[grc] Dissertation talk: Tools for Creating Audio Stories

Tue Oct 6 07:37:32 PDT 2015

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Huzzah! Hear! Hear! Great discussion!

I concur that this looks like an amazing piece of work (the audio
stories editor)! But one fear (concern?) I have is that the more people
who adopt tools like this the more radio stories will sound just like
This American Life or RadioLab. While those are (were) ground-breaking
productions, I don't think we want everybody's stories to sound just
like them. That's why we have *community radio* (including LPFM) to give
voice to the lesser-heard voices and unheard ideas.

Agreed: get to know how to edit pieces and concentrate on doing it well!

  ~David Klann

On 10/06/2015 09:07 AM, David Goodman wrote:
> I agree with Victoria. Computers and software are great tools. But there is
> a "feel" one develops when editing and mixing that an algorithm cannot
> replicate. It's part of the process in which the creator finds their own
> voice. Sure it's messy... it's meant to be.  Similar to writing - people
> fall in love with technology - but the writing is the most important thing
> we do. (IMHO)
>
> cheers,
> dg
>
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 8:04 AM, Victoria Estok <ve at victoriaestok.com>
wrote:
>
>> Thanks for passing this along. I will certainly be looking into this
more.
>> It may be a little premature to weigh in but as someone who teaches sound
>> editing I couldn’t let this thread pass by without adding that much value
>> comes from low level editing both for the beginner as well as the more
>> experienced producer. Learning to listen and craft your own sound often
>> results from this going through this process. You begin to hear what’s
>> between the pauses, what’s in the hesitations, what you may have missed
>> through casual listening. Bypassing this will result in a cost. 
While more
>> time devoted to storytelling is a certainly a compelling pitch... I would
>> caution the idea of jumping on the algorithmic bandwagon if captivating
>> sound or developing more of a unique structure style is also part of your
>> storytelling approach.
>>
>>> On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:56 PM, Susan Davis <sue at worldsofadventure.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The other bit of audio software that that research group did, which does
>> sound underlays under speech, looks interesting, too.
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: grc-bounces at maillist.peak.org <grc-bounces at maillist.peak.org> on
>> behalf of Brian Shiratsuki <settled at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Monday, October 5, 2015 10:18 PM
>>> To: GRC
>>> Subject: [grc] Dissertation talk: Tools for Creating Audio Stories
>>>
>>> [on the cutting edge? razor blades not mentioned. the talk at UC
>>> berkeley computer sciences is likely inconvenient for most to attend,
>>> but a non-interactive version appears to be available at
>>> <http://vis.berkeley.edu/papers/audiostories/>]
>>>
>>> Title: Tools for Creating Audio Stories
>>>
>>> Speaker: Steve Rubin
>>> Advisor: Maneesh Agrawala
>>>
>>> Date: Friday, October 9
>>> Time: 4-5 pm
>>> Room: 510 Soda Hall (Visual Computing Lab)
>>>
>>> Abstract
>>> Audio stories are an engaging form of communication that combine
>>> speech and music into compelling narratives. One common production
>>> pipeline for creating audio stories involves three main steps:
>>> recording speech, editing speech, and editing music. Existing audio
>>> recording and editing tools force the story producer to manipulate
>>> speech and music tracks via tedious, low-level waveform editing. In
>>> contrast, we present tools for each phase of the production pipeline
>>> that analyze the audio content of speech and music and thereby allow
>>> the producer to work a higher semantic level.
>>>
>>> We present Narration Coach, an interface that assists novice users in
>>> recording scripted narrations. As a user records her narration, our
>>> system synchronizes the takes to her script, provides text feedback
>>> about how well she is meeting the expert voiceover guidelines, and
>>> resynthesizes her recordings to help her hear how she can speak
>>> better. Next, we present a speech editing interface that addresses the
>>> challenges of logging, navigating, and editing recorded speech. Key
>>> features include a transcript-based speech editing tool that
>>> automatically propagates edits in the transcript text to the
>>> corresponding speech track, and tools that help the producer maintain
>>> natural speech cadences by manipulating breaths and pauses. Finally,
>>> we present an algorithmic framework based on music analysis and
>>> dynamic programming optimization that enables several methods for
>>> adding music to audio stories: looping, musical underlays, and
>>> emotionally relevant scores. Combined, our tools augment the
>>> traditional audio story production pipeline by allowing the producer
>>> to create stories using high-level rather than low-level operations on
>>> audio clips. Ultimately, we hope that our tools enable the producer to
>>> devote more time to storytelling and less time to tedious audio
>>> recording and editing.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> grc mailing list
>>> grc at maillist.peak.org
>>> http://maillist.peak.org/mailman/listinfo/grc
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> grc mailing list
>>> grc at maillist.peak.org
>>> http://maillist.peak.org/mailman/listinfo/grc
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> grc mailing list
>> grc at maillist.peak.org
>> http://maillist.peak.org/mailman/listinfo/grc
>>
>
>
>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2

iF4EAREIAAYFAlYT3KsACgkQZtxZ++32cNjqLAEA3ZZ+TbHbLIBf0ZVrz0vwU+Tn
E3DqasoxmpL1ZO9ZuUwBAJ/+EpYFQkkHM0k1cVG93jhYyKF9zb29pqEr4h1vGQmy
=HKCU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----