Scripting “The Gift of the Piano” for an Audio Essay

Here’s a portion of the original “written” essay:

Every Wednesday afternoon when I was in the 3^rd and 4^th grade I got into trouble because of the piano.  That was because on Wednesdays, I had piano lessons…. which were to me worse than spinach, bath times, long church services and pesky brothers.  In fact, I knew of nothing in the world worse than piano lessons but my Mom and Dad forced me to go every week…. even in the summer.  “Someday you will thank us for this.”  “I wish I had stuck with it and learned to play”, my Dad constantly told me.  “I will never thank you for this”, I would grumble back again as he marched me to the door.  “What good is it ever going to do me?” 

Here’s how the above essay would be “scripted” to record your voice in sections then mix with music and sound effects in Audacity:

You would record each section of the script as a different "voice track" in Audacity then import the "Piano Song" and "Chop Sticks" music as two more "tracks".  After recording the narration tracks and importing the music tracks, you use Audacity's "move" tool to position the tracks on the timeline so they play in the order you want (as indicated in the script above).

This is what the above Audio Essay would look like after assembling it in Audacity.....

Play the finished Audio Essay....

For more information about using Audicity, refer to the Audacity Tutorials

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