For my audio postcard, I decided to walk down Hills Beach Road, which is right near UNE, and it’s a road my roommate and I always walk down after our classes to get fresh air. I used a sound in the called Walking Outside, to add to the sounds of my footsteps. I found this on free sound.org.
Month: February 2025
For my family podcast interview I decided to interview my cousin Lauren. She is a sophomore in college and is majoring in Early Childhood Education. We were super close growing up and have a lot of childhood memories that you will hear about in the interview, like our trips to the beach, when I would go visit her in Pennsylvania or when she would come to Vermont to visit me. We are only a year apart, so we’ve always gotten along and we’ve always been super close. The reason I decided to interview her is pretty much because of the reasons I listed above. We have a lot of memories together and have always been super close, which is what I felt like made this interview more meaningful because of our close relationship. At family events we always were together. We were always told we looked alike and looked more like sisters than cousins, so I think that also influenced our relationship because of how close we were. We pretty much share the same memories besides when we were separated. Although she lives in Pennsylvania and goes to school there, we still talk all time, and she still comes to Vermont to visit me, which is how I was able to do this interview. I asked her questions about growing up like who has had one of the biggest impacts on her life, things like that. Interviewing her was nice because we were both able to reflect on our childhood which is what my intention was, and I was able to get to know more about her childhood from what I missed because we live 7 hours away from each other. This was meaningful to me and a good way for me to remember good memories I had with my cousin and being able to enjoy hanging out with her.
Using Guzi’s essay (perhaps Part I for the most part), how would you present your own definition of a soundscape. Try to distinguish it from a sound. Distinguish it from a landscape.
From using Guzi’s essay, I would describe a soundscape as a collection of sounds from your surrounding environment. It’s an interaction of sounds in a specific environment. A good way that she put was thinking of sounds in your home, which helped me get a better understanding of what I think a soundscape is. That made me think of being home and sounds I hear at home that are recognizable to me, and then I started to think of other places I hear noises that could be used as an example when I’m trying to describe a soundscape to someone.
What’s a soundmark? Again, let’s use the term “landmark” as a kind of visual equivalent. Share a soundmark that is important to you, ideally one that would be recognizable to anyone with whom you have shared a soundscape. How might you capture that soundmark?
When I think of a soundmark compared to a landmark, I think of a sound that goes with a particular place because a landmark is a recognizable spot to someone, and they’re able to identify it when they see it. A soundmark that I can think of off the top of my head that’s important would be the lake for me in the summer. I live right near Lake Champlain in Vermont, so I go there all the time with friends. Hearing the water getting splashed around and everyone having fun, this is a soundmark I could tell my friends about and they would understand what I’m talking about. I would do close- up recordings at the lake when I’m there with friends.
For my audio playground podcast I decided to give a tour of my dorm room to my grandma back home. I was taking a “video” for her and explaining to her what you would see as you walked into my dorm room. Our requirements for this podcast were to give a tour of somewhere we are familiar with to someone we know. It could’ve been a tour of your college town, your hometown, anything you were familiar with, and it wasn’t supposed to be more than a minute long. So for my podcast, I chose my dorm room. There wasn’t much noise in my room at the time, so I decided to add some background noise of a fan blowing because we have our fans blowing in our room all the time. The background noise is Fan Wav by dyl0694 on freesound.org. I chose to give this tour to my grandma because she isn’t able to come here often and come all the way up to my room since I live on the fourth floor. She’s always been very supportive of my choices in life from sports, to school, and all my relationships I have with others, and I know she’d be so happy to see my room, so instead I decided I would give her a tour as much as I could in my podcast. This directly reflects the prompt because I gave a tour of a place I was familiar with to someone who isn’t familiar with the area I gave them a tour of, and I kept it under a minute. There were details from my room I left out because I couldn’t give details of everything, so I decided to focus on the main parts of the room that stand out like our decorations, our mini fridge and ice machine, and our colorful lights we have hanging up on the wall.
For my first interview I interviewed a classmate of mine, Levens. I asked him questions to get to know him better since it was our first class. The story of my interview was to get to know him better, so I focused on what he said was a childhood memory that stuck out to him. He began introducing himself by saying his name and talking about his major, which was a good way for me to get to know him and why he registered for this course. He then talked about how football was a big part of his childhood and how he still enjoys playing to this day. This was a good way for me to get to know him because before this interview I didn’t know he enjoyed that. I like how I kept his childhood memory in there because he sounded excited about talking about football, so I know that it’s something he enjoys.
For my music I decided to use some upbeat jazz music to make it more enjoyable to listen to. I like how I used some upbeat jazz music because I felt like it was more enjoyable to listen to. Next time in my interview I feel like I could edit it better to try to make everything flow together because I felt like there were some parts that didn’t flow together as nicely as other parts of the interview did. I will probably use similar music in my next interview because I felt like it matched the energy that was in the interview, and gave out good energy.
Overall for my first podcast I think it was pretty decent because I’ve never made a podcast before, or edited a podcast, so for my first time I learned things I can do better next time and things I will continue to do in my future podcasts.
