Wanted: Ideas for beginner's audio projects

October 24, 2008 7:59 AM

Teaching audio recording & editing to beginners at Uni (for this certificate). Looking for ideas for mock projects to get them going in the practical session.

I've got to demonstrate Adobe Audition, Audacity & GarageBand, and have to have students get their feet wet using them (all in the space of one three-hour slice). I've got a lab with Macs and PC's with above software, a bunch of head- and microphones ... What I'm really lacking is creative ideas for mock projects that will get them going playing around. A radio show about [...]? A jingle for [...]? A podcast about [...]? (Yes I am going to use the Metafilter podcast as an example, too :-) ... Anyway, help me to inspire 19-25 yr old UK students to get going on loop-based composition and recording voice & stuff. Many thanks for your help!

posted by yoHighness to education (12 comments total)

If all you have is three hours, you might want to focus on one piece of software. Also, with limited time, it would be smart to have some pre-made audio (like voice-overs, background music and sound effects) available for them to get started.

They should know how to get fresh audio into the software, so have them record someone talking or a guitar or drummer. Show them how to take that audio, cut it up within the software and use it as a loop.
posted by bryanzera at 8:16 AM on October 24, 2008

I second prerecording small audio projects: interviews with people on the street (have them make a 30-second vox pop or edit for clarity), three minute speech excerpts (make one 30-second vox and then one 50-second package), A real challenge is then a four minute conversation between two actors trying to explain how to get to an office, have them edit to the precise directions and then reveal the directions and see if people got it right.
posted by parmanparman at 8:23 AM on October 24, 2008

Recording a phone voice mail prompting message for a company. You know, "Thank you for calling _______. ....".

Get a singer and record a simple two- or three-part song with him or her singing all the parts. Or you could do a simple round/canon and just use the one voice part (with click for precise timing) and layer it.

A short playlet with different locations - have them get background sounds to establish the locations (a cafe, bookstore, park, next to a body of water). If you have them record the background sounds, this might also encourage them to be better listeners. There's a whole genre of 10-minute plays out there, but probably you/they could write/find one.

Voiceover demos. This could be hugely fun. Here are some examples
posted by amtho at 9:24 AM on October 24, 2008

If they are going to be doing in all in the three hours you are not going to be getting more than a few of minutes audio unless it's only roughly edited. I found it useful to get less material, rather than more, and concentrate on editing it well.

One exercise I used to use was cut-ups: talking a short section of recorded speech and then rearranging it to get the person to say something other than what they originally said. Its humorous so its easy to inspire people with a quick prepared sample, and its quite short while requiring a decent amount and level of editing, once the basic editing is done, you can get students to layer it over music etc.

3 hours is not a long time but in longer workshops what I like to do is come out with the outline of a short magazine style radio program on a specific topic. Then I split students up into groups and get each group to focus on one element -- so one group does an interview, one a piece to mic, another stings/titles etc.

Interviews are another good subject, I have a leson plan for a two hour session on this, mefi mail me if you want a copy.
posted by tallus at 9:40 AM on October 24, 2008

Seconding voiceover demos, particularly having them make up a pitch for a product (real or fake) and then recording it. Another thing I've done, if you had more time, is to do a Story Corps or This I Believe type audio essay - something that they will carry with them beyond the classroom.
posted by mrmojoflying at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2008

The Pro Tools class I was in a year or so ago did radio spots-- which turned out to be a good test of who can follow directions and keep their recordings short and to the point. (The guy with six minutes of overleveled obscene music about some young woman's vagina didn't get an A, obviously.)
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 9:45 AM on October 24, 2008

The most success I had with a bunch of high-schoolers while teaching them Audition was this - get them to bring a bunch of mp3s of their favorite music, and then turn one of those tracks into an instrumental bed. Take out all the vocal sections, loop an instrumental section, throw in the instrumental bridge, and finish it out.

It teaches them simple editing, and that will teach them the best parts of the audition interface, as well as which parts are useless. They had a blast, no kidding.
posted by god hates math at 9:54 AM on October 24, 2008

I ran the production booth for the radio station in college, and some of the most challenging work was to get small things to sound right. Bleeping out songs was tough, but a good learning experience. I once had to take a song that somebody wanted for an overlay and figure out how to rearrange the notes from an instrumental section to keep the really distracting vocals from wrecking the promo, and keep it sounding relatively smooth. It's a bit like the audio cutups that tallus mentioned, which would be a good way to give them an ear for making things sound right.

