The prompt

Ok, this may seem random and like a waste, but I promise it’s not. Our radio show has more characters than we have actors, so I wanted to try my hand at editing voices so they sound like two different people before offering this up as something we could do. I think it worked out pretty well, although there is a little distortion and I would have to keep playing with it to get it perfect.

The quote is from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s the point where pretty much all hope is lost and Gandalf, the wizard mentor character who has already died once, and Pippin, the comic relief who’s not much more than a child, are coming to terms with the fact that they were not going to get out of the coming battle alive. It’s a fairly sweet moment between two characters who for the rest of the story have not gotten along.

If you know the lore (and I mean REALLY know the lore, this stuff isn’t easy to find) you’ll know that the afterlife Gandalf is describing is the afterlife that he saw when he died and where he expects to return when he dies again. This is because he is a Maia, a demigod of that world. He is immortal, he can only go between what I’m calling the astral plane and the real world. Pippin is a hobbit; he’s mortal. He won’t see the afterlife Gandalf is describing. (Tolkien was Catholic so Pippin and all the other mortal characters go to judgement.) Gandalf likely knew that, but couldn’t think of anything else to say to the hobbit they both thought was about to die. I tried to capture that bittersweetness in the music, a stock piece I found a long time ago called “Soft Horror Piano Drone.” I didn’t think it was particularly horrific, I thought it was more sad and maybe threatening or foreboding than scary.

I put the music in Audacity, where I already had my voices. I recorded Pippin’s track first, and then Gandalf’s. For Pippin’s voice, I pitched it up a bit and sped it up some, as well as increasing the bass a little (to make it sound more masculine) and increasing the treble a lot (to make it sound smaller). I also did an accent to differentiate him better. It’s terrible but I’m calling it a Shire accent. For Gandalf’s, I pitched it down significantly, sped it up a little so it sounded more natural and increased the bass to make it more masculine. I also added a slight echo to make him sound a little more ethereal. Then I played with the pauses so it sounded right with the music. That put me at about 20 seconds, so I cut the music down (it’s a two-and-something minute piece) and had it fade out. I ended up with a pretty neat effect, I think. They definitely don’t sound like the same person recording it back to back. If I were to use this again, I don’t think I would make the differentiation quite as dramatic, less is more I think. At least in this case.

As someone who is quite inexperienced with audio manipulation software, this assignment was certainly going to be challenging. Despite the challenge ahead of me, I was able to very quickly think of a quote I love and a song that matches the tone of the message. This may be completely subjective, but there is something special about the pairing of an upbeat song that makes you happy to be alive and a classic Bob Ross quote, allowing you to drift away from reality for a moment and coast across an ethereal plain.

To help emphasize this idea of ascension and providing an “other worldly feeling,” I wanted to dot his voice throughout the music section as almost an echo. Thankfully, this was quite easy to piece together. It took a bit of messing around with Audacity’s tools, but by lowering the volume on some segments and allowing the music to fade in behind his voice, I feel like I was able to create basically exactly what I set out to make.

I remember when I was in high school watching The Handmaid’s Tale and I heard this quote. This quote really hit me because of its meaning. Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some. And this can be related to everyday life. You can’t make everyone happy. You can try but you won’t be successful. Culture and society are created by different beliefs, politics, and viewpoints. You can’t have Democratic ideologies and Republican ideologies. As an influencer, celebrity, president, or anything else you will have beliefs that others will be against. The song, One Last Time, from Bad Boys for Life, is one of my favorite sounds from the movie. It’s very suspenseful and tense. For this assignment, Quote with a New Feeling, I used Voice memos from my phone to record the quote. I converted it from m4a to mp3 using an Online Audio Converter. I downloaded this song from Documents and then added it to my Google Drive. After that, I imported it to Audacity. I added the two tracks together, cut the sound to make it match with my quote, and then exported it.

Hello! Welcome back to another audio assignment. This assignment is called Quote With A New Feeling, submitted by Christopher Vasquez. The description is as follows: “Most people have a favorite quote or saying that they know, use that and record yourself speaking it using programs like (audacity, garage band, etc..). After that mash up your audio recording with a sounds, song, or instrumental in the background too better explain the feeling that this quote or saying has on you.”

I chose the following quote from an interview with Bruce Lee. This one in particular resonates with my experience as a Eurasian martial artist who wants to appear on screen. In American media, we make a big deal about racial identity when in the end, we’re all just human –

Interviewer: “You ever think of yourself as Chinese or do you think of yourself as North American?”

Lee: “You know what, I want to think of myself as a human being. Because, I mean, I don’t want to sound like you know, ‘as Confucius say.’ But under the sky, under the heavens man, there is but one family. It just so happens, man, that people are different.”

