Monthly Archives: October 2015

Since my essay is about the world and adventure video games impact for me, I’ve decided that mostly using game soundtracks would be best to convey that sense of adventure and excitement. For one scene, the scene with my father, I thought about using a track from the game he was playing–the very first game I saw and played myself. To convey the idea of a distant memory, I thought of having the music fade in halfway through the scene, and keep it at a very quiet level, maybe even with some kind of faraway or static filter over it. The 8-bit feel of the music also gives the sense of this being a memory from the past, and something digital and other wordly.

And then, since the main focus of the essay is on the specific games of the Pokemon series, I thought of using music from the games to help convey the feelings I feel when playing said games. I thought of the first track I would use to be the opening track of the game, which starts off with little instruments but then suddenly builds, to really give a feeling to diving into adventure and exploring this other world. In “Using Music: The Kitchen Sisters”, it’s emphasized to use music that may not necessarily have lyrics unless you’re making a specific point or using it for a pause in your speaking. The music should never be distracting or drown out the voice, but instead enhance what is being said. They also suggested to cut music up, loop it, have it pause, etc. I’d like to do this with my own music, having it stop at certain points to emphasize my words, or having certain parts on repeat that could help enhance whatever it is I’m saying. I’m not totally sure how I’m going to work in music yet, but after reading all of this, I’m excited to experiment!

In “Reading on Air”, Kern talks in detail about speaking in contrast to writing essay–the difference for example between saying news on the radio as oppose to reading it in a newspaper. What was stressed most was to sound conversational–that many people on radio or what not don’t even use scripts at all. He says, “You are not giving a lecture; in fact, as far as the listener is concerned, you’re not even reading a script. You’re just talking” (133). He suggests for one to speak as if they were holding a photo, to imagine talking to a family member or a close friend. That there’s an importance of establishing a sense of familiarity between the speaker and the listener.

When listening to both of the audio essays, I felt one succeeded in this more than the other. In “Ugly Pew”, I didn’t get the sense of conversation that Kern spoke of. He opened up with many adjectives and long sentences, and at times I felt like I was being read an essay than being spoken to. He says, “The soft hands of mothers and their babies and the chubby hands of those babies teething the wood of the pews,” (1:45). The sentence is is descriptive and uses too many adjectives, and while it paints a picture, I feel like I’m reading something rather than hearing someone simply speak to me.

This contrasts to me from “I’m White and Mennonite”, where the speaker felt like someone familiar, like she was just talking and not reading. She says, “Patrice beat boxed me into a corner, and we started making out. We made out in his bed, his roommates bed, my bed, the stairwell, empty shower stalls…” (8:35). She’s not overly descriptive, and she talks as if she’s just talking to her friend.

That’s what I feel like I need to work on in my essay: to be able to talk to someone as if they’re just a friend, as if I’m not reading from a script at all.

In Writing for Broadcast, Kern talks about the difference between essay in writing and essay in radio, and the differences the two have and the proper way to deliver something orally as oppose to delivering it through writing. He emphasizes to “write the way you speak”, saying that, “when you are on the air, you are communicating with one person at a time” (27). In The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto, when first reading it, it’s actually hard to read at all. It starts with, “about two years ago ellie and I decided we needed a new mattress          or maybe ellie decided it         because i didn’t pay much attention to the problem (113). The lack of capitalization, punctuation, and odd gaps in sentences makes it jarring for our mind to read. But when I read it out loud, it sounded natural, like the way someone would tell their friend a story. The gaps were pauses in speech, pauses of thought. Capitalization and the sort didn’t matter when it was said aloud. Antin’s piece is not meant to be read, but to be spoken, to be listened to.

And to capture that way of real life speech, Kern offers some rules and guidelines. He says again and again to keep things simple, from the adjectives you use to sentence structure. He says, “Keep Sentences short… The desire to pack information often results in sentences larded with clauses that separate the subject and the verb” (33). Basically, what he’s saying is that when someone is listening to something, they can only hear something once, unlike reading where you can go back and reread things if there was something you missed. You need to keep your sentences simple so listeners will be able to follow the flow of the story without any confusion. Antin certainly compliments this use of simplicity and short sentences, his story very choppy in writing. One such instance is, “she said no     so i said forget custom made         custom made is for people who are geniuses” (119). The sentences are choppy and not at all how you should ever write, but this is exactly how people speak when they are telling a story, and that’s what must be conveyed here.

One thing that stood out to me instantly when hearing the audio essays was the fact that there was music in the background. In “The Bitter Fruits of Wakefulness,” a piano piece played in the background to capture the somber mood of the essay. But what really made it effective was not only the use of music, but the absence of that music. At 42:00, the music stops. This is the moment when Lovell saw the mother and the father having sex. Listening to the music the entire time, it’s become noise, familiar. When it drops, you feel an uneasiness, and emptiness, and you can only hear the words Lovell says, and those words feel have more impact because of the silence they’re said on. This strategy is effective to show which moment left Lovell with such uneasiness and left such a mark on him.

Another tactic in an oral essay is the use of dialogue. In writing, how dialogue is said and the voice each character has is left entirely up to the imagination of the reader. With audio, every little tone can be heard in speech, hearing two different voices interact, hearing the casualness of how they speak. It feels like an actual conversation, and by hearing it, you believe it, you become a part of it. In “NRA vs. NEA”, at 10:25, Vowell shows us a conversation between herself and her father. With the sound of the car in the background, it feels as if you are right in the car with them as they speak with one another. The laughter in their voice, the pauses, everything that’s so natural that cannot be captured perfectly in just writing. Also in this essay, there are pauses between scenes, where only music plays. One such time is at 10:15. A pause cannot be done in writing in this way. A reader can read through a line break as fast as they’d like. But in audio, they are forced to only know what is told to them, and must wait when there are pauses. At this pause, only music plays, showing the transition of a scene and using the upbeat music to set the mood.

There are just some things that cannot be captured in writing. Music, the sound of canons, or feeling the timidness in someone’s voice–these are things that sometimes can only be perfectly portrayed through audio, letting the listener in through completely new senses.