It's all about the timing

The road:

I've rarely used Garageband, and although I have access to recording equipment, I decided to put myself through the Garageband process to learn more about the program. I hope to utilize it to generate Podcasts in the future. Additionally, I have already familiarized myself with Audacity, as it comes with M-Powered Pro Tools.

In my previous broadcasting experience, I have focused on other people, only inserting my voice to keep content flowing; to change direction when the audio clips of those interviewed are lacking "connective" dialogue. I also used my voice to explain certain situations or to define something in particular. But in all I find it's much better to let the sources do the talking. They're much more credible. And I feel like I sound pretentious in an unambiguous sort of way when I try to do all of the narrating.

In this line of thinking, I went ahead and tried new areas that I'm absolutely not used to: Garageband, personal storytelling, humor, comedic soundtracks, and timing—all on a story on the misadventures of bad timing.

I had originally hoped to make an excerpt out of a creative nonfiction piece that I'm writing to sell on the market, but after a few short scripting attempts, I found that I couldn't get the dialogue down below eight minutes. I then decided that since I had to work on my timing, I'd decide to do a personal narrative on one of two incidents I've experienced that involved a fast sequence of events where everything went wrong.

The challenges: since I used a script, I basically only used it for cues in order to keep my voice in a storytelling mode, but even after a few attempts at certain sections, it's obvious that I'm reading during some point. I tend not to use scripts when doing audio journalism, but I certainly see the benefits. And even after getting my recording down, and knowing where I was going to break up the monotony of the storytelling with music, I had to meticulously go second-by-second on my monologue to remove short pauses without making any odd transitional effects apparent. In all I made 71 cuts to my voice pauses.

The other difficulty stemmed from the music soundtrack. I abhor sound effects in the setting that I chose, and I didn't want to have only one soundtrack. So I went to the library and found a bunch of CDs, brought them back, and went through them one-by-one to find the right ones for the job. At the beginning, when introducing the power businesswoman, I inserted "Trouble Blues," an upbeat blues song by Johnny Lee Hooker that does a little storytelling on the trouble with women. The lyrics are barely discernible, save a couple of spots, but anyone who enjoys the music, and plays the song by itself, should delight in the irony. The second song, "Rollin' and Tumblin'" by Muddy Waters is an oldie, but is also upbeat, keeping the frenetic pace of the story going. Again, the lyrics aren't discernible, but the music is inserted at a point where all is going wrong, and people are falling down and 'rollin' and tumblin'.' Finally, the last song is "Fox Musette" by Les Primitifs du Futur, who were featured on "All Songs Considered," and I thought the song not only made a fun, classic radio closing, but it paid homage to This American Life.

Utilizing "Trouble Blues," I wanted to time the music a little better, and since it had a repetitive blues beat, I did a little cutting and pasting to lengthen the opening blues riffs to time the singing to happen just as I was making a pause for a shift in storytelling. Did you hear the transitions? I hope not, because I tried really hard to blend the cuts.

And (insert sigh), yes, I did go over by almost a minute. But it had to be done for the sake of the story. I cut the story down to its basic elements, and I eliminated the personal pauses to keep the story going, and to keep the pace up. But I had to make a few musical pauses and dramatic stops just to try to make this silly story work. It really was pretty funny when it happened, but to try and retell it is pretty difficult.

I hope you enjoy/ed listening to my project even a fraction as much as I had making it.



Aaron Geiger's audio disease "It's all about the timing"