Transcript Golden Age of Soundx

Golden Age of Sound
What is a “Golden Age”?
How does it apply to radio?
The golden age of radio — the period when radio reached its peak popularity with general audiences — was in
the 1930s and 1940s.
Strangely, part of this period was during the great depression in North America when people were doing
without most luxuries, and even a few seeming necessities.
Radio and its wide range of live music, comedy, variety shows, and dramatic programming served as a
welcome escape from those troubled times.
Even though many people couldn't afford payments on their washing machines, vacuum cleaners, or Model A
Fords, they desperately struggled to keep up payments on their radios.
Typically, these early radios also had large speakers that provided rich bass, and large loops of wire wound
around an internal drum that served as an adjustable antenna for receiving distant stations.
By 1935, more than 22 million American homes had radios, and automobiles were being sold with radios.
Listen and Compare
RE-BROADCAST
MODERNIZED FOR THE ANNIVERSARY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXTEUM4OF7Q
ORIGINAL 1938 BROADCAST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzC3Fg_rRJM
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt
develops “Fireside
Chats” with the
American public
I never saw him—but I knew him. Can you have forgotten
how, with his voice, he came into our house, the President of
these United States, calling us friends..."
—Carl Carmer, April 14, 1945
(quoted on Museum of Broadcast Communications website,
Flashback: The 70th Anniversary of FDR's Fireside Chats—
linked from EDSITEment-reviewed Center for History and New
Media)
Read and Listen to the 7th Chat that FDR outlines a program of
change for the American public.
http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/speeches/spee
ch-3304
How does media play a role in changing America at this point?
SoundStory v. Soundtrack
So what is the difference between a Soundtrack and a Sound Story?
Old time radio shows used to use sound as part of the story telling and radio broadcast. Movies,
videos and other visual pieces us soundtracks as a way to communicate emotion and narratives.
The next project is going to be the development of a Sound Story in the tradition of the Golden
Age of Radio programming with a modern twist,
Project SoundStory Part A
Follow the links to listen to the content
“THINK ABOUT” TAB
“THINK ABOUT” TAB
https://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/multimedia/series/AudioStories/tel
ling-stories-with-sound.aspx#Think About
https://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/multimedia/series/AEMicrosites/sp
ooky-sounds#Think About
Follow the links from each “Think About” tab,
answer the questions, form your opinions and
discuss what you learn in your blog.
Explore the songs, sounds, and understand
how tempo, notes and tones connect to the
emotional elements.
This is part A of this SoundStory project.
This will be found on your Blog page of your website.
Part B
SoundStory Script : post it on your MP1 Page as a document file
A Story with BOOO factors:
Get Dark
Isolate
Imprison
Make something go wrong
Add something special or magical
Create an extraordinary character
Use your storytelling skills (Have you ever fibbed?)
Say it more than once, Pause for effect, Visually
compare
Use language to paint the pictures you can’t see.
When Your Ready to Put it all together keep these
things in mind:
In radio plays it’s all about the sound. Since we can’t
see anything, everything must be conveyed by
dialogue or sound effects.
· Don’t forget to start with “Who, What, and Where”
just like you would with any other story.
· Write the script without thinking too much about the
sound effects. It doesn’t have to be very long. It simply
has to have a beginning, middle, and end. If it’s spooky,
you probably want to end with something scary or a
twist.
· Once you’re happy with the script, decide which
sound effects you want to add. Edit the script and be
sure to make notes for the sound effects you plan to
use.
Science of Scary
The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure that sits near the base of the brain.
Among its main functions is figuring out whether or not a person should be afraid of something.
If the answer is YIKES!, the amygdala fires off signals getting the body ready to run or fight.
In 2005, researchers in Oxford, England, used brain scans to test how people’s brains react to
scary music. They played different kinds of music for people whose amygdala had been removed
because of illness or accident. They found people without this part of the brain had trouble
recognizing scary music, while people with their amygdalas had little difficulty.
Researchers concluded that the amygdala is what puts the “scare” in scary music.
