Audio Production Journey
Every interest together with every skill learned is rooted in an epic tale. This is mine.
What we hear could be interpreted differently.
We can change our mood according to the music that we listen to. What we hear is how our minds interpret sound waves and we automatically are always looking for rhythmic patterns. It comes as no surprise that we hear things that we want to hear and block out the rest of the noise. We didn't make a conscious decision on what is noice and what isn't.
With that in the back of our minds, including audio in storytelling becomes a little more technical. We want to manipulate as well as compartmentalize everything in every aspect of an audio clip so that the story is absorbed as it was intended. Whether in movies or podcasts, it is a good idea to control every aspect of sound not to muddy the story delivery.
As a method of repurposing audio material that I gathered from interviews, I learned a bit about sound engineering. It took me a good part of three months to understand my analogue audio mixer, but the sound quality from recordings was amazing. Not yet at a level where I can call myself a sound engineer or nearly able to run a recording studio, I gained control of my audio input in recordings.
" Not so sure about podcasts yet"
Probably because I only listen to selected podcasts, mostly motivational speeches, I don't see much advancement in my podcasts in the South African market. I do, however, see another use that suits me better. As a writer primarily, adding audio interviews to blogs adds a personal touch of authenticity. Using a platform like Podbean only index my audio work better and since it's on another platform which I can imbed anywhere, it might catch on amongst my audience over time.
Watching endless YouTube videos, it became clear that what we hear in content creation is almost more important than visuals. I think our minds are always looking for clues that something might not be as it seems.
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As soon as what we see don't correspond with what we hear, we instantly become suspicious. That becomes detrimental to telling a believable story.
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Knowing this, I invested in a few pieces of audio equipment. I already mentioned my 4-channel Dixon sound mixer, but I started off with lavalier microphones which quickly progressed to condenser and dynamic microphones. They were cheapies, but learning how to clear up audio in audacity made a world of difference.
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I actually only recently started to use more functions in Audacity as I used it previously only to clean up and improve recordings. I was actually surprised when Nate, the owner of Opening Act ZA and aspiring sound engineer was impressed with my music festival sound recording.
I would like to delve into the crevices of sound engineering sometime in the future, but Nate's reaction indicated that I might be okay with what I want to achieve now. The payoff for knowing more could be replaced with a dedicated sound engineer when projects warrant more professionalism. That doesn't mean that I won't find it interesting though.