Happy New Year from RadioEdu!

January 1st, 2014 by WLOY Staff

How many fifth gradersdo you know with a CD release?

Happy New Year everyone! RadioEdu ended the Fall 2013 semester in an extremely exciting fashion with a CD release for the students! This was a wonderful event highlighting the accomplishments of three remarkable fifth grade students. The amount of material that they were able to master in a short amount of time continues to astonish me as I look over the blog entries of the past three months.

We are looking forward to another great semester filled with exciting and challenging projects, and I have no doubt that the students will continue to demonstrate mastery over the increasingly difficult material while gaining confidence in their production techniques. This year we will continue with the project-based learning approach, while aiming to integrate a long-term collaboration providing the students an opportunity to demonstrate increasing autonomy in regard to audio production. We will continue to develop and hone core audio production skills and look to post more incredible content each week!

Thanks for all the support and for helping to make the first semester of RadioEdu at Eutaw-Marshburn a success!

Jonathan

How many fifth graders do you know with a CD release?

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RadioEdu Week 12: Part Two

December 13th, 2013 by WLOY Staff

Concepts: Cutting Loops, Advanced Editing, Recording Vocals over Soundbeds

While M worked on mixing and finalizing her track, J was working on another ‘Top Ten’ list, this time thinking more about how the loop would sound under what he was planning. He decided to do a ‘Top Ten Worst Video Game Cliches’ and already had a vision of what the track would sound like.

He selected a few different basslines that he liked, and then cut them up and rearranged the audio samples into his own groove. He manipulated the audio slices and even began to comfortably use the ‘reverse selection’ function to enhance his new bassline. J has developed a go-to method that he uses for this process, which involves keeping the original audio file intact on a separate, muted track. This allows him to easily go back and cut out the sections he wants. I’m going to post screenshots of J and M’s arrangement so that everyone can see the detailed cutting and editing of the looped segments.

After recording this, J did a quick mixdown of the 30 second clip and looped it under his ‘Top Ten.’ We then listened and mixed it Thursday morning. M wanted to add some drums to J’s original bassline, so Thursday I had her and J work together to accomplish this task. M did an excellent job chopping up the beats and layering them in, and realized that it’s often quite difficult to add drums to an already existing line, especially if that piece was done without drums to begin with.
The project was more an exercise in working to place audio visually, as M used the waveforms to line up the hits, just as she did in her 30 second track from Wednesday.

We finished the session with M recording a recipe segment where she walked the listeners through creation of one of her favorite meals. Make sure to keep posted for this file next week!

J’s Top Ten Cliches

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J and M Combo

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RadioEdu Week 12: Part One

December 13th, 2013 by WLOY Staff

Concepts: Cutting Loops, Advanced Editing, Recording Vocals over Soundbeds

This was a tremendously productive week for the students! We covered so many valuable topics that I need to write a two part blog entry to cover everything. Since we had two abbreviated yet successful weeks, this was a very invigorating week and the students demonstrated that they have not forgotten anything during our shortened sessions.

We began by revisiting J’s piece from last week: his first attempt at recording a ‘Top Ten’ over a looped soundbed that he created. The students listened to the mix and provided their feedback, and J was able to analyze his mix and offer input on the things that he did and what he would change. I also briefly introduced the Phaser effect, and the students had fun listening to the impact it had on morphing audio, especially vocals and drum sounds. We will revisit the Phaser next week.

Since the students had two snow days this week, I decided to have them do an impromptu radio show about the things that they liked and disliked about the snow, and what they did during their time off. The purpose of this exercise was to emphasize the importance of transitions and smoothness during a radio show, and they have noticeably improved their abilities to talk with little downtime!

In the Wednesday afternoon session, we focused on more advanced skills involved in manipulating and editing audio loops. We reviewed the previous techniques, and both J and M were given the task to create a 30-40 second track that would serve as a soundbed for a segment that they were to record at the end of the session.

M began right away, and started with a drum track and then layered in some piano, sound fx, and synths. She came up with the arrangement herself, and cut and looped the audio to match what she envisioned. She then worked through the mix herself to optimize the sound.

On to part 2!

M’s Beat

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