Original assignment may be found here (2.5 Stars)

The assignment tasks you with recording different noises you her throughout the day. The noises can be whatever you want. I decided to my Sunday morning routine. First I’ll explain how I did the assignment. Using my iPhone 6, I opened up the Voice Memo app. I recorded four different noises/files. I uploaded the four different files onto my computer. In Audacity, I clicked on File and then Import. I selected the four files. Once the files were imported, select the Time Shift tool. This allows you to move the different files. I wanted each file to overlap for one second with each other. Once I shifted the files by clicking on them I exported the recording. Select File and then Export Audio. Once that was done it was saved as one file instead of four. To finish, upload the file to SoundCloud.

I recorded my first noise as I walked down the stairs into the family room. I do not remember what was on TV, my guess is the Golf Channel. The next sound is in my kitchen. I tried to record the sound of bacon sizzling in the pan. The third sound is the sound of coffee pouring into a mug from a Keurig. The last sound is from the Purple Martin bird house on my parents property. The sounds of morning are my favorite. I believe they tend to be more relaxing.

One of our assignments this week, from the bank, was titled “Make it 800% slower.” (Very original title) The instructions were to, “Find a song to experiment with and slow it down to the point where it becomes an amazing piece of ambient music. Be sure to pitch shift so that even though the track is longer, it doesn’t become just a low pitched version.”

One of my all time favorite songs is Home, by Phillip Phillips.

Here it is slowed down:

[Worth 3 stars]

In case you missed it up top, here is the original version:

I used Audacity to slow the song down. After fiddling around a while and becoming extremely frustrated with the pitch and such, I decided to look at some examples online. I did this in hopes that someone posted a tutorial of how to work the god forsaken technology that is Audacity. Thankfully I found this kid’s blog, and he pretty much laid out how to do the assignment. Instead of changing the speed of the song using the :change speed button” he suggested that instead you use the “paulstretch” effect. Which basically slows down the song without changing the pitch.

After discovering this glorious tool, the assignment became much easier. After paulstretching it 50% the song lengthened to about 4 hours. I only used 10 minutes of it for the sake of my sanity. I was not about to sit here for three days waiting for it to upload…no thank you.

In the end, the final project came out sounding like dying whales, but hey, at least I tried? Right? Please don’t fail me.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/make-it-800-slower/

(Three Stars)

This is “Girl Inform Me” by the Shins, it is Scott Brinkmann’s favorite song. It might be a little hard to recognize because it is slowed down 800%. To do this I took a song off of my iTunes and put it into Audacity. I then used the effect Paulstretch to slow it down. This effect allows you to change the pitch along with the speed. After it has been slowed down it sounds like it takes forever just to change sounds in the song.

The story I created is from the point of view of my loyal travel companion, Becki the backpack (see photos). Becki and I have been traveling together for a decade. This story is a forty-five second snapshot of a day in the life of Becki.

…I sit patiently, and empty, as she books flights on her favorite airline website. I wonder where we are going next and how soon. More importantly, what is she going to stuff me with? Hopefully, not the work laptop; it’s too big and I’m not equipped to provide the necessary cushion. Ahhh, no laptop. Just clothes and a travel pillow this time. And she remembered to remove the new Swiss Army knife before it got confiscated. Again. Whee! Off we go! I’m sitting on top of the large suitcase as she wheels us through the airport. I’ll have to say a temporary goodbye to Mr. Suitcase soon, as she’ll be taking him to the TSA folks for additional screening of checked bags. The trip through the x-ray machine was a breeze, on account of no laptop and no utility knife. I’m now safely stowed in the overhead compartment. I’ve got plenty of room since it’s not a full flight. But wait! There is disadvantage to this as I get tossed around during turbulence. Ugh, not good. Now I’m upside down. Three more hours to go. Yes, we have arrived! What a relief. And I’ve never been to this place before, so I expect I’ll be getting a new patch by the end of this trip. If only there was enough room…

I downloaded over five minutes of audio from FreeSound to create this Sound Effects Story Assignment. I tried the other websites, but found FreeSound to be the easiest to work with. After considering the story spine, I excluded three of the audio files originally downloaded and using Audacity, further edited the files I ended up using to create a story that is roughly 45 seconds long.

Below is a screenshot of my Audacity project for the Sound Effects Story:

Sounds Like an Adventure (Sound Effects Story screenshot)

Below is a matrix that maps each track to the audio file used for this assignment:

Since downloading the LAME library, in order to get the MP3 encoder, I’ve had trouble with my Internet Explorer, and other web browsers. This slowed down considerably completion of this and other assignments this week, which added frustration to an already trying week.