Ode to an Orange Soundtrack

 For this project, I decided to focus on sound and sound editing as my medium. My goal was to create a soundtrack that a viewer could listen while reading “An Ode to Orange.” I wanted to create something that would add to their experience and help them more fully ingest the feelings of praise the ode stimulates. I have worked with sound editing before while video editing, but I have never focused exclusively on the sound. I wanted to specifically learn if it was as easy to put together a soundtrack using phone apps as it was for our class to put together videos on a phone. At first, I tried to use GarageBand so I could become a little more familiar with this common app. However, I think I still have a little bit more learning to do because I could not get my files to upload. Not wanting to lose heart in my desire to exclusively use my phone for editing, I researched and found another app used for sound editing called AudioEditor. Using this app, I was able to combine, trim, and fade in/out clips using sounds I had previously recorded on Voice Memos. I was amazed at how easy it was to combine sounds together on a phone and I feel more inclined to use this exercise in my own future practice.

An important element of understanding this project was to study the texts. Reading through the original piece and looking at other texts, or pieces, creators have generated based on their feelings and experiences helped me to better understand why Thelvin encourages us to help our students become familiar with other “texts.” Using the inspiration I found from the way other people created, I was able to more fully focus on the details of the original text, such as focusing on different elements like the peels, the cutting, and the juice. This helped me in own “process,” or method of creation. I specifically found a quiet place where the sounds of peeling the orange, cutting slice on a cutting board, and juicing the orange could distinctly be heard. When uploading these files into AudioEditor, I originally intended to keep each sound separate and tell a story one sound at a time. However, as often happens in the creative process, my text’s development took an unexpected turn when I accidently play all the sound back together at one time. I listened the many sounds I had recorded working together harmoniously to tell the story of peeling, chopping, and juicing over and over again. I could better envision many different oranges people consumed around the world every day when I heard all the sounds together. This seemed like a more universal ode to an orange. This helped me to especially see the meaning of “literacy,” or skill developed while working on this project. I was able to see how the original texts inspired me from the beginning, but my creation was still a unique text, allowing me to truly create something new. Going through the personal experience of researching texts for inspiration, creating a personal process of generating my piece, and seeing how my piece as an original fit into a larger collection helped me to understand the literacy of creation, I feel better equipped to help my own students understand the meaning of these terms and more encouraged to help them experience these terms in their own work.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qvvY3zMJuWucyYKNKhoAT86Ft3bJHXNd?usp=sharing