The relationship between Scary & Sound
Scary music has a long, bone-chilling history in symphonies, plays, ballets, and operas, as well as
movies. Most listeners automatically recognize when music sends clues that something creepy is
hiding under the bed, in the basement, or behind the mask. And the creators of spooky tunes know
exactly what they are doing to send shivers down the spines of listeners.
“Music contributes a lot to the overall emotional experience of an audience,” says Neil Lerner. Lerner
is a professor of music at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and an expert in horror film
music. Music composers and arrangers have a variety of ways to add eeriness, ramp up suspense, or
help deliver the shock people love to fear, according to Professor Lerner.
A favorite scary music technique is sound and music that hints a character is being chased. For
example, the music may speed up and grow louder to suggest the danger is closing in. “My hunch is
that our brains hear that music in terms of being hunted,” suggests Lerner. “Our instincts tell us a
creature is upon us and we need to run away or turn and fight.” That was the technique the Jaws
theme used to such terrifying effect.
What are other ways composers craft their music to scare us?
How it works…
Rhythm
A heartbeat, ticking clock, footsteps, a galloping horse—these are familiar sounds a composer
may echo in the beat of a song. By changing the pace—speeding up the rhythm or slowing it
down—the composer sends a signal that can put listeners on the edge of their seats.
Accelerating tempo (speed of music) might suggest a chase or the heavy breathing of a
frightened character. Slowing down the beat might indicate lurking evil or a fading heartbeat.
Using an unsteady beat often hints that something is out of whack or out of control. Bringing
back a steady rhythm helps ease the tension.
Dynamics
Refers to how loud or soft notes are played, and how the volume changes during the course of a
song. Soft, eerie music can raise suspense by suggesting danger in the distance. Getting louder
may hint that something or someone is about to pounce. Listen:
Pitch
Ever notice how people’s voices often get higher when they feel nervous? Composers may build this behavior into their
music, raising tension by having the instruments or voices shift upward in pitch to higher notes. In the art song “The
Erlkonig,” for example, composer Franz Schubert has the voice of the young son get higher and higher as a forest spirit
pursues him. Listen:
Dissonance
Some musical notes sound good together, creating harmony. Other combinations produce friction, making us wince and feel
uncomfortable. An example of a creepy combination is the tritone—a musical chord that can annoy the ears and suggest
something is terribly wrong. Long ago, church leaders labeled the tritone “Diabolus in Musica”—“The Devil in Music.” In
Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre, Death raises skeletons to a graveyard dance by playing his violin in sinister tritones. Listen:
When composers want to signal that the coast is clear, they will often return to a pleasant-sounding harmony.
Strange Instrumentation
Hearing a strange, unfamiliar sound can stop us in our tracks to listen for trouble. In a similar way, arrangers of scary music
will sometimes use unusual instruments or play instruments in unusual ways to give a song freaky weirdness. Composers
John Cage and George Crumb wrote music for a specially-prepared piano that might have screws, hair clips, and playing
cards attached to the strings so the instrument sounded bizarre. Listen to the two examples in the audio player below:
Stingers
Bursts of music that deliver a shock. In suspenseful TV shows, they usually blare just before a commercial break. “Buffy
the Vampire Slayer,” for example, often punctuated a scary scene with screeching violins that sound like a rising scream.
Stingers can even be turned on their heads to make us laugh, as in the clip of the “dramatic prairie dog.” Watch and listen:
Playing with Expectations
Want to know when a movie monster is about to attack? Listen for the silence, or a sweet, gentle tune. A music arranger will
often try to get the audience to relax before delivering the big “AAARGH!” Another tactic is to increase tension by
performing a familiar song in eerie ways, like a baby’s lullaby played out of tune. Listen:
What gives a scary story its boo factor?
At their heart, scary stories share the qualities of any other story, including a main character
with a goal and obstacles standing in that person’s way. But they have several additional factors:
a scary setting, creepy character(s), and a twist or uh-oh moment.
Let’s say we’re writing about Susie, a girl who wants to get home but can’t find the way.
In a non-scary story, Susie struggles to read her map, tries in vain to find someone who can help,
and wanders for hours before finally making it home.