I then combined it to some music from one of my favorite TV shows, Avatar: the Last Airbender. To see these Asian influences growing up and to see something so different than standard cartoons was amazing. This show teaches major life lessons for all ages. I chose this soundtrack for this quote not only because it blends the ‘East’ and the ‘West,’ but it is called the “Avatar’s Love.” As people, we need to love each other and not mind our differences. In the show, four nations, each representing an element, are at war. The orchestration shifts from something tender into something strong: the unification of humanity.

I also incorporated a heartbeat sound effect to represent this unity. We all have a heartbeat; we are all human. Editing was minimal, for I only changed the volume of each clip, split the quote into two parts so I could separate the last statement, and increased the reverb of the interview. Please listen:

Good lord I love Bruce Lee! I have so many Bruce Lee books. This is how my friends decorated my framed posters for my birthday:

For my last assignment I decided to choose one called “Quote With A New Feeling”. For this assignment we were challenged to take a quote and pair it with a song in the background. I wanted to make this 80’s theme to fit our class. I chose the quote “To me, obligation is not love. Letting someone be open, honest, and free — that’s love. It’s got to come natural and it’s got to be real” by Dolly Parton. I thought the best song to pair this with was the 1987 hit I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston. This process was fairly simple! I used garage band to input my song and then recorded my voice on top of it. Here is the final product:

This audio assignment might be a little…international. The challenge behind this assignment was to take a quote of inspiration and record yourself saying it. Afterwards, you needed to add background music that pairs with the power of the quote.

Voilà! I present a favorite French quote of mine – Sois belle à ta façon – or, ‘Be beautiful in your own way.’

This challenge was fairly straightforward because I’m getting used to Audacity. I did have some troubles at first, however, because I attempted to use a Voice Memo from my iPhone. That wouldn’t work, but I found it was actually easier to just record my voice on Audacity instead! Look at me problem solving

Below are the details of the challenge:

…Don’t let it get away! For this 2-star assignment we used one favorite quote and recorded a sound that fits well with the quote. One of my favorite quotes went really well with my all-time favorite song, It’s a Beautiful Day by U2!

This assignment was pretty easy to put together. Unfortunately the recording for the song did not record very well but I tried my best. I then used the voice memo app on my computer to record my voice saying “It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away”. This quote/song always put me into a good mood, it reminds me of being in the wonderful Florida weather!

This assignment was perfect for one of my favorite quotes and one of my favorite songs ever – Beautiful Day by U2. The photo that I used was a photo I took while flying with my dad. Overall this was a fun assignment and I enjoyed creating music with a quote.

I love quotes, so when I saw the Quote with a New Feeling Assignment (2.5 stars), I knew it was one that I would want to do. I then started thinking about it and realized that it could be a good one to use Ella Maguire for. I think quotes are really helpful and can represent where people are in their lives now.

To find the right quote, I went to my trusty source of quotes, Pinterest, to find a quote about change. I decided on this one: “If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies.” Ella is at a huge crossroad in her life. She just turned 18, she is about to go to college, she just found out she is a witch, and on top of all of that, she is questioning her sexuality. A lot in Ella’s life has changed recently and will continue to change for a little while. As one of my friends said abroad, “High schoolers are silly in thinking that high school graduation is the last goodbye for a while. The change isn’t going to college, but rather college is four years of unending changes and goodbyes.” I really relate to that, and I think Ella probably will to.

She is coming to the end of high school, but she has so many more changes ahead of her. She has figuring out what it means to be a witch, and what her sexuality is, which can be two conflicting issues, coming up. If she is gay, she probably won’t be able to continue the family line of witches, which adds to her sexuality struggles of coming to terms with whatever it is. If I could tell Ella one thing, it would be this quote. She is going through a lot of changes, but she should keep pushing through and not be afraid of them. Good things can come from change, even if it’s uncomfortable.

I added a song I found from YouTube’s free music section, called, Rain on the Parade. I wanted to represent how Ella is probably feeling through the music being played in the background of the quote. She is probably feeling stressed and somewhat sad about the changes and having to do all of these new things.

I first recorded the quote in iMovie and then I uploaded the song I downloaded from YouTube’s free music to the project. I wanted to have some of the loud piano notes before and after the quote, with slight rain in the backdrop of the quote. I cut the song down to about 15 seconds and played around with what part I wanted. I placed my quote in the middle, and iMovie automatically made the sound of the song softer during the quote. I really liked how the piano started before the quote finished. I feel like it is a reminder that good things come after change and that life keeps going. Sometimes I feel like people can be so scared of change that they forget that life continues on after it. Once I liked the sound and felt like it fit my message, I exported the project as a file and uploaded it to SoundCloud.

Here I have attached a anonymous quote with my favorite song at the moment called “Believe” by the band Romes.

Enjoy below!

So for my quote I picked was “Do something everyday that scares you” now i couldnt add instruments but i used Audacity and edited the sound to make sound pretty cool. so to hear it click here.