Audio Production Workshop

A five-part series of workshops about the potential of sound and the essentials of audio production. By the end, each student will have made their own highly produced, 10-minute audio piece. Can be taught in person, virtually, or a combination of both.

Workshop 1: Deep Listening

From Golden Age radio dramas, public radio documentaries, soundscapes, and unscripted interviews—students will learn how to listen analytically and deconstruct the formal elements of great audio.

Workshop 2: Audio Structure

Next step, students get into the actual written scripts and audio mixes of the pieces in the first session. It’s a first-hand look at the innerworkings of great audio as well as a chance to start manipulating sound in a digital audio workstation (DAW).

Workshop 3: Field Recording

We break out the gear: simple and complex recorders, along with shotgun, binaural, stereo, and lavalier mics. Students learn how to approach different sonic sources, including the human voice, music, and ambient sound.

How do you get someone to deliver the audio you need? This workshop is about developing strategies to get that audio, and workarounds when you fail to get what you intended.

We will reinforce essential sound editing techniques in a DAW: how to edit voice properly, and how to add other sounds to an audio piece, such as music, sound effects, and ambient sound.

Teaching Experience

Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff have given over 30 lectures in media, journalism, and audio production at such institutions as Cornell University, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Brown, Boston University, Skidmore, Stanford, and a dozen other schools. The pair were practitioners-in-residence at Cornell for a semester, during which they guest lectured in a variety of classes and led student workshops on audio production. Previously, Chris Hoff was a Teacher’s Assistant at Mills College and an instructor at UC Berkeley, where he taught a course “Introduction to Radio Journalism and Audio Storytelling.” He was also a founding member of KALW Public Radio’s Audio Academy, which has trained hundreds of journalists in the San Francisco Bay Area.