A tutorial on using sounds to create a scene for a listener using Audacity.
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A tutorial on using sounds to create a scene for a listener using Audacity.
Stars: 4
For my next assignment I had to create a place out of sounds. After the first week of audio assignments, I think I got a pretty good idea of how to use audacity. A few weeks ago I would say this assignment deserves 4 stars of difficulty, but this week it was really easy. I chose to make a radio show office. I made it sound like a worker for the radio show was going into work to record. I also chose a German radio recording to facilitate our spy theme. Once I chose the sounds from free sound, I compiled them into audacity and made a recording to upload to Soundcloud. This assignment was pretty easy and not as time consuming as I had imagined, so it is impressive to see my learning through out the class already.
Since my group was still deciding details about who does what, set-up, etc. I decided to start working on assignments for stars. I decided, since I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for the group, I might as well start working on my story segment. My character Maria, and her friends Thiago and Narelle, go to Australia in several of my posts to look for the bunyip and the yowie. Since I have had a bunyip narrative but not a yowie one, I decided to go for that.
I was inspired by the assignment that you had to tell a story using only sounds. While I will be speaking in my story, I wanted the background to be sounds, not music, to help add to the outdoorsy aspect. So, I decided that the assignment about making a place, in this case the outback, with only sounds. First, I researched about the yowie using mainly the Wikipedia page but also checking out a couple websites. It seemed like Queensland and New South Wales were the Australian states that I should go for. Specifically, Springbrook, Queensland, as well as the border between the two states.
So, I used Freesound.org and looked up Queensland and Springbrook. I chose all sounds that were from those two states. It was not too hard to make this, since it’s only 5 sounds, not 9 like I’ve dine before! Though, its only 45 seconds and the final story will need to be about 4.5 minutes! I had to quiet the creek sound to not overpower the hiking sounds and increase the hiking sounds so they can be heard. I actually made 2 extra tracks of the hiking sound so it was 3 sets of feet, and staggered the tracks so they wouldn’t all sound like the same set. I’m not sure how well that worked! I also copy and pasted the cricket sound a couple times to get it to the right length. The bird sound I had to cut out a lot of quiet/no bird call parts, in order for it to fit the length.
Overall, it’s my starting point for the rest of the story, as well as inspiration for the story itself. I was not planning on having a creek or waterfall, but when I saw the option I decided to go for it. Chances are the sounds here will change a bit as I figure out dialogue.
This is the assignment that I made this for:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-a-place/
This is where all of my sounds came from:
https://freesound.org/people/Yoyodaman234/sounds/349060/
Water Flowing Through Very Close Rapids 2
https://freesound.org/people/Yoyodaman234/sounds/348817/
Close Waterfall 2
https://freesound.org/people/Yoyodaman234/sounds/349077/
Hiking on Soft Ground 1 – Through Mud
https://freesound.org/people/iankath/sounds/262366/
Crickets
https://freesound.org/people/S.%20Dedalus/sounds/260104/
Birds of Noosa Biosphere Reserve
This is where my Featured image is from:
File:Natural Bridge, Springbrook National Park, Queensland – Cave Creek.JPG
Brizpom
For creating this assignment, which is creating a place just using sound, I decided to take inspiration from real life and make my dorm room. How I came up with that, I have no idea. Perhaps its because I was sitting in my room when thinking of ideas. I wanted to make something that could tell everyone what my room is like, without pictures or other invasions of privacy (and safety!).
The background sound, that can’t always be heard, is the air conditioner, which during this part of the year is always on. The first sound that appears is the garbage truck, which must comes like every two days, before I want to wake up, and makes it so I can’t sleep in as much as I want. It’s rather annoying! That’s also why its so loud. Next are three knocks. Both the door to my room and the door to the bathroom get stuck, so for the front door, I have to hit it three times with my hip (or butt) to get it to open. Then comes the writing and typing noises. My roommate and I are almost always on our laptops, and its often only those noises when we are doing homework (the writing). The chewing that comes afterwards comes from us eating snacks, particularly goldfish! The human voices that appear and disappear are our suitemates, who we never talk to (not because of animosity. We just inhabit different social spheres). My roommate and I hear them only for a few hours a day at random times. Honestly, I don’t know when they’re in their room or not and what they’re doing. They do have guests over, so that’s why there are guy voices too. The writing and typing go on for so long because that’s what our room is like-my roommate and I just being quiet for long stretches of time. The three thuds at the end are the people up above us, who are constantly making thuds, though I’m not quite sure what they’re doing.
Overall, this was a fun assignment to do. At 9 sounds, its the most I’ve ever used in one recording! The most annoying part was not being able to see all of the sounds on one page in Audacity, having to scroll down to see ones that don’t fit and then when moving them not know if I moved the sound to the right place on the timeline. I had to repeat the air conditioner sound 5 times for it to go as long as I wanted, though I did cut the last repeat in half as otherwise it was too long. I also cut the garbage can sound