Daily Create: From DS106 Bumper to Solid Gold
This post is a response to the #dailycreate assignment, posted here. Here’s the assignment:
Create a bumper. A bumper is “a term used in the radio broadcasting industry to refer to short clips of signature or theme music used to buffer transitions between programming elements. Bumper music is commonly employed when a syndicated program takes a break for local station identification or ‘goes to a radio commercial.’”
I had given myself about 50 minutes for today’s create, and I could tell it was going to take a little more time. Here are the things I used:
- Free Music Archive which was found using the media links at 50+WaysToTellAStory (Thanks @cogdog). This is where I found the media.
- For audio processing I used the resources at ds106 handbook, that reminded me of Audacity (which I had used about 3 years ago). I had to download Audacity, and try to remember how to use it!
- For posting the audio online, I had my first soundcloud post, and also added it to a group.
- Finally, I had to figure out how to embed it into WordPress, which I managed. (But I just found this post,
so maybe it’s easier than I thought…hmmmm). It is easier. Wow.
Spending a little more time on the daily create was worth it for me today. Yesterday, I had limited experience with audio. Today, I know how to find media, record, layer tracks, fade in/out, distort, export to mp3, post online, and embed. While it took me a little while today to stumble through the process, it really did give me confidence at the same time. I can do this. The little prompt, to create a bumper (which I had never heard of, by the way) was what I needed to get back my audio groove.
So what does this all mean, and why is my dabbling in audio useful?
- I learned how to play the guitar this year and some ukelele.
- I believe the storymaps that I have been playing with at work now support audio.
- Other audio adventures on the horizon? DS106 radio?
Thanks #ds106. Today I found some audio skilz in my box o’ gold.
Content in my audio from Apache Tomcat‘s song “Rockin’ in the Jungle” cc Attribution Sharealike
It has been great to see how much gusto you have put into your open DS106 adventure. I found the same excitement last year when I did the Headless13 run and I am still here. Yes, you an do it and I found a great group of people who really want to help us all learn. We help each other as best we can. Sometimes, just by reading a blog post and saying: Somebody is reading and empathising with the toughness and the awesomeness that is this experience. And yes, it always takes longer than we we think! If you are on G+ do join the community there – it is sometimes a little easier than TW to ask for help and there are many communities: Gimp, Photoshop….I don’t know if there is one for Audacity. I will check.
DS106 Radio and Audio were are real discovery for me – I never imagined I would even enjoy it, let alone now doing a long term show and having done several stand alone ones. I found I love it. I even created I tumblr for all my audio: http://colinpods.tumblr.com Who would have thought it? Enjoy discovering.
Thanks for the comment, Mariana. I am happy to hear that you had a similar experience last year. Also, I an can resonate with what you are saying about it taking longer than you think (for most of my Daily Creates so far I had put aside about an hour and they have taken about 3 times that!). Thanks for the suggestion about the G+ community also…in the past I usually have turned to Twitter, but perhaps jumping in and posting questions on G+ will be yet another learning opportunity for me 🙂 (And that’s a great point about technology specific learning communities on G+).
I agree, that audio discovery was a surprise to me as well, and that is wonderful that you are doing a radio show! I will check out your audio on the tumblr. Hey, did you end up using the bumper on the show? Do all the shows get archived somewhere? I am still new to the ds106 radio but open to learning more!
Alex