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Audio Week Assignments:

1. Thoughts About Audio Storytelling
2. A Murder Of Crows
3. Create A Place
4. All The Relaxation
5. Remake That Genre!
6. Auditory Hell
7. What A Song Might Mean To You

Audio Summary

What did you learn?

I learned about some sound techniques such as using sound effects, layering, and music. I also learned about storytelling. The Ira Glass videos were quite informative regarding how to tell a story. It’s the most natural thing in the world to speak a story, but writing a story, or even producing a story, is much different. I don’t often consider the parts of a story, how I want the story to progress, what elements I want use to create a mood or give the story a certain pace or rhythm.

This week, I used Audacity for the first time. It wasn’t difficult to use. I have previous experience using sound and video editing programs and this one is similar to what I’m used to. The resources for free sounds and images were most useful during this week. Freesound.org made finding sound effects so easy. I also learned more about copywritten material and the different licenses. Though this was something I looked into on my own.

And, I learned that sites which use programs to auto-determine if something uploaded is copywritten can be wrong. SoundCloud pulled one of my sound clips as being copywritten even though it was under a Creative Commons 0 License.

What was harder than you thought it would be?

The most difficult thing was listening to hundreds of sound files to find the ones I needed. It was time-consuming. Sometimes the files I wanted didn’t exist. Other times, they didn’t have the necessary license for public use.

What was easier?

The idea of working with sound this week was daunting. When I looked at the amount of information included in this weeks resources and assignments, I felt overwhelmed. But when I finally sat down to do the work, it wasn’t that difficult.

Also, it appears that I haven’t been completing the assignments correctly. The whole thing was confusing to me. But it seems that I need to add sound, images, and video even if the assignment doesn’t call for it. Mentally, that felt like a lot of work and I was discouraged about it. I really didn’t even want to do any of the work this week because I was so frustrated. I’m an overachiever and I don’t like not meeting the mark. Anyway, when I finally sat down to work on the assignments, it wasn’t that much extra work. It was much easier now that I know about freesound.org and publicdomainvectors.org.

What drove you crazy? Why?

I find copyrights really annoying. It feels extremely limiting. I’m very confused as to how some people can include copywritten songs on their YouTube channels while others can’t. I want to create my own content in the future and I want to be able to use modern music and such without having to pay to use it. Right now, I don’t really have the time to research this, but in the future I plan to learn more about properly using copywritten materials on my own channels and websites.

What did you enjoy? Why?

I enjoyed listening to the podcasts. Podcasts are a part of my daily life since I spend so much time driving. It was a nice change of pace. Also, I enjoyed creating fuller content on my blog posts. I’m not sure if I met all the requirements yet since the due date hasn’t arrived. Some of the things I added were actually quite trivial. I’m not a believer that adding more content equals engagement. But, that’s because I’m a different kind of person. I’m not impressed with marketing tactics, clickbait, or empty pushes for user engagement. I do recognize that others are. So, I’m trying to change my mindset. I know that if I want to be successful as a content creator, I have to follow all the algorithms and marketing ploys. As annoying as it is to me, I know that it does work for others. I am surprised that I enjoyed adding a bit more content. It’s not quite where I would like it to be. But, I’m getting there through baby steps.

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Prompt: For this assignment create a place by just using sound. For example, make the listener know where they are if outside use birds, cars, etc. You can get sounds from https://freesound.org 

I always say that water is my spirit animal. Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s how I feel. Water feels like a kindred spirit to me. It refuels me, refreshes me, uplifts me, inspires me, and so much more. And, I think I embody many features of water. Water is necessary for life. It cuts through strong rock just by persistence. Also, it can have devastating effects on surrounding areas if nature gets “angry.” Alternatively, it can have a calming affect on people. This is why I always take pictures of water when I’m out exploring.

Water is also alien. It doesn’t react the way one would expect it to. One of my favorite things is to watch YouTube videos about water. Take this one for example:

At night, I listen to “white noise” type of sounds such as light traffic or ocean waves so that I can sleep. I don’t care much for the extra sounds that happen near the water like the birds, the loud people, or loose animals. There is nothing more relaxing than to take a walk near the ocean, feel my feet in the sand, and listen to the waves crash against the shore.

The prompt: create a space using only sound.

The most comfortable and relaxing place in the world is a coffee shop. The ambiance is perfect for work, reading, and meeting with friends. Not to mention, the amazing coffee and pastries.

I created the experience of a coffee shop from when you first walk into when you take the beautiful first sip. You’ll just have to leave the taste and smells to your imagination.

This is only the third audio project that I have ever worked on. I feel that I have been sleeping on sound editing. While I am certainly never going to be qualified enough to be even an amateur sound editor, it is something that I could see myself playing around with more in the future.

So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and relax.

Under Water noises, could be used in a cheesy 1980’s music video intro

I choose to do this visual assignment Create A Place, because I could really use a vacation right about now. I am sure that everyone can guess what location I was trying to mimic. My ideal vacation would be me laying on a beach somewhere (literally any beach I am not picky) void of children with only the sounds of nature in the air. The only other sound I would like to hear is me opening up a bottle of Pacifico.

I found the sounds on freesound.org , and used Audacity to mix the sounds together!

Directions: ” For this assignment create a place by just using sound. For example, make the listener know where they are if outside use birds, cars, etc. You can get sounds from https://freesound.org “

Behind the Story:

Narrating the Process:

So, for my first post of week 5, I had said somethings that I now regret. I was struggling to get used to working with sound effects and putting all that together and was not pleased with my progress. Now that I’ve played around and gotten used to it, it’s kind of fun. It’s still a bit more time consuming than other assignments, but I do like experimenting and creating things.

For this assignment, I decided to recreate the sounds of the city. I have a specific city in mind, but any city you can think of will do!

Let’s switch it up for this post. Here’s my cat:

Though this is very similar to another assignment I did, I thought this would be fun to do because I could create a place and not a story. I wanted something to do with the 80’s so that it went with the theme of the semester, and when I asked around about a place that I should do, I heard I should do a Danceteria.

I first thought to myself, “What is a Danceteria?” The quickest summary of it, it’s a five floored nightclub. It was in New York City, and the 80’s was the most popular time for this. Since I never a part of a Danceteria, I got ideas of how it was like back then through pictures and articles.

It honestly was pretty hard to find what to put. I just didn’t want it to sound like a normal nightclub now and days, but from what I gather it is really similar to it, just five floors and older music. Probably also lots more drugs.

I first found some songs that would go for each floor of the Danceteria. I picked “I wanna be sedated” by the Ramones to be the main song playing. I put “Boderline” by Madonna, “Cover Band” by Red Cross, “Roam” by B-52, and “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club as background noise for each of the floors in the Danceteria. Looking back at it, this probably wasn’t the best idea. It added a lot of background noise, and I only needed 1 or 2 songs for above and/or below the floor.

Then I found soundtracks of people talking, footsteps, glasses clinking, and people cheering. Rather than the song, I made people talking and cheering the loudest. Then, I copied the sound of a glass clinking multiple times throughout the 30 seconds. That one isn’t so loud, but when it happens it can stand out. The footsteps used to be really loud, and it took away from the audio more than I wanted. So I dialed it down a lot. You might not really be able to hear it, I’m not too sure. I might just notice it a lot because I know where it stands out the most.

I feel this entire thing is kind of chaotic, but isn’t that what nightclubs are like? A big mess of noise and probable mistakes. So as much as this audio clip that I made might be a giant mess, it fits considering the atmosphere that the sounds are set in. And that is my excuse for my horrible audio, though I will say I’m proud of my creation. Enjoy!

The Danceteria:

I also feel like I should mention this just in case: I am not making any profit off any of the music being played. This is solely for educational purposes!

Description: “For this assignment create a place by just using sound. For example, make the listener know where they are if outside use birds, cars, etc. You can get sounds from https://freesound.org”

For this assignment, for 4 stars, I did the “Create a Place” audio assignment. We had to mashup a bunch of sounds in order to create a place. For mine, I wanted to choose D.C. because that’s where I spend a lot of time. For the audio, I included a lot of metro door closing sounds, car horns, traffic sounds, and rally sounds. I thought this was fitting considering it is a very crowded city that is very politically focused. I made it on audacity, and then copy and pasted a lot of the sounds to make it more interesting throughout the clip. I got the sounds on Free Sounds.org and it was really easy to download and compress the different audios. Hope you enjoy!