A Mom Recalls Bringing Her Son Into The World explores a woman’s bond with her son, focusing on his birth and importance in her life.
This story does not begin with music, as it instead immediately places the listeners into the conversation between mother, Regina Collins, and son, Jonah Collins-Simpson. This allowed the conversation to feel like a natural exchange, rather than one that was professionally recorded and strategically built up to through music. Around 1:44 background music supports the story by matching the conversation’s sentimental tone through not being too overpowering in terms of volume or speed. This music gradually gets louder and continues to play even once Regina and Jonah’s conversation has ended, ultimately finishing the story by fading out.
The pacing of this story was great, as it allowed for Regina and Jonah to discuss pregnancy, birth, being raised by two moms, and for the strength of their bond to be well represented. As for sound quality, my favorite aspect of this story was how well it captured the emotion in Regina’s voice. It did seem as if the volume of Jonah and Regina were uneven at points, however, I am unsure of whether or not this was a volume issue, as Jonah’s voice was deeper than his mother’s and may have come across as louder because of it.
Two Friends Look Back on Y2K and The Apocalypse That Never Was follows a casual conversation between two friends, Erin Maloney and Alec Lively, as they reflect on how they coped with the conspiracy of a Y2K apocalypse.
This story does not have any intro music, as it instead jumps into the discussion taking place between Erin and Alec. It does, however, involve two different instances of audio outside of the speaking voices of the two friends. The first is a news recording that comes in at 1:22 as background noise before making itself the main focus at full volume. This clip assisted in putting us into the time period of Erin and Alec’s Y2K experience, as they were confronted with an anti-climactic turn of events when the clock hit midnight. The second audio is outro music that begins around 2:12 and ends the recording by fading out in the same way the first story I listened to did.
The pacing of this story was overall well done, but I do feel as if the back-and-forth between Erin and Alec was slightly fast at times. Although, on the positive side, this could assist listeners in grasping their familiarity with one another. The sound quality was also overall well done, but I believe Erin’s audio was slightly better than Alec’s, as his sounded almost flat at points. There were also a couple moments where if you listen closely it seems as if background noise was captured.