Table 2: Audio Manipulation

Disclaimer: Any product posted herein is solely practice and NOT intended as a finished product.

Number One on the checklist was "Turn on laptop microphone and record using laptop microphone." I was a little confused. I'm guessing laptop microphone means the built in microphone (that picks up a voice, but also all the background noise. See my podcast in Thing 21, where you can hear a doggie having a bad dream in the background...hehe), but what application were we supposed to use to record? Hmmm..skipped this one.

I moved on to Audacity. I eavesdropped on the people around me and heard at least four people mention that for them, Audacity didn't seem user friendly. I've used it and been okay with it, but then I haven't done really advanced projects with it yet. I recorded myself reciting a part of Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and played it back. Yes, I'm finally getting used to hearing my own voice and I guess it's not so so bad. :-P

Then I checked out Incompetech (www.incompetech.com). This was new to me, but yea, I really like it. It's a music download site, but what I thought was great is that you can choose music by "feel" (mood), such as "ominous," "lighthearted," or "triumphant." Wouldn't it be fun to have students choose background music for parts of their favorite books? And at the same time, they are learning about mood and being exposesd to mood words. It's awesome! Dowloading is easy, too, except the day I did this, I kept getting a "page not displayed" error, but it magically solved itself. Probably just a temporary network or server glitch. I imported a piece of music into Audacity and edited it so that I had just the section of it I wanted and it was the length I needed.