Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.

Assignment Bank- Audio Assignments

It was hard to come up with the radio bumper. As I mentioned in previous posts, I rarely listen to the radio, so I was not very familiar with radio bumpers.

To create this radio bumper, I used Audacity. It took me a little bit of time to figure out the program and how the different functions work. I kept clicking something wrong and it would make the sound play backward sometimes, but other than that, everything was under control once I figured out the basics. For the song playing in the bumper, I found it on Freesound.org after searching for the word “secret”. The song pretty much just a loop of spy/secret agent music.

For my bumper, I included the phrase “don’t go undercover” because I thought it fit well with our secret agent theme. It was kind of a “spy” way to say “don’t leave”. I like how the bumper turned out and I hope if it plays on the radio that the listeners enjoy it also.

This week was the first time I was introduced to DS106 Radio, and I was also given the opportunity to create a radio bumper for it. The instructions for the “Create A Ds106 Radio Bumper” assignment were “Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into. So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.”

First I recorded a clip of myself giving a message. I uploaded the clip to Audacity and trimmed it a bit. Then I went to freesound.org and decided to look for an audio clip that sounded like secret agent music. I uploaded that to Audacity as well. I aligned the clips so that the timing was right and the music changed right as I began to speak. I made sure that that music did not overpower my words, but instead complemented the message. I am happy with the final product, which you can listen to below!

Since this week is all about audio storytelling, particularly on the radio, I decided to partake in an activity where I make my own radio bumper! A bumper is 10 to 30 second audio clip that announces the radio show that you are listening to during breaks while on air. This was something new for me, I never knew that those little interruptions during songs or discussions were specified as bumpers. That being said I dove right in to making my own bumper for our classes radio show, ds106 radio.

I was inspired to create a bumper based off of our secret agent theme. I felt it would bring more life to my bumper because I was unsure as to what to say to begin with. So with that my bumper opens with the theme song from mission impossible. The song plays for 15 seconds and then it cuts to me introducing the show and telling everyone to sit tight and we’ll be right back. Following that I let my bumper fade out by continuing with the mission impossible song. Overall it ended up being 29 seconds and portrayed a bit of the secret agent world. I thought this was a fun way to contribute to the radio show. While I certainly have many improvements to make as an announcer I thought I did a decent job for my first time.

I created my bumper by using audacity, which was an overall easy process. I first opened up the application and then pulled up the mission impossible song I was planning on using. I then hit play on the song and record on audacity. This is where I recorded the first 15 seconds of the song. From there I then ended the song and began to record myself introducing the show itself, ds106 radio. Once I had completed that I began to play the song where I had left off and continued to record it up until my bumper reached 29 seconds. From there I saved the recording as a .mp3, after listening to it obviously, and then uploaded it to Soundcloud.

This ultimately was a super fun activity and I hope to hear my bumper live on the radio. From here I certainly want to better my audacity skills and continue to work with audio itself. Ultimately I got to help contribute to audio storytelling by using my voice as a way to create a connection and immediacy with others!

This is my radio bumper for the DS106 Radio Station!

This assignment was a little easier to do since I had previously done an assignment that counted towards my stars for the week. That way, I kind of got the hang of Audacity, and the rhythm that I should be in when editing and adding audio and whatnot through the application.

I got a sound bit jingle from the free sounds website, and I recorded my voice after it for the DS106 radio tag. It wasn’t too hard, thank god! I got so frustrated the first time.

Here it is below!

-Caty

Hey there everyone! I just finished up editing my radio bumper for #DS106Radio. I had some fun doing it, but I wonder if it’ll ever get airtime. I used a air horn to reel in the intro because it is something that is done a lot on the radio channels I listen to. I encountered some weirdness when I recorded my voice using a headset. Weirdly, it modified my voice’s pitch to sound like Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks. I had some trouble getting my voice to sound ‘normal’ again after messing with a bunch of different mixers within Audacity. So instead of continuing to try to bring my voice to where it normally is, (when I had no idea what settings I had to manipulate), I just went with an ultra-deep distorted voice.

Thanks for looking!