Sounds of Myself Response - Mary Lee

Composing the "Sounds of Myself" essay was challenging, but in a good way, for me. I found it difficult to narrow down all the songs and sounds I wanted to use. I ended up using only music and a couple peoples' voices. I wish I hadn't because I feel like it sounded like a playlist/mash-up more than anything; I wish I had simply done sounds and not songs. I also wished I could have incorporated poetry (as listening to poetry is one of my favorite sounds) and silence.

It was definitely different than writing a text because you didn't have to worry about the mechanics of writing; however, if I had done a better job organizing then I'm sure it would have felt more like writing an essay. The two main challenges I faced were the technical problems of using Audacity, and making the essay cohesive. My computer doesn't really like Audacity, so it stops every time after I try to make a cut and says "Not Responding," which got really frustrating. I think I did overcome the problem of the cohesiveness of the essay - I attempted to fuse the themes of the sounds I would hear in a perfect day and the sounds that are important to me/that I associate with people in my life (hopefully that was clear!).

Listening to my own essay in class was practically mortifying. I always forget how Valley girl-esque my voice can be and it definitely was in that project! Otherwise, I wasn't too embarassed about the content. Listening to others' projects was fascinating - I learned so much about everyone's style, the music they liked and the sounds that appealed to them. It was really interesting!