of the audio essays had a repeated phrase that showed how they changed their mindset throughout the piece. When revising my own audio essay I think I will try to add more personal anecdotes and have repeated phrasing that will show how my viewpoints change. Also, I think I will make more use of my pacing and perhaps speak slower during my essay.

After looking over the audio essays that my peers wrote, I have a lot of ideas on what I should incorporate in my audio essay project in order to make it better. One thing that I think I will change about my essay are the sounds presented within them. For instance, rather than extract all of my audio from online sources, I will try to make some audio of my own in order to promote authenticity. In addition, I will try to make the transitions between my voice and my sounds smoother in order to get the constant noise supply that I heard in some of the other essays. 

After listening to many other audio essays, I was inspired and motivated to really re-evaluate what I'd done. I really liked listening to everyone's stories. It is really interesting to hear how we all interpreted this project a bit differently. When re-doing my project I plan on trying to make mine a bit shorter. When making it initially, I thought everyone's project was going to be a bit long so I wanted to make sure that I explained mine properly as well. Turns out, that wasn't the case and I probably just talked a bit too much in some places as well as let my background audio clips run a bit too long. I think I just got into the songs too much. After hearing how concise and well put together everyone else's is, I will try and do a better job by editing and cutting out different pieces. 

My initial draft is somewhat poetic and lacks a storytelling element. Incorporating a personal anecdote that relates to the theme will enhance this project. This storyline will offer more opportunities to inject sound effects and background noise. Additionally, my draft does not fully capture the sentimentality of my selected object; evoking more pathos necessitates reworking my script to adeptly convey this momentousness. With regards to the technical aspects of the audio essay, I can capitalize on the potency of silence for emphasis and enhance the clarity of my narration. My ultimate goal is for my audience to not simply listen to my narrative but to be deeply touched by it. 

After listenin to my peer's audio essays, I realized that my audio essay could use a lot more work during revision. Specifically starting with the placement of the outside audio used in the essay. After observing how well other students used their audio/ted talks and how well they placed them, I realized that I could definitely place it at a better point in the audio essay. Also my audio essay ended up being alot shorter than I expected and after seeing the lengths of other audio essays, I realized that I should find ways to lengthen my audio essay 

After listening to other essays, I think I want to condense my essay down by removing the final quote and look to see if there are other areas where I could shorten my essay. For the final draft, I also think it would be helpful to rerecord my essay to improve the sound quality. In my original recording, I struggled to reduce the amount of noise due to the air conditioning in my dorm and other background sounds. I’ve also realized that I need to be more conscious about the volume of the background sound effects in my essay, particularly the music that continues throughout. I may reduce the volume of the music a little more and perhaps increase the volume towards the end for a greater sense of conclusion. 

After listening to other's podcasts, I've decided I will focus on improving my essays flow, from clips of my voice to sound clips. I will also add more relevant sound clips in more relevant places, and add a wider variety of sound clips. I also plan on shortening the length of my podcast.

After listening to several of my peers' audio essays today, I am blown away at how deep and personal theses projects are as well as inspired to make positive revisions to my own. All of the podcasts I listened to today were shorter than mine, and I've been able to identify several spots in my project that could be more concise. My introduction, for example, is almost two minutes long and definitely could be shorter. I have spots with just sound effects/music and no narration, which I think work well, but like the introduction, could be shorter. I also loved the variety of sounds other students used in their projects. Since mine is about a golf cart, I tended to use the same golf cart engine sound over and over again and need to search for new videos to add variety. Overall I'm pretty happy with my project so far and am excited to see where it goes after the revision process! 

It was really helpful to listen to my peers' audio essays because I thought of ways that I could improve my own. In general, I think that everyone that I listened to did a good job of incorporating the sound effects, which is something that I could do better on when I'm editing my own essay. I also want to work on my composition, which is something I noticed when I listened to my peers' work. The way that their essays were structured worked really well so I want to go back in and see if I could make anything else better about my own. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my project as a first draft.