This is the assignment about what a song means to you. I choose “Looking too Closely” by Fink.
And here is my soundcloud speech about what it means to me.
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This is the assignment about what a song means to you. I choose “Looking too Closely” by Fink.
And here is my soundcloud speech about what it means to me.
Before you read anything else, listen to this song. You’re not going to understand if you don’t.
Close your eyes for the full effect.
For reference, here are the lyrics from bobdylan.com:
Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high
There’s a soft cotton dress on the line hangin’ dry
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Not a word of goodbye, not even a note
She gone with the man
In the long black coatSomebody seen him hanging around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the Bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man
In the long black coatPreacher was a talkin’, there’s a sermon he gave
He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied
It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coatThere are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die, people just float
She went with the man
In the long black coatThere’s smoke on the water, it’s been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted, ‘neath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating a dead horse
She never said nothing, there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man
In the long black coat
Now that you’ve gotten done with that, I can explain. This post is for the assignment What a Song Might Mean to You for 3.5 stars in Audio Assignments for Digital Storytelling. The assignment says:
Lots of people have a particular song that reminds them of certain situations, I know I do! Embed the video of your particular song and a short recording of why you really like the song, or what makes it important to you.
As a music lover, I naturally felt compelled to pick this assignment. It sounded a little intimidating at first, but I actually had fun talking about why I love “Man in the Long Black Coat” by Bob Dylan (after eight drafts! I guess the eighth try is the charm for me, because I’m too determined to settle for the third). Since the narration transcript below covers the story aspect pretty thoroughly, I opted to just leave the text of the script below and focus on narrating the process.
Me as the Interviewer: What’s the weirdest place you’ve found music that you listen to?
Me as the Interviewee: Its hard to choose one–I’ve found a lot of great music in odd places, but this sticks out to me. Its a song called “The Man in the Long Black Coat” by Bob Dylan.
One afternoon I left the TV running while I played on my phone. I was completely ignoring the TV until I heard this song. It caught my attention, even in my screen-induced haze. I looked up to see what I was watching.
It was a commercial against human trafficking. The husky voice twisted the words so some were nearly-unrecognizable, but I managed to make out just enough to Google.
I couldn’t believe what I found. It was one of my favorites, none other than Bob Dylan. I knew him as the crooning voice of the ’60s. But of the years that followed his decade of big hits, he spent a few years involved in evangelical Christianity. This song hearkens from that era of Dylan’s life, during which he had a very different style, so that’s why I didn’t recognize it as his, even though he still retains all of his talent.
Me as the Interviewer: So what do you like about this song? It seems like you prefer Bob Dylan of the ’60s.
Me as the Interviewee: I do and I don’t. I love this song because of how darkly poetic the lyrics are…Dylan’s songwriting definitely matured along with his worldview. He utilized some powerful imagery, as you can see from lines like “he had a face like a mask.” You can see how it draws heavily from Judeo-Christian culture, from his invocations of the Bible, sermons, and preachers to the black and white imagery symbolizing pure good and evil and the suggestion of an apocalypse. His optimistic ’60s persona transforms into a darker, deeper one; this is not “Blowing in the Wind” or “Mr. Tambourine Man”…but it is great music, especially if you’re feeling down. There’s no antidepressant like downbeat music.
Me as the Interviewer: What’s the song about though? Reading these lyrics, I bet you didn’t even understand them when you first read them.
Me as the Interviewee: Actually, I never understood them. Most people don’t seem to.
However, the most convincing explanation I found is that he wrote it about the rabbi who converted his girlfriend to Judaism, precipitating their separation. But its still something of a mystery.
Me as the Interviewer: What does the song mean to you then? I don’t think you’ve ever had a girlfriend who converted to Judaism.
Me as the Interviewee: No, I have not. I guess what I love about the song is that it really is something of a mystery, the lyrics vague enough to be about anything, but strange enough that you can never really prove your interpretation. All you can do is listen to Bob Dylan’s voice, full of darkness and despair.
I was inspired by Ira Glass‘s discussion of storytelling, which you can read about on one of my earlier blog posts. In this, he discussed his own work as a journalist, which relies heavily on the interview format. I wanted to be able to use his advice, so I decided to do this assignment in interview format. I used several minor tips from him and elsewhere, such as leaving about three seconds of silence at the beginning, utilizing pauses, and speaking with the microphone close after seeing what worked best.
Once again, Google Drive was my hero. I used the Voice Recorder on my Android phone. I’m guessing it is virtually the same between Androids and iPhones; all you really have to do is hit record, then hit stop, and you can record and re-record anywhere with sound that pretty much matches the quality of a laptop’s microphone (or at least, my laptop’s microphone). I then emailed myself the link like so:
Mousing over the file, it will show two icons, and mousing over the right icon, you’ll see Show in Drive, as below. 
Click on Show in Drive to land in your personal Google Drive, where the file will be shown to you. The first time I did this, it took a little while to scroll down to the place where the new file is, but it does so automatically, so be patient!
Also, a word to the wise: do not leave the automatic file name on there. I deleted all my other files that said “Voice 001” or “Voice 002” for the sake of clarity, but there were several.
Anyway, once I clicked on the file, it showed the little audio player to listen to the file. That’s what I embedded into this post. To embed, there’s a couple more steps. First, click on Pop Out icon, the second from the right in the upper right hand corner. I moused over it here to show the label.
That will redirect you to the file itself.
Now, click on the upper menu bar icon that looks like three vertical dots. It will open up a drop-down menu like this:
The second option is Embed Item…, as highlighted in light grey on the white menu by me mousing over it. I clicked on that to get a window called Embed item.
In that window, copy the code in the box below the instructions to embed. I assume we’re all using WordPress for Digital Storytelling, so I’ll show you how to do it in WordPress. It should be similar if you’re using some other means of coding for your website in HTML.