But in a scary story, Susie is lost on a rocky, crab-filled seashore at midnight. She does find
someone who offers to help, but it’s a ragged hitchhiker with a claw hand. Just when Susie
thinks she’s found her way, the hitchhiker reveals a secret: Thirty years ago, he, too, got lost on
the shore—and he’s been wandering ever since.
Starting to see the difference between the two? Read on to learn more about the tricks you can
use to rattle readers.
Get dark.
Choose a dark setting for your story.
In Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, the doctor finishes building his monster at 1 a.m. on a “dreary night in
November.” As “the rain patter[s] dismally against the panes,” his candle fades.
It’s a creepy scene. Why? For starters, it’s really dark.
This means we can’t see who or what is nearby. Note that it’s dark for several reasons:

It’s the middle of the night.

It’s raining, so there’s no moonlight.

The candle, the one source of light, is burning out.
To add to the gloom, it’s November. Think dying leaves and cold nights. Icky.
Isolate.
Try to send your characters somewhere far, far away from anything else. Author Bram Stoker does this in his novel
Dracula.
Here’s what it’s like when the narrator arrives at the vampire’s castle:
With wolves howling nearby, the narrator ends a long journey by arriving “in almost complete darkness, for the rolling
clouds obscured the moon…in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light,
and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.”
Obviously, it’s really dark.
Also, we’re way out in the wilderness. It’s taken ages to get here. There’s space for a giant castle. The only nearby creatures
we know about make scary sounds (unless you’re really comfortable with wolves).
Plus, Dracula’s castle is run-down, and when you take a big, normally fancy setting (a castle) and make it look crummy, it’s
a signal to your reader that something is wrong. Scary wrong.
Caves and decrepit, old houses are often used as isolated settings, keeping characters far from help. The same is true for
forests: Think about Little Red Riding Hood alone in the woods and Snow White alone in the dwarves’ cabin when the
witch arrives.
Imprison.
If you can, trap your characters. At the end of the second chapter of Dracula, the narrator discovers that all the doors are
“locked and bolted…The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!”
In the story of Hansel and Gretel, the children are lured into a tempting (and isolated) candy house, only to be imprisoned.
Hansel ends up in a cage (a big warning sign) and, ultimately, almost in the oven (a bigger warning sign).
You can scare your readers by playing on their fears—having your characters go somewhere appealing, like a candy house,
that later turns out to be scary and dangerous.
Okay, so you’ve got a scary setting. And you’ve probably got one or two “good” main characters. Now how do you build
your creepy characters?
Make something wrong.
Even if your creepy character seems mostly like you and me, there should be a hint that something’s not quite right. Like the
way he keeps looking at the closet. Or the fact that he never leaves his house.
Maybe it’s the way he moves: When Frankenstein’s monster first wakes, “a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” Not
normal.
Maybe it’s a permanent physical feature: Count Dracula, who turns out to be a vampire, has a “fixed and rather cruellooking” mouth, with strangely sharp white teeth. He’s also extremely pale. And he makes the narrator feel sick to his
stomach (which maybe should have been a warning sign).
Or a physical feature that seems to have changed: “My, what big teeth you have!” says Red Riding Hood to her grandmother
(the wolf in disguise).
Giving your character this trait early in the story will add to the tension, because it allows your readers to suspect that
something is wrong—and start to worry.
Add something special—maybe even magical.
Think about how many creepy characters have a supernatural power. There are vampires, werewolves, ghosts, goblins in
Maurice Sendak’s Outside Over There, the Headless Horseman—even Rumpelstiltskin. In fairy tales, it’s often the evil witch
or wizard who causes the scariness, while the princes and princesses are non-magical, average (but rich) people.
What if something’s morally questionable?
Let your readers see your story’s bad guys doing something wrong. Even in stories where the main characters have magical
powers, the scariest figures seem to have more influence and are quick to abuse their power. Think about the Wicked Witch of
the West in The Wizard of Oz and Voldemort, Harry Potter’s rival.
Their creepiness may already be clear, but at some point in the story, these folks’ actions make it doubly obvious that they are
up to no good. The old woman tries to cook Hansel. Mr. Hyde murders Londoners. Cinderella’s stepmother turns her into a
slave. Ursula the sea witch steals Ariel’s voice.
