Listening and Recording

Instructor: Steve Wetzel

Rant

rant       
verb [ intrans. ]
fulminate, go on, hold forth, vociferate, sound off, spout, pontificate,bluster, declaim

noun
tirade, diatribe, broadside

Let’s use “rant” loosely. You don’t need to shout, and you don’t need to be wild; but you
should care about the subject of your rant—“impassioned.”

Your first step is to write your rant, or plan your rant.  How you prepare for your
recorded rant is up to you: improvisation, script (monologue/rant), rough outline, etc.
What’s important is that you truly have something to say about the subject of your rant.
If you don’t believe in your rant, don’t bother with it. Find a subject that honestly moves
you emotionally and then passionately EXPOUND. The subject need not move the earth.
You could rant about Friends, or why we need to reconsider Truman as a great president,
or why you’ll never eat plums again. You could rant about dear ticks, thick blankets, lovers who
don't drink coffee, flowers that die quickly. Or healthcare, the cosmos, and so on and so forth,
etc., etc., etc. Just pick a subject that gives you that certain kind of pre-rant tingle, plan it,
perform it and record it.

If you’d prefer to not hear your voice, then feel free to enlist the voice of another. Try
your best, in either your performance or the performance of your chosen other (actor), to
achieve the tone and emotion for which you’re aiming. Don’t settle on the first take.
Be critical and get what you need from the performance. Make me believe it.

Again: this doesn’t need to be a scream fest. One can calmly deliver a rant.  Perhaps
intonation changes as the rant develops.  Maybe in only one line do we hear anger,
contempt or frustration.  Perhaps the mood of the rant builds slowly, or maybe it hits hard
at the beginning and then cools off as the rant progresses. The structure of the rant is
your choice.

CRITERIA:
1. The rant has to come from you; it needs to come from your person, your mind, your heart
2. Has to be a rant, i.e. it needs to be language directed toward a personally held position,
an impassioned position, a deeply felt sense of some aspect of the your world!

 Other objectives:
1. As discussed in class, be sure to make a recording of room tone either at the beginning
or end of your recording (you’ll use this to cover up edits), and, if you have time, experiment
with equalization.

2. Make a good, clean, detailed voice recording (you’ll need to experiment with your mic
location, sensitivity and gain). When making this voice recording, you'll need to take command
of the recording context, i.e. you'll need to minimize background sounds. So if you only have
access to a space that has hard, reflective surfaces, cover them with blankets or pillows to
minimize echo. Be sure to turn off all devices and electronics. And if you're so inclined, you
can make use of the Recording Booth in the Media and Reserve Library at UWM.

3. Once the recording is finished:
    A) With a rant you’ll need to transfer the various takes and edit together, in
    Audacity, the best moments of each into one seamless rant (you may simply
    get an entire performance from one take; or perhaps the last sentence in take 3
    is the best, along with the first paragraph in take 1, and finally the body—up
    to the last sentence—in take 4); this should be edited seamlessly, which means
    that I shouldn’t hear the edit, I shouldn’t be able to tell that you pieced
    together bits from various takes.

4. Once the edit is finished, make a new post in your blog site entitled “Rant”
  AND, IN ADDITION, if you attempt EQ,  make a screen grab of your final
  equalization graphic in Audacity and load it onto your rant post.

CLICK here for info on making a screen grab.

5. The length of the rant should not exceed 03:00, and should be at least 01:30.

What you need to know, technically, for this edit:
1. How to properly record voice with homemade microphones and hand-held recorder
2. How to equalize a voice recording in order to bring out its best qualities
3. How to make and post screen grab

 WHAT you'll be posting in Blogger
1. A new post entitled Rant
2. List the subject (as a title?, or just state it: "My rant about needles")
3. Total running time
4. .mp3;  and .wav links
5. Screen grab of your final EQ graphic IF YOU used EQ