I used 5 sound effects in Audacity in addition to my own vocal recording to create a bumper for DS106 Radio. I found the process easy and enjoyable, attempting to imitate radio DJs by using an echoed “Hey!” exclamation in my bumper and a piano synth as ornamentation to my backing effects. Check out my results below!

This assignment was to get a basic feeling for how audacity works and just get a general idea of what tools it has to offer. I already have experience with audacity from using it in other classes so it wasn’t that hard to get back into. I have also experimented with other music production software such as FL Studio and Ableton so I have some experience importing, editing, cutting, and manipulating songs and sounds. The hardest part was to source a song and then to record myself saying something and hoping it sounded alright.

The song used is Blank Banshee – B: Start Up, a vaporwave song that samples the Windows 98 startup tune that is then layered with a trap beat and stretched in a true vaporwave aesthetic. I recorded myself using just the QuickTime audio recording tool that comes with my mac. It was easier use it and then import the audio file rather than trying to learn how to record on Audacity.

With how the song progresses and naturally dies off, I decided to start it at full volume and then use the Fade Out effect about halfway through the song. When the song volume reaches a point that the recorded audio volume is higher, only then does my message play, letting the song taper off quietly and quickly right after I finish me message. This I felt was the most natural way to fade the song in and out without having the message drowned out by the song.

Greetings…fellow agents. For our radio, I encoded another message in the ds106 radio announcement. Make sure you get the message when it is aired! Fear not, our enemies shall not get ahold of our plans. Agent Smith, signing off.

-Agent Smith

The Radio Bumper assignment was to create a radio bumper for the ds106 radio station. This assignment was rated 4 stars which I believe should really be 5 stars. Before I started the assignment I did not know what a Radio Bumper was so I had to search the internet for some example videos. Once I somewhat of a idea, I went to YouTube and  and found some sample sounds that would sound cool on the radio. Once I picked the the track I went and pasted it to Audacity to begin my editing. It took no problem to edit it all together and save. After I did all that I was done. Wrong! When I was editing I wanted the music plying the whole time when I went to say ” Ds106 radio” but I had no idea how to do that so I had another track below the original with the music playing along with it. So I saved it and tried to post it to Soundcloud. However after an hour Soundcloud was still processing the video so I was confused on what I did wrong. I went back to Audacity to figure it out and I came to discover that I had to merge the two tracks together instead of having two separate ones. I had Audacity merge the tracks and it created one single track and once I did that I uploaded to Soundcloud. This time it was uploaded as soon I clicked the button to save it. I have know idea if I did the radio Bumper right but I like the how it turned out. I am both excited and embarrassed to hear my bumper on the ds106 radio.

Radio Bumper:

Radio Bumper:

Music: http://freesound.org/people/4barrelcarb/sounds/362832/

This was based on the assignment found here (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/creat-a-ds106-radio-bumper/).
Royalty free music found here (http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/straight).

This assignment taught me how to import background music and edit it in ways that it did not overpower my quiet voice. I also had to look into fair use rules and royalty free music, which was interesting to learn about.

For this assignment, Create a Ds106 Radio Bumper,  I collaborated with Justin Zamecnik to create a radio bumper for our upcoming radio show on Ds106 Radio! We both did equal parts to this assignment as in he did half and I did the other half. We collaborated because we both wanted to do this idea and decided to share it! Anyway, here is our Ds 106 Radio Bumper! (wow I’ve been putting a lot of exclamation points…)

The idea came from one of our favorite online videos (linked here) where someone voiced over an owl making it sound like the owl is saying HEY!! Justin worked on getting the voiced over robot part and then emailed it to me, then I downloaded the HEY audio and put everything together in Audacity.

After some consideration, I decided I wanted to revisit my radio bumper from audio week as part of this week’s assignments. I knew when I made it I wanted to give it a heavier edit later on, and now seems the opportune time.

Link to Assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/creat-a-ds106-radio-bumper/

Stars: 4

Process: This was interesting to do. I knew I wanted to make it deeper and more general (not a slogan), but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Naturally, rather than searching the ever-broadening internet for answers, I played around to get it to happen. I first started with my original file. I opened the multi-track .sesx file in Audition and listened to it a few times. From there, I went into the .mp3 of my voice. I selected the portion I wanted and exported it to a new file. Once it was in an editable format, I ran a stretch and pitch process on it, deepening it substantially. I remembered typical radio show bumpers having a bit of repetition of syllables, so I went ahead and copied the “D-” of DS106 and pasted it a few times in front of the track. I inserted this into the multitrack, muting the old file, and found that it wasn’t quite long enough. To fix this, I went back in and copied “radio”, repeating it a few times at the end of the track. I flashed back to the multitrack and could visually see that it still needed some length, so I ran a Stretch and Pitch process to stretch it to 133% of the original length (similar to slowing Ride down 800% during Audio week). Once it was reinserted to the multitrack, I increased the volume and mixed down the session selectively (so as not to have the old version overlapping with the new) into a single mp3. That result is below.