I went to my blog post draft for this assignment and clicked the HTML tab in the upper right hand corner, next to the Visual tab that automatically opened. In that tab, just scroll to where you want the player to be embedded, and then paste the code like so. 
Make sure you copied the whole thing and that you paste it in the correct place without disturbing the code.
That’s pretty much all I did. The hardest part was recording and re-recording until I felt my voice sounded okay. What I was really hoping is to make my voice sound natural. For my next assignment I might try not writing out an entire script so I can ad-lib and sound more natural that way. It seemed that it would sound better if I sounded more natural, as Ira Glass said, so I declined to use the versions I made by editing with Audacity software. Overall I’m happiest with the content. I think I really captured what a great song meant to me and managed to not be boring and sappy while doing it. (Plus I’m proud of myself for not choosing Nirvana for once, even though I already admitted that they’re my favorite in another post.) However, I would like to know if there’s an easier way to get audio files from an Android phone to Google Drive. Although I have a Soundcloud, I prefer embedding the simple, elegant Google Drive media player–I’d recommend it to anyone whose still finishing up their assignment posts/embedding stuff today.
What does a song mean to you? Check out this assignment! Hopefully my assignment will inspire you to do the same!
Going through life, we all experience hard times and tough experiences.
Sometimes life gets difficult and we have to learn to work through these times. Whether it be problems with a job, a relationship or everyday struggles, it is important to remember to keep going and to not beat yourself up about everything! I need a constant daily reminder of this and and I know many of you do as well! Here is a little reminder from me to you!
Now that we have received a few wise words from these two lovely penguins, the song below speaks directly about this problem and encourages everyone to enjoy life and to not sweat the little things.
In this audio message below, I explain my understanding of this song and how it personally inspires me:
I chose this assignment because I am a big advocate for music and music having the ability to convey a relatable message. Music has the power to motivate, inspire and educate people all around the world. The messages within songs such as the one above, can change a person’s perspective and inspire people to change or to grow. This aspect is very important to me as I have stated before- the constant desire to learn and to grow as a person. Music has opened me up to a world of creativity and discovery as I continue my life. I hope that music can and will do the same for many of you. It is an extremely powerful and effective tool that is utilized in many ways and should be celebrated.
The Process
This assignment is very easy to recreate. First, pick a song that means something to you or you connect with.
To upload an audio response to the song you choose, go to Soundcloud and go to Upload-Start new recording:
You can record directly from this site and upload the file to your account!
I hope this was helpful. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions you might have. Always remember that life isn’t perfect and we all have those days. Give yourself a break and enjoy your life!
This has been the most difficult assignment yet. I’ve spent many frustrated hours trying to complete a single audio assignment. Most of my frustration comes from my lack of knowledge of anything audio. I feel like an ESOL student because I’m having to hunt for definitions of wav., mp4, LAME and so many other abbreviations and processes that I just do not have the background knowledge to understand.
At first, I thought I was doing pretty well. I used a few tools I had in my pocket from my technology cadre. I started by finding a video of “In My Life” by the Beatles on YouTube then using KeepVid.com to be able to save just the audio to my computer. After struggling with a variety of Java issues, and attempting to download the mp3, I just had to go with the mp4 version.
That process got just the Beatles song saved on my computer. Then, I tried to open it in Audacity to do the editing, but found that that file type is not supported. So, a little more Google searching lead me to Zamzar.com which is a free file conversion site. Through Zamzar, I converted the song from mp4 to WAV and then got it into Audacity. PHEW!
Next, I recorded my narration. That was easy. I even edited out a little bit of speaking errors and my ending click using this tutorial. I didn’t do any of the fancy stuff like rendering or remixing because I literally had no idea what that would do, but I did adjust the sound levels so that you could hear my voice over the song. I saved it and exported to my computer, and thought, “Wow, I can do this.”
So very, very wrong, indeed.
There seemed absolutely no way for me to host or share this blasted assignment. Google was my best friend and worst enemy for multiple hours.
Here are all the things I tried:
I surely hope that worked, because that was an incredible amount of work for two minutes of audio. In my life, I’ve never felt so frustrated and proud at the same time.
~~Always Learning~~
I came across this audio assignment after searching through a couple pages. This one stuck out to me because it required that I upload the video to a song and a short audio clip of why I like it and what the song means to me. A song automatically popped into mind, Cachamba by Kinito Mendez! For as long as I can remember this song has ALWAYS reminded me of my mother. Any time this song would come on she would get super excited and happy; dancing, smiling and singing every word to the song. No matter where I am or what I am doing, when this song comes on I automatically picture her dancing.
I also tried to add the layering sound technique into my recording of what it means to me. Hope you enjoyed! To show a song that has meaning to you, follow these steps.
[3 1/2 STARS]
This song was played the first time I ever danced with my husband. He is an amazing dancer and spun me around the dance floor like it was only him and I in the room. It will always remind me of that day and our wedding day because we chose it for our first dance.
This song was played the first time I ever danced with my husband. He is an amazing dancer and spun me around the dance floor like it was only him and I in the room. It will always remind me of that day and our wedding day because we chose it for our first dance.
Please visit this link for my explanation why the below song was chosen for this assignment: https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/h8gd3wpf3x0jjbjf
This week we had to dedicate at lest 5 stars to our character. My character again is Rancher Bob who works on a large ranch with his family. I selected to do a 3 1/2 star assignment called what a song might mean to you. This assignment tells you to select a song and simply take about the importance the song has in your life, but I am selecting a song for Rancher Bob and talking about “what it means to him.” I uploaded the song below and then a souncloud clip of me talking about how the song is important to my character. I am happy with how it turned out and happy I found a song that really fit my character so well!