We also had some fourth-graders come by the station one time, and three of them went on the air and one of them came into the production studio with me and recorded a few station IDs, all of which were under ten seconds. She got the hang of making good editing decisions pretty quickly, learned how to snip off plosives, and got comfortable with multi-tracking.

I think at first she felt like she got the short end of the stick by only being on air for the last 5 minutes of the show, but by the end she was glad - she had a ton of fun and got to hear her voice on the radio for at least a couple years afterwards.

It sounds like editing for appropriate media is a big part of the certificate, so if you can have some prerecorded samples that sound lousy over headphones but good on monitors and vice versa, maybe they could work on getting them to sound good on alternate equipment.
posted by averyoldworld at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2008

Thrilling to find so many inspiring and totally relevant answers (selecting "best answer" is gonna be really tough) - thank you, knowledgeable fellow Metafiltarians!
posted by yoHighness at 6:05 AM on October 25, 2008

One of the well-known demos of audio editing systems is to take a politician's speech and cut it up to mean the opposite of its original- IIRC Nixon speeches are good for this. Could be fun.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 9:48 AM on October 25, 2008

One of the first projects I did when learning Protools was to take a song, and cut up and rearrange it into a different song.

Good to teach them how to pull loops out of audio, crop it and rearrange. Or try an dget hold of some stems from popular songs. The audio college I attended had tracks from The Killers and Sting and NIN. It was very easy then to isolate loops and repurpose the audio to new songs.

Off the top of my head you should be able to download NIN stems pretty easily, and radiohead has the stems for Reckoner up for sale on itunes. Also, there's a mogwai album (whose name I can't remember, but the album cover is all silver) that has the stems and a trial version of cubase saved on it too. Also, Davdi Byrnes "in the bush of ghosts" or whatever its called, is available on ther net. Pretty easy to find if you google it.
posted by robotot at 2:17 PM on October 26, 2008

I really liked everyone's advice, so I'm collecting it in one place here:

Voiceover Demo
Make up a short voiceover from one of these categories:
Television / Radio Commercial
Business / Corporate Video
Podcasts
Documentaries / Narration
Cartoon
Audiobooks / Book on Tape
Jingles
Telephone System Recordings
Educational videos and e-learning
Movie / Video Game

Vox Populi
-Make 5 short interviews with people on a specific question
-From each interview, make a 30 second vox pop or edit for clarity
-Frame the interviews in a short magazine style program item


Playlet – Ten Minute Radio Play
Cast as many characters as you like, because the actors can play more than one part.
Take the listener anywhere in the world with appropriate sound effects.
Set your play against any kind of background in any kind of weather, in daylight or darkness.
How many scenes?
How long are the scenes?
How many changes of scene?
How many players per scene?
How many players in total?
What kind of dialogue?
What sound effects?

Other Project Ideas
-Phone voice mail prompting message for a company. "Thank you for calling _____”
-Short magazine style radio program on a specific topic
-Edit a politician’s speech to make it the appear they’re saying strange things
-Censor a piece by “bleeping” out offensive words

-About the Speeches: See youtube – NightFlight – „A little Irony“ … in general speeches by presidents/prime ministers are good because there are a lot of recordings
-About Censoring: Any hip hop will do. Extreme case: Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” (extended Video clip version with 2 minute intro consisting of only swearing)
-Also great: Google „StoryCorps“ and „This I believe“ ... Make story recordings / essay recordings like that
-Intro to your dream show: Theme tune, then musical bed + voice listing all your musical guests, tracks, …
-Make a “news of the world” style featurette for a specific year a la Bob Brigg’s 52CC (on Resonance FM): Pick a year from the past, look up on Wikipedia, then pick 5-6 items from different sectors, politics, news, science, culture etc. and read them out as if actual newsreaders. Apply filters to sound like an old radio. Finish off with a musical piece from the year you choose.

The class went well, repeatedly! I am indebted to all who answered for your help.
posted by yoHighness at 9:49 PM on November 28, 2008