newsonaut

Turning inner space into outer space

February 11, 2013

Sometimes sound is all you really need

Think outside the video box, and you’ll find there are other interesting ways to innovate on the web.

We recently did a story about efforts by a First Nations group trying to keep its language alive. Language is all about people talking to each other, so I recorded an elder speaking in his language and giving English translations.

I used the SoundCloud app with my iPhone, which made the recording easy to save and retrieve from the SoundCloud website. Best off all, I was able to embed it on the website along with the story. It definitely added a dimension not available in print.

Check it out:

As I’ve mentioned before, the big drawback with SoundCloud is that you can’t edit your track on the site. And so far, every one of the people I’ve interviewed have interjected a few words that needed to be edited out.

To do that, you need to download the track and open it in an audio editor such as Audacity. It’s actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it, but I can see where some people might find this to be a major stumbling block. For that reason, I’m hoping SoundCloud will soon incorporate some basic editing tools.