SoundCloud

This is a guest blog post by 2012 SoundCloud Community Fellows Pop Up Archive. They’re hosting a mashup contest so use your noggin and creativity to come up with something neat! Photo by ogimogi Introducing the Pop Up Archive Mashup Contest 2012: bring archival audio to life for your chance at a free SoundCloud Pro account! Take a stab at showcasing the hidden value of archival audio for the first ever Pop Up Archive Mashup Contest! We’re soliciting mashups of up to three minutes in length, centered on three themes (up to one submission per person, per category): Ambiance, Election Season, and/or Voices. You can find the sets at http://soundcloud.com/popuparchive/sets — take a listen and follow the rules below to contribute your mashup before Wednesday, October 24th at 12:00 noon PT. If we pick you as a winner, you could find yourself on the receiving end of a free SoundCloud account! And thanks to SoundCloud Community Fellows Guidebooks, Working Now, Detroit Audio Tour, Life Advice Radio, DecodeDC, RandomTape and The Truth for sharing your audio! How it works:

• Listen through and pick some audio from the three sets we’ve curated for you, centered around three themes: Ambiance, Election Season, and Voices.
• Download any tracks you want to remix and get to work! At least 50% of audio materials must come from the clips in the Pop Up Archive mashup sets.
• You can mix and match tracks between the sets, as long as the finished mashup is under three minutes in length and fits one of our three mashup themes.
• We repeat: the time limit for submissions is three minutes. That’s 180 seconds.
• Upload your track to SoundCloud and submit your entry by adding it to the Pop Up Archive Mashup Contest Group: http://soundcloud.com/groups/pop-up-archive-mashup-contest-2012.
• For extra points, once you’ve mixed your audio, illustrate it using the interactive storytelling tool Zeega, or Mozilla’s PopcornMaker. You can request the beta version of Zeega here: http://alpha.zeega.org/register/ and get direct access to PopcornMaker here:http://popcorn.webmaker.org. They play nice with SoundCloud audio! Just click the “Share” button under your SoundCloud track and use the “Link” provided as your media source for either editor. Then add timestamped maps, images, video, or just about anything else you’d like (PopcornMaker works best with Firefox, surprise surprise).
• If you created an interactive piece using Zeega or PopcornMaker, submit it to us directly: popuparchive at gmail dot com. Feel free to link to it in the description of your audio track on SoundCloud, as well.
• Proper Creative Commons licensing is required. Attribute yourself by name and indicate which non-commercial Creative Commons license you have chosen for your mashup.
• Your submission must also include attribution (with hyperlinks) for the material you have remixed from the Pop Up Archive mashup sets. You should do this in the description field when you upload your track to SoundCloud.
• All material from outside the Pop Up Archive mashup sets must be original, or used under a CC license.
• Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, October 24, at 12:00 noon Pacific time. We’ll pick one winner per theme, to be announced on Friday, October 26. Each winner will receive a one year SoundCloud Pro membership.

Click here for full rules, terms, and conditions.   PS. Did you miss Pop Up Archive’s free online archival training on October 9? Lucky for you and your disorganized media, we’re doing it again. Join us on Tuesday, October 23 at either 10am or 2pm PT — details and registration here.

This is a guest blog post by 2012 SoundCloud Community Fellow Amy Costello whose project Tiny Spark who investigates the business of doing good. Amy also contributed a report to PRI’s The World on the medical community’s attempt to learn from mistakes made in Haiti. Read it here.

It’s hard to believe my SoundCloud Fellowship is soon coming to a close! Before it does, here’s my latest podcast: It’s a months-long investigation into a seemingly good idea: medical professionals who volunteer in international crisis zones.

Turns out, doctors and nurses who lack specialized training can actually do quite a bit of harm.

And there’s one more thing I’ve discovered during the course of my Fellowship – it’s not as weighty but it’s still important: SoundCloud can save journalists quite a bit of cash.

Since I launched Tiny Spark a year ago, I’ve spent thousands of dollars renting studios and hiring freelancers to record guest interviews. Then, a few weeks ago, I asked a Harvard doctor I wanted to interview whether she’d simply hit the Record button on SoundCloud. She sat in front of her computer in Boston while I was at mine in New York. She took out her iPhone headset, plugged it into her computer and used it as her microphone. She then hit Record, uploaded the audio to me afterwards and whoop! I had broadcast quality audio….for free! Here’s a little sample of that interview so you can hear the quality of audio that can be achieved with Soundcloud’s record button. (It’s also a pretty harrowing piece of tape..and gives you an idea of the kind of things that went on in Haiti.) Finally, I wanted to share with you another thing I made for free with SoundCloud and through ThingLink. A surgeon from California emailed me some photographs of patients she treated in Haiti, who’d suffered from the work of earlier volunteer surgeons. I recorded her voice with SoundCloud too, chose a few excerpts, and integrated it with Thinglink to create this interactive photo. I think there’s enormous story-telling potential here with these two platforms. 

This week’s guest post is by 2012 SoundCloud Community Fellow Stephanie Dub. Her project, The Appreciation Engine, is ready. Record and share your messages of appreciation online!

Opportunity is a funny thing. We often hear that something is a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” or that “opportunities like ‘this’ don’t come around that often,” or “if only the opportunity presented itself,” but my opinion? Opportunities are everywhere.

Life isn’t about waiting for the right opportunity to present itself; it’s about recognizing an opportunity for what it is. And a lot of time that recognition starts with slowing down, acting with intent, prioritizing where to focus your energy, and above all staying positive. 

My goal, my vision, is that The Appreciation Engine will provide you an easy opportunity to experience the good producing effects that feeling and sharing appreciation can offer, and use media and technological connectedness to do it (not take away from it!). After a few weeks of hunkering down to design and build (with help from a tech professional ;)!) I am excited to announce that The Appreciation Engine is now live and ready for use!

Read the rest of Steph’s blog post here.

soundschool:

It is a delight to present the first installment of the SAE Institute’s “Sound Advice” series. SAE Atlanta‘s David Lopez instructs how to give your kick drums added distinction and depth in “Sound Advice: EQ Tips & Tricks for Kick Drum pt. I.” The Institute’s tutors are hard at work…

Get your learning on with SAE Institute and Sound School!