Sound Recording

For this aspect of our collaborative campus history project, you need to create a historical fictional interview with your building, or a building related to your topic (however loosely—it doesn’t matter).

This assignment is a fun way to experiment with historical fiction in the service of providing actual historical perspectives, based on actual research, and the experience contributing to a new kind of digital archive of UNM.

Remember we’re modeling this on the Everything is Alive podcast. So you can think of your assignment here as a very short version of one of their episodes.

What to talk about

• Highlight some fun facts and history from documents and iamges in the archive. Even if you have images of those materials in your essay, describing them and their significance makes for good interview material.
• Makes some general observations about campus history and how the campus has changed
• Use campus photos to describe hanges around your building, changes inside your building
• Your building should say something provocative about the history of UNM, not just give facutal information. Be creative!

Prepare your script

• It’s easiest to write out a small script/dialog of your questions and answers before you record anything so you can conceptualize how everything is going to fit together.
• Come up with 3-4 questions. They should be thoughtful and descriptive that provide some context and motivation. (i.e. they should have some substance to them!)

Record/download your interview components

• Record your questions on your phone, computer, or with the computers in the lab. The lab microphones will have noticably better sound quality and you can record and adjust on the fly. If you use your phone, you have to transfer files to a computer for editing.
• Use a free text-to-speech tool to read your script and create the voice of your building. Some of these you have to create a free account; others you can use right away. The idea is that you type in some text, choose a voice, and download the sound file.
  • TTSMP3: No use limits, but limited voices and tons of ads to ignore. This is a great tool to test and refine your script.
  • Hume
  • Luvvoice

Put everything together

• Feel free to use whatever editing software you want, like Garageband, if that’s easier for you.
• Watch a short intro to Audacity. This is a really good overview, even if it covers more than we need to do.
• You can either download audacity for yourself, or use the computers in the lab
• Once you’ve created all your sound clips, upload them into Audacity to combine them
  • You can drag and drop files onto the app or use the File menu to import files
  • Cut out what you don’t need from the clips
  • Arrange them so they make sense
• Export your file (the defauly mp3 is fine); make sure you’re exporting a sound file, not an Audacity project file (.aup)
• Upload the sound file to your campus history folder in GitHub
• Copy and paste the audio code snippet from the Essay Components page (with all the snippets) to your own essay
• Change the filename to match your downloaded file

Easy Extra Credit (pick one or more)

• Record some ambient sounds in your building—doors closing, people walking—and splice them into your interview. 2 or 3 clips is fine. Even just a few sound bites adds a new layer of interest. To record these, you probably already have a basic sound recording app that came with your phone. Two free recommendations:
  • Android: Voice Recorder
  • iPhone: Voice Record Pro
• Incorporate free intro or background music into your interview from a site like Pixabay. See the above video for the exact procedure.