Creating Sonic Immersiveness: Sound Generators and Digital Audio Workstations for Generating Sound and Music for Digital Stories

Humanities Pedagogy, Training, and Mentorship.Aimed primarily at digital humanities educators, these resources explore digital storytelling and have a particular focus on the integration of music and sound within it.Although they focus on GarageBand, which can be used primarily when creating the associated music and sounds, other applications in this area work similarly and according to the same principles (see Supplement 3).At the heart of this article is a video recording of the conference presentation (Figure 1) that explains the concept of digital storytelling and walks the viewer through the possible creation process, with a particular focus on the musical dimension, because music and sound are extremely important for creating immersiveness.The video serves as a source of ideas and examples for digital storytelling with a connection to cultural topics.It also shows examples curated by cultural institutions to illustrate the application of this concept.In addition, the video outlines possible scenarios for implementing digital storytelling in educational environments.A significant part of the video consists of explaining how a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) works (using the DAW GarageBand as an example).Although DAWs are usually associated with the professional music industry, free or inexpensive applications make it possible to produce music outside of these boundaries.Demonstrations in the video illustrate how even people who do not have in-depth theoretical and methodological knowledge of music can use automated tools for music generation and as input for DAWs.A specific application for the automated generation of tone sequences is described in more detail, while additional tools for music and sound generation are also referenced in the supplementary materials (Supplement 1, 2, and 3).Beyond the realm of music, the video illustrates the integration of images and video elements to increase the overall appeal of digital stories.The video concludes by exploring how teachers can incorporate this technology into their classrooms.In order to make the steps viewed in the video more accessible, a corresponding transcript of the video is provided.With didactic considerations in mind, the materials continue to provide examples and use cases of digital storytelling with a music-centred focus.Supplement 2 presents an example created in a DAW, including a corresponding MP3 sound file.Teachers who also want to gain a deeper insight into the possible didactic conception of teaching settings that incorporate this topic can look at a sample course plan (Supplement 2) for a course on the topic.This is divided into different phases with different levels of involvement on the part of the learners and provides links to further resources.In addition, Supplement 3 lists additional and alternative applications that can be used (various generation methods and music analysis tools, also for different operating systems).