Digital Tent Mix

This took longer than I expected, given that I’ve been dabbling in Audacity projects for over 15 years. The Envelope tool was less familiar since I’d only used it a few times. I kept finding new ways to mess up my music fades, undoing them, and trying again. At one point it was so irredeemable that I deleted the track and imported it again. I think it works now, but I still don’t really like music underlying speech – even at the low volume I used. I also split the stereo tracks and faded speech on the right to -7db and same for music on the left. That gives a bit of a stereo effect.

I also recorded my piece with two different microphones (just because Jim can’t help himself if there’s an opportunity to complicate things.) The Headset mic picked up more spikes than the webcam, being closer to my mouth, so I compressed then amplified that segment to bring up the volume on the words.

I recorded myself reading from the Facilitator Guide of a University of Alberta digital storytelling course in their Digital NWT program licensed CC-BY-NC 4.0. Music is The Way of Freedom by Siddhartha Corsus from the Free Music Archive. I used Screencast-O-Matic to generate and then edit and export the transcript. It was exported as plain text and further edited in Word. I recorded the credits as an afterthought and had to type them in by hand. I could have exported the transcript in different formats with time codes. However, SOM splits up transcript segments inconsistently, with some being long and some only one word. I thought the transcript would be more readable as sentences.

I’m curious what people think.
1. Do you prefer the warmer webcam mic or the crisper headset mic?
2. How does my stereo mix sound. Should the balance between music and speech be different? Different how?
3. Should my transcript have timecodes? Why or why not?

Transcript
This is being recorded on my Logitech webcam C920. 
Building a canvas tent
Consider all the things needed for building a tent
1 a good location to be comfortable and have good space to build

2 poles for a solid structure

3 canvas securely pulled over the poles. 

4 rope tying everything together

5 spruce boughs the foundation for the tent. 

Wood stove, the center of the home giving warmth, encouraging sharing, giving thanks and acknowledgement. 

This is being recorded on my Logitech USB headset.

Elements of a digital story.

Digital stories can be framed in a similar manner.
Each element of the digital story can be compared to a step in the process of building a canvas tent.

1 a positive space to help feel supported and be creative.

[forgot to say “2”] Narration, Words are the structure of the story like the poles of the tent.

3 visuals, like the canvas of the tent these are the pieces that you see.

4 editing, This brings the elements together like the rope of the tent.

5 music provides a grounding to the story similar to the spruce boughs.

6 credits sharing an appreciation similar to being gathered around the wood stove.

This except is read from the Digital NWT Course 3 Storytelling Facilitators Guide
And the underlying Music is The Way of Freedom by Siddhartha Corsus from the Free Music Archive