Basically, you want your creepy character to do something that no ordinary person could—or should—do. If it’s bad enough
that it would get your character expelled from school (as in the case of drinking blood or cooking children), you’re on the right
track.
Twists
Shock your readers! Change the plot in a way they never saw coming. Think about W. W. Jacobs’s story “The Monkey’s
Paw.” In it, a man granted three wishes decides that he’d like a lot of money. He gets it—but there’s a catch. His son dies
at work, and the money is payment from the company where the accident happened.
Scary stories often include a twist or at least an “uh oh” moment when the main character(s) and readers realize that
everything’s not the way it seemed. The escape route is locked, a child wakes up from a nightmare to find that she’s still
stuck, someone’s slammed the door without realizing the monster’s already inside with her.
Keep your readers on edge (and then help them fall off it!) with a scary surprise.
Storytelling
Scary stories often take place at night, which, as it turns out, is also a good time to tell them aloud (but not to your little brother
or sister, unless your parents say it’s okay!). Try sharing your story from a different perspective at a campfire, sleepover, in the
basement, or on Halloween.
A few tricks to help you tell your story like a true storyteller:
Say it again.
Repeating a key phrase, especially if it’s mysterious, can build tension. In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” the ominous
bird repeats the word “nevermore.” At the end, we learn that Poe is referring to his soul being trapped—and released
“nevermore.”
You can use repetition to make your reader curious and to hint at what’s to come.
Compare to scare.
Give strong visual descriptions, and choose your comparisons wisely.
If there are clouds in your story, compare them to ghosts, not cotton candy. If your creepy character rides a bike, unless you
have a good reason to make it shiny and new, describe it as rickety. The more details you give, the more realistic your story
will sound—and the more spooky the details, the scarier the story.
Say it scary.
Telling a story aloud allows you to use your voice to scary effect. Give your old man character a gravelly voice and the little
child a high-pitched voice. Pause for dramatic effect, and pace the story to slowly build tension.
Sometimes the scariest stories are told quietly, or even in a whisper. You can get loud all of a sudden to scare your listeners. If
you’re really ambitious, get a friend or sibling to wait for a particularly scary moment and then pop out of nowhere with a yell
and frighten the audience.
Spook ’em with special effects.
Nothing says scary like a bucket full of gooey eyeballs. Ditto for lighting effects. Dim the overheads and shine a flashlight at
your face from below to cast eerie shadows.
You can also use spooky sound effects. If there are noises in your story, imitate them. Make the whoosh whoosh of a ghost’s
steps in the hallway, the squealing of brakes as a car grinds to a halt in the middle of the night, or the faster and faster beating of
a heart.
Have a fun fright night—and good luck falling asleep afterward!
Remember
Sound and sound effects can help bring stories to life.
Part C
Put it together
You will need to put the entire story into a narrative, you can record yourself or someone else
telling the story, then you will need to add all the sound effects to make this a true SoundStory.
You can find sound effects at:
http://findsounds.com/
You can use SoundBooth to record your narrative but I would recommend using Audacity to
create the final SoundStory.
When it is finished put the SoundStory.wav or SoundStory.mp3 that you have created into your
SoundProject Folder in Dropbox and share the link on your Website.
Resources
Understanding the Golden Age of Radio
Dig Deeper!
http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv018.htm
The National Capital Radio & Television Museum
FDR Fireside Chats
For more on the legendary The War Of the
Worlds broadcast:
http://www.rense.com/general4/hg.htm
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/fdrsfireside-chats-power-words#sect-thelesson
http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/sp
eeches/speech-3304
Kennedy Center
https://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/multimedia/series/AudioStories/tellin
g-stories-withsound.aspx#For%20The%20Educator
To hear more episodes of The Inner Sanctum:
http://www.otr.net/?p=isan
http://relicradio.com/otr/series/inner-sanctum/
What makes radio so great? Here’s one
argument:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/articl
e-1364899/Radio-Its-like-TV-pictures-betterCLIVE-ANDERSON.html