‘Sound Matters Podcast’
I’m listening to the ‘Sound Matters’ podcast by Tim Hinman as an example of how to create an engaging audio paper. The presenter starts the podcast by playing a field recording that relates very closely to the theme of the episode, listening to nature. The recording contains him lying in a snow covered clearing, in a forrest somewhere in Sweden, he is talking to the recorder describing his surroundings. There are large pauses in his speech, I imagine to let the surrounding sound be heard, but he also takes this as an opportunity to talk in these gaps. The result of this is that the line between the field recording and the episode is blurred, he’s in two places at once, I find this very interesting and engaging. Another technique he has used is to put a very subtle melodic drone low in the mix, I think he has done this to help keep the edits smooth, so there isn’t silence between cuts. In the transition between the field recording and the next piece of audio (Animal calls) he monologues a bit, and brings the volume of the drone up underneath the vocals, and the synths become more textured and complex, this keeps the ear entertained so we aren’t just listening to him talk, its very effective. He then fades this melodic synth out as the next section begins, it works as a very effective transition almost telling the audience to listen to what comes next. Hinman introduces his guest through presenting his work first, he then has a kind of one way conversation with him. He has interviewed him and isolated his responses, Hinman then describes the guests life events and work whist inserting snippets of the interview to give more detail. As his guest (Bernie Krause) descries the origin and development of sound on earth, Hinman supports it with sound design recreating these sounds (or an interpretation at least). I appreciate the way he has blended the vocals with the sound design in the line “now wait for it… life on earth is just about to begi (booming sound)”. He cuts his own dialogue off with the sound design, this keeps the listener really engaged with the sound design, keeping them on their toes, its almost as though the sound design is leading and Hinman is talking ‘around’ it. At one point Krause makes a comment about the human range of hearing, rather than just ask the listener to understand the words being spoken, Hinman plays a note that goes from the lowest point of the frequency spectrum to the highest point. This makes it so much easier for the audience to understand the facts being said, you are way more likely to understand and retain information if you learn it through (or it is supported by) first hand experience. A rather strange technique I found is admitting fallibility, at one point the presenter struggles to say a word that Krause coined, ‘anthropophony’. This humanised the host and makes the audience feel as though they are learning along with the host, rather than being told facts.
The goal of an audio paper is to convey information, and gain understanding from the audience. I believe that a lot of these techniques will help me to do that, I think giving audio examples of the topic is the most effective way to do this. I also think it’s very important to integrate the dialogue and sound design seamlessly.
