Sound Project Links
February 2018
Places to download audio samples
- Archive.org public domain recordings of yesteryears
- The Free Sound Project free (as in beer, as in speech) sounds for all your sound mixing needs
- Incompetech site for royalty-free music. Can search by genre
- UBU Web a library and archive of sound and video based art. Kinda difficult to find things by browsing since it is organized by artist, but you can search for keywords.
- Sounddogs Lots of specific stuff, Also see old website right under home icon.
Tools
- Audacity a free multi-platform audio mixing tool
- Chiptone an online tool for making soundforms, theoretically for video games
- MyNoise online tool for creating soundscapes, mixers/sliders for different volumes and effects
Radio Drama
- Old Time Radio Dramas from Wisconsin Public Radio, where they're rebroadcast regularly
- A short documentary on Delia Derbyshire one of the unsung pioneers of electronic music and looping
- Raiding the 20th century a documentary about the history of sampling and the remix
Getting Started with Journalism
Youth Radio teaching resources is an amazing source. That link shows just the full lessons tab, there's more under discussion and blog. In particular worth noting are:
- How to make a podcast
- How to conduct different kinds of interviews
- Fundamentals Of Field Recording
- Intro to Fact-checking for Journalists
- Telling stories with data
Example podcasts
- Best place to start would be Youth Radio Listen to the kinds of stories teens from Oakland's own Youth Radio make.
- The Memory Palace is a storytelling podcast and public radio segment about the past. Episodes < 10 min.
- Revisionist History is an investigative journalist attempt at revisiting recent and not so recent history, trying to reflect on our best understanding of what happened. Amazing interviews with people. Personal stories.
- Dead Ideas: The History of Extinct Thoughts and Practices - (RSS) − We explore ideas and practices once believed to be true but no longer. Each dead idea is explored in all its glorious eccentricity. For example, discover miasma, the theory that plague comes from stinky air. Or the medical diagnosis of hysteria, which holds that women's wombs wander around their bodies causing trouble. Join us on a fun romp through the history of ideas that didn’t quite stand the test of time.
- Ear Hustle - (RSS) − Ear Hustle brings you stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it. The podcast is a partnership between Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams, currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, and Nigel Poor, a Bay Area artist. The team works in San Quentin’s media lab to produce stories that are sometimes difficult, often funny and always honest, offering a nuanced view of people living within the American prison system.
- Something True - (RSS) − Something True brings you incredible and bizarre true stories from the footnotes of history. A dog in the United States Cabinet? A leading rocket scientist who quit his job to make a moonchild? Virginia Woolf donning blackface to prank a navy? They're all true. They're all Something True.
Quick practical down and dirty phone interview recording best practices
Condensed from this Youth Radio article.
- Find a quiet room — preferably one with carpet, lots of furniture, etc. — for interviews. Unplug or remove all devices that click, tick, ring, hum or buzz.
- Make sure your phone has enough space. You don’t want to gather awesome sound only to find out there’s nowhere to save it!
- Have the person being interviewed hold the device’s receiver a few inches away from their mouth. If you want to capture multiple people’s voices, ideally each person will have their own phone. If the phone is too far away, their voices will be hard to hear.
- Check out some broadcast/recording apps. There are many free or inexpensive mobile apps that allow you to customize the levels and quality of the sounds you record on your phone.
- Cogi for Android
- Easy Voice Recorder for Android
- Recorder Plus HD for iOS
- RecApp for iOS