Theater of the Mind; The Sound of Clothes Dropping

My wife and I cleared out our closet this past weekend. This was a rare moment when we felt the strength to fill two big garbage bags with older cloths and take them out of the house. The two bags filled our trunk as we drove them to the nearest clothing donation box. I lifted the first bag up and into a large levered door. When the bag dropped it made a beautiful thud with deep a metallic ring to it. After dropping and listening to the second bag drop I thought wouldn’t this be a nice noise for my Theater of the Mind Podcast. 

Creating a podcast is the project for this week, week 10 in AAU Integrating Technology Into Art Education Settings. Last week I created a plan for this podcast, designed to encourage the creation radio dramas in the classroom. This week I implemented the first episode of this series that I am calling Theater of the Mind, an open classroom of Radio Drama.  

Collecting audio clips was fun. I took my digital recorder outside and recorded the wind. I had a recording of crows from the past. I found a recording of a train passing. I used these sounds as examples of what could be added to a radio drama to bring it to life. 

I narrated the podcast initially from my small digital recorder and uploaded it to the Apple software Garageband. In Garageband I could easily cut up this audio so just the best clips remained. My narration was rather dry so I added a few words here and there and some laughing recorded right in Garageband. Unfortunately the audio quality was different for these different recordings. With more time I would re-record my voice. 

The starting place for this podcast was really the audio drama Mars is Heaven. I downloaded a copy of this radio play both as audio and text files. I used only the beginning few seconds of the recording, the announcer counting down of a rocket launch.  From the text I took a few lines from three characters. I read these lines as a way of showing how one actor can play more than one part in a radio drama. 

The deep clattering noise I found in the clothing bin. I used that sound along with clicking our emergency brake to demonstrate sounds you can collect and for the sound of a rocket blasting off. Keep your ears open, there are good sounds all around us.