Written in an encouraging and accessible way, this textbook is about how to compose with sound-to make powerful soundwriting like podcast episodes, audio essays, personal narratives, and documentaries. Using ideas and language from rhetoric and writing studies as well as the authors' personal experiences with soundwriting, this book teaches soundwriters how to approach the world with a listening ear and body, determine a writing process that feels right, target the perfect audience, use such rhetorical tools as music and sound effects, and work in an audio editor.

The many exercises throughout the book and the supportive resources on the companion website will further help budding makers to strengthen their skills and their understanding of what it takes to make compelling audio projects.

About the Author
Tanya K Rodrigue is Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Salem State University.Kyle D Stedman is Associate Professor of English at Rockford University.

Reviews

"This is the book we've been waiting for: the perfect guide for students and teachers on how to bridge sound studies with sound design and composition. Soundwriting anchors the craft of working with sound in the exciting worlds of audio, sound research, and pragmatic first-person reflections. As a textbook, it provides every essential tool and insight for new audio-composers; as an introduction to sound studies and composition, it draws us into the fascinating and absorbing terrains of musicology, rhetoric, affect studies, and beyond. The book is accessible, theoretically sophisticated, and inspiring." - Ada Jaarsma, Mount Royal University

"As the authors suggest, and as this compelling text aptly demonstrates, this is, indeed, 'an exciting moment for sound.' Soundwriting is a timely, smartly conceived, well-designed, innovative, and highly accessible text that provides readers (and listeners) with a rhetorically informed, hands-on approach to composing with sound. In addition to offering users instruction, tips, and activities geared toward the successful realization of sound-based texts, Tanya Rodrigue and Kyle Stedman generously share details of their own soundwriting experiences in a series of reflective, process-based Interludes, further underscoring the complexity, richness, diversity, and potential of writing with sound." - Jody Shipka, University of Maryland

"This is the textbook I wish I had had when I first taught soundwriting and sonic rhetoric. In an increasingly multimediated era, students need to analyze and intervene in their sonic environments, and Soundwriting provides them with tools and approaches for such interventions. A wonderful mixture of theoretical approaches and very practical advice-students and teachers looking for sophisticated approaches to composing with sound in a variety of genres and approaches should turn to (and tune in to!) this book." - Michael J. Faris, Texas Tech University

"Soundwriting crackles and buzzes with exciting ideas and sonic possibilities. Whether you're a seasoned soundwriter or a total beginner, a student or a teacher, this highly engaging book offers an impressive range of accessible strategies, models, and hands-on activities for every stage of the production process. Rodrigue and Stedman have written an essential guide for anyone interested in the art of sonic composing." - Steph Ceraso, University of Virginia

Book Information
ISBN 9781554815111
Author Tanya K. Rodrigue
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Broadview Press Ltd
Publisher Broadview Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 363g