Radio Bumper

This is my radio bumper assignment (worth 1.5 stars). I made this for the radio show project, so we decided to go with The Wire theme. I decided to use the opening sequence from The Wire as the music (“Way Down in the Hole” by Tom Waits). To make this, I used audacity to edit the parts of the song that I wanted and to record the speaking.

Two Shots at Voice Over a Beat

So my last audio assignment for the week was “Voice Over a Beat” (1.5 stars). I chose to do this one because I thought it would be fun. Though at first, I didn’t know what I was going to say.

How I did it:

But I went on Soundation and created a login so I could choose and save and download a beat. I ended up choosing the second beat that I listened to. It caught my attention. I clicked on Electronica>125>BassBroke C. That is the one I went with. I had to click and drag it into the center space where you can add tracks so that I could save/download it. I went to File>Export as .wav file because I knew I could import that file type into Audacity. I then opened Audacity and imported the file. I didn’t modify the sound any, just what I recorded.

So at first I was like oh I’ll make a bumper for our show using this, but then I remembered that that is a separate assignment that I have already done this week. So I made that one and I made another voice over a beat. I said Groom’s catch phrase “Make Art Dammit.” I went to Effect>Amplify and made it louder. I also went to Effect>Change Pitch and made it lower so it didn’t sound like me saying it. I played around with that a lot because it was funny to hear my voice in different pitches. I went lower because I thought it would sound cooler and would be easier to hear over the beat. I saved the bumper first and exported it then I took out the words and changed them and re-saved and re-exported. Here are both of the tracks that I made on SoundCloud.

My First Ever Radio Bumper

My first audio assignment for this week was the “DS106 Radio Bumper” Assignment (1.5 stars). I decided to do it since we have our radio shows this week and next week and we need some bumpers for them! I didn’t do this assignment in the previous audio week because I liked a lot of the other ones so I figured I’d save it for later. This was a little harder than I expected, mostly because I am a perfectionist.

First, here it is:

I decided to go with static because it reminds me of the opening credits of The Wire and I knew I wanted it to be a simple bumper so I just went with the normal “DS 106 Radio.”

How I did it:

I used FreeSound to get the sounds that I needed. I searched for static, a boing sound, and background static. I imported all of these sounds into Audacity so that I could edit them. I then searched for a free text-to-speech site which I could download from. I was very picky at this stage in the game because I wanted the speech to sound natural. I tried several different sites but ended up settling for this one. I am happy with how the speech turned out. I downloaded it and imported that into Audacity as well. I also had to mess with what I typed in. First I tried “D S 1 0 6 Radio” but they said “one-zero-six.” Then I tried “D S 106 Radio” but they said “one-hundred six.” So finally I tried “D S 1 o 6 radio” and that is what I ended up going with. Some of the text to speech things made the “oh” sound funny and that’s why I had to be picky.

Then I cut and moved the tracks around until they sounded right and fit together well. I cut out a lot of stuff from three of the tracks (the sound ones) because I knew my bumper was going to be short. Then I put it all together, saved the Audacity file, and exported it as an MP3. I tried to upload it to Twitter, the Hub, and SoundCloud via Known but for some reason it didn’t upload to SoundCloud so I had to do that separately.

Sound Off

My second to last Audio assignment was a Bumper for DS 106. I feel it is a little different from sounds I’ve previously heard but speaks to the messages David Simon addresses in The Wire. I thought of all the social injustice issues that are portrayed in the series and allowed this to be the motivation behind what sounds I would sample; the car crashing, the bellowing voice of Malcolm demanding issues be addressed, and the coins dropping symbolizing change to come. The inclusion of my voice at the end gives this Bumper a more personal and realistic sound for a station which implies serious discussion. These sounds I chose to generate an echo to in order of reinforcing the impact of climax. Once completed I uploaded these sounds in MP3 format to Soundcloud and the end result can be found here.

DS106 Bumper

This assignment was to create a DS106 Radio Bumper. I had a lot of fun doing this. I used sounds from http://www.freesound.org/ which was the dial up and music box.I then recorded my own voice and played with some of the effects in Audacity. To get the HBO bumper I used YouTube to MP3 converter and downloading the audio into Audacity. Hope you enjoy my finished product!

 

 

Bumpin’ the Dark Side

ds106 Radio bumper from the Dark Side.

Bumpin’ Against The Dark Side

I was bumping up against the Dark Side all week, so here’s my ds106 Radio bumper audio assignment:   Another Audacity project, this time adding a track, and using the Effects >> Fade Out to accommodate the second track to be heard. I used the built-in voice modulator in my headset/mic to get a lower […]

DS 106 Radio Bumper

Starting out with this assignment, I was getting very frustrated with trying to figure out how Audacity works. Even after looking over the tutorials the first time I was still having a lot of trouble editing the tracks and organizing them together. So I went back and started to read the instructions word for word on how to create it. After reading them, and playing with Audacity, it finally started to make sense and it was becoming easier to create this bumper. After I finished creating my bumper, I realized how easy it really was.

audio

To start out I went to freesound.org and chose out a “siren” sound to begin my bumper. I wanted something that was loud and got your attention once you started to listen. Then I went to a text to speech converter and typed “This is D S 106 Radio.” Lastly I needed background music to match the loud siren, so I chose one of my favorite songs of all time. I picked Thunderstruck by AC/DC. This process was challenging, however once I figured it out, it felt great to make this radio bumper. I went with something that I was up-tempo. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

Jon’s Knockout Radio Bumper

So in the midst of my battle with Audacity to create this awesome DS106 radio bumper I considered the entire classes struggles with audio this week. Therefore I am dedicating my radio bumper to the entire class. Way to go everybody!