So this may or may not be a little bit of a stretch, but when doing this assignment I definitely wanted it to fit with a spy-themed show. Spy novels in general, but especially the older noir ones, really remind me of rainy and stormy weather. It’s foreboding, and I always imagine figures in trench coats and fedoras meeting in the rain to exchange secrets. This one took a while to create. First, I wanted to make it sound like rain (which I was semi-successful in doing), so I recorded the sound of my fishtanks filter. It has a hum in the background, but I wasn’t able to edit it out. Before that I attempted a few different ways at recording a rain-type sound, like poking holes in a soda can to imitate a watering can, or to record rice falling on the floor, but it didn’t sound quite right. The next step was to record a windy storm sound. If I had an aluminum sheet, I would add thunder, but I didn’t have access to one. So instead I went with the sound of a bag being crumpled. I heavily edited it in Audacity (changed the pitch very low, added a lot of bass, added a lot of reverb and echo), and it actually ended up sounding pretty close to what I intended. The overall product is nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be, but I put in a lot of effort into it, and I’m fairly happy with the result.

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For this assignment, we had to imitate the sound of weather using objects only within reach of the computer. Sounds easy, right? Not so much.

I picked this one because it seemed like it would be fun but it was harder than I thought. First of all, I don’t have much within reach of my computer. Second of all, imitating weather sounds is harder than I thought! Even “cheating” a bit and widening my range of useable objects, weather sounds are not easy to imitate and even harder to make sound legitimate. I tried banging pots and slamming doors to try and imitate thunder, to no avail. Because of the recent hailstorms in our area, I wanted to try hail but I couldn’t figure out how to go about it. I finally decided on raindrops hitting a roof. I used my nails and tapped on various surfaces, trying to get something as natural sounding as possible. Ironically, the closest I could was using the keyboard! It doesn’t sound completely natural but it seems pretty close to me.

So the assignment said to use only what’s in arms reach, so I used a big plastic lid and squirted water from my bottle into it. It ended up sounding more like pee in a toilet, but you get the idea.

For this 2 1/2 star assignment to imitate the weather (Audio Assignment 406), I chose to try and sound like rain and wind. I’ve noticed before how if you breathe right, you can sound like the whistling wind on a winter evening. However, I’ll be the first to admit that my first few attempts sounded more like an asthmatic trying to whistle. I think I got eventually- you’ll have to judge for yourselves. I do notice now that I’ve uploaded that you can kinda tell I ran out of breath at the end.

To record my sounds, I once more used the Smart Voice Recorder on my phone, then transferred the files into Audacity. I actually layered two versions to get this final one– I thought it sounded a little more real with the dual tracks. (Also, it was harder to tell where I had to pause to breathe. I’m a little ashamed that I couldn’t hold my breath for longer than about 10 seconds.)

For the rain, I experimented with a couple different surfaces before settling on the top of the binder I had sitting next to me. The graphing calculator sounded too hollow, and the laptop too metallic. I’m pretty happy with the way this turned out, overall. Who knows? Maybe at some point I’ll actually use it for something.

For 3 out of my 10 stars for audio assignment banks posts this week I selected to do imitate some weather. This assignment instructed you to use simple things around you and try to make it sound like weather. I was in the kitchen so I turned the sink on low for rain, used my voice as like a whistling wind and then used a sheet pan as thunder. I was going for a thunderstorm sound, but I think the sheet pan didn’t work as well as I had hoped. I think if I did this again I would select a different item to use.