Media 17/10/08

Today's media lecture was a great run through and to be honest, the time went quickly.

I achieved my goal for today which was to record the voice for my jingle, needless to say that it went better than expected. I used the recording studio, (Studio 6) at college to record my voice, which is also used for the radio. I had quite a few attempts at this by using a programme called Sound Forge, which is owned by Sony. I spoke through a microphone quite a few times and by the end, i must have had seven attempts to play around with. I tried recording sitting down and standing up, and i felt that standing up gave me a better tone of voice.

Paul (my lecturer for A-level Media) put them on the N-Drive for me to access in the music tech room (T14). I then listened through them and picked one and opened it in Sound Forge. Using Sound Forge, i was able to edit it in many different ways and the outcomes were very interesting. The software allows you to record your voice through a microphone and edit it. You can change the pitch to high and to low which makes your voice sound like a chipmunk or a voice box thats far too broken and deep. You can change the echo so it sounds like your in a cave and you can change the tempo to fast or slow although i think this mostly depends on how high or low you set the pitch. There are many other effects which i could explain to you but there are some which have complex names. However, one of which is the 'Bender', this is the name of the effect. It puts your voice waves onto a chart with a zig zag line going from left to right and if you drag the line in different places, then you have a voice which could go from high to low, to high and then back to low. This was an effect which i was considering to use but it didn't sound professional for my liking, so i stuck with the tempo, pitch and the echo. Another Effect which is on Sound Forge is the fader, i didn't find this very useful as it fades the voice at what ever end you want it to. For example, it starts off quiet and then gradually gets louder, or alternatively, it starts loud and gets quieter. I personally didn't think this would be any use at all so i didn't use it. I think that it is important to make your voice clear, especially for the Jingle so that the listener can identify the ID for the radio station. There was an amplitude effect which wasn't very effective, if you turn it up only slightly, it starts to crackle a bit.

Anyway, i was experimenting with these recordings and came up with four possabilities, number 5 i am still working on at this moment in time but i should have it done by Tuesday, or maybe even by the end of the weekend if i can edit it over the college terminal. I am hoping that by the time the next lecture ends on Tuesday, i should have had all the editing done and hopefully have it placed over my Jingle which would be great! It would mean i would be able to go onto the next stage.

I think that everything is going brilliantly and i am also enjoying it alot.