HYPERTEXT PROJECT3: Making Bits Itty-Bittier and More

April 18th, 2012 by susan


Knew there was a way and played with a discarded .wav this morning to figure out how to add some “silence” moments in between the music in a clip.

Instead of recording a clip over and over again until I get the proper selection both time-wise and chop-wise, I’ve learned I can make a clip, then cut the clip itself in Audacity to shorten it.

Also learned how to add in some silence to extend a clip anywhere from the beginning (may be a way of “opening” the audio file later in the page rather than fiddling with jQuery and links to delay the start) or to add in some time between the notes.

Most likely I’d be able to also drop in some notes if needed, but I really don’t want to mess with the original too much; I’ve already “replayed” some sections to either suit mood, or extend the 9 minutes of audio to fill about 20 minutes of reading.

I just need to keep in mind that the music, while it would be terrific to match it perfectly to the reading, is impossible because each reader will read at a different pace. On top of that, the inclusion of hypertext links brings in another whole method of reading that changes the actual time spent on a page. i.e., will a reader open the links (stretchtext) and read that and go back to the point where he clicked the link or will he finish the visible text and then click the link? There are images; will the reader take any time to look deeper into them?

Need a soft start to the music, and an even softer ending, almost a fade, so that it is not noticeable to the reader that the music stopped (already decided to make the clips on the short side rather than have them run over past the reading point of all but the speed-reader, though I need to have someone besides me read this to check it out).

Need then, to learn the volume controls to learn fade I guess, unless there are more subtle controls.

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