For this assignment, I shared a tongue twister and added some fun background music to it. Take a listen:

I recorded the audio on audacity and then paired it with a fun beat I found on freesound.org

Directions for this assignment were as follows: Say any tongue twister as fast as you can and include a background sound to layer it. 

“Betty Botter bought some butter
But she said the butter’s bitter
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter
But a bit of better butter will make my batter better
So ‘twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter”

I found this tongue twister and then I looked for background music from https://freesound.org/.

The only thing I was slightly annoyed with was that there was crackling in the audio and it wasn’t there until after I merged the background music with my audio. It is possible that it was there before and I didn’t hear it, but I’m going to say it wasn’t. Anyways, here is my final product.

AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments2119

The instructions for the “Tongue Twister” assignment were to “Say any tongue twister as fast as you can and include a background sound to layer it.” I decided to use the classic Peter Piper tongue twister. I recorded myself saying it and uploaded the audio to Audacity. Then I figured out how to repeat the clip multiple times, since I couldn’t actually say it more than once. Then I found a clip on freesounds.org to layer with it. I picked a song that I thought complemented the tongue twister pretty well. I had to turn the volume of my voice recording up and the music clip down. Then I trimmed both clips and uploaded the final track to SoundCloud. You can listen to the finished product below.

For another assignment, I created a tongue twister for 3 stars. I did this one without any help this time, and I figured out how to clip the audio silence in Logic! so, when I bounced my audio recording, instead of bouncing the whole 126 or so seconds the file starts with, I changed it in the bounce settings to only the 8 seconds it goes! DUHHH! I’m just proud of myself for figuring it out!

I used Logic again and again on the HCC computers. I used freesound.org for the scream that’s in the background. I found this Betty Botter tongue twister just by a google search. I recorded myself on my phone, and then emailed it to my gmail, and then I downloaded it onto Itunes. This one was a piece of cake. I did enjoy this one actually!

Betty Botter bought some butter;
“But,” said she, “this butter’s bitter!
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit o’ better butter
Will but make my batter better.”
Then she bought a bit o’ butter
Better than the bitter butter,
Made her bitter batter better.
So ’twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit o’ better butter.

By Carolyn Wells

This assignment was to recite a Tongue Twister as fast as you can, with a background sound included. The assignment can be found here, and it is worth 3 stars. I was inspired to do this assignment when I saw Francesca’s version of it from our class’ website! I thought it looked like a fun one to try myself. I’ve always loved poetry and tongue twisters!

The first step I took with this assignment, was to find a tongue twister I wanted to recite. After some google searches, I found this one about Betty Botter on this site, which cited it as one of the common famous tongue twisters. I thought this was surprising since it’s actually one I’ve never heard before; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one before involving so many B’s as the central tongue twisting sound. I chose it simply because I love baking myself, and thought it would be most interesting to chose one I wasn’t familiar with, and one that was a bit longer than the usual tongue twisters. Are you familiar with this one?

After I chose the tongue twister, I had to record it several times, which progressively got faster each time. I’m still not a fan of hearing my own voice in recordings, but I got it to a decent speed in the end, and it was easier after saying it many times in a row! I used Audacity to edit my clip of me saying the tongue Twister and add the sound of a timer ticking away in the background. I thought this would add some urgency to the reciting of the tongue twister, and help create the image of baking that Betty Botter inspires! It even includes a ding at the end, signifying that the reciting and whatever delicious buttery concoction Betty has made is done!

I got this background sound from freesound.org, from user keweldog, which you can visit here. After uploading the final product to SoundCloud, and adding the fitting image of the timer to the post, I was done with this one. It was easier to edit this one as compared to the first assignment I did, since I’m now a bit more familiar with Audacity. I’d highly recommend this assignment to anyone who wants to do a fun one!

Hello, everyone! I made a recording of myself performing a tongue twister as fast as I could, and set it to some music:

The tongue twister in question goes, “Send toast to ten tense, stout saints’ ten tall tents.” The background music is a track I found on the Free Music Archive, “Glouglou,” by Komiku. I found the image of the tent from Pixabay.

I looked for tongue twisters on tongue-twister.net. I thought about trying “I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop…” and “How can a clam cram in a clean cream can,” but in the end I decided to do “Send toast…” simply because I liked how it sounded the best, and I didn’t want to do anything I was too familiar with, like “Peter Piper.”

I recorded myself using the voice recorder app already installed in my computer, with the aid of a small microphone I could plug into my computer. I honestly lost track of how many times I recorded myself trying to say the tongue twister, but it must’ve taken at least 15 tries before I got it a take that was satisfactory. I edited both the vocal track and the background music in Audacity.

I did find it a bit challenging to figure out how to mix the music track with the vocal track–the background track was pretty loud, so I had to reduce the gain on that and bring up the gain on the vocals, but I don’t think it’s quite perfect. I also tried to cut the background track at just the right time, which was also a bit challenging, but I did manage to figure that out eventually (after a lot of cutting tiny increments of the track).

I found actually saying the tongue twister to be a challenge, too, and I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to say it fast enough without stumbling over my words, which is something I occasionally do, even when talking at a normal speed! I know that, out of the at least 15 takes of my trying to say the tongue twister, I had to stop part-way through and trash the take because I mixed up words and sounds, which was frustrating. Luckily, though, I was able to say it without messing up most of the time; it was just a matter of the recording sometimes not picking up the first second of audio, or me not saying it fast enough to satisfy me.

Hopefully, this assignment and the alternate history audio narrative will help me with speaking better and more clearly, since that’s always been something I’ve been self-conscious about. We’ll just have to wait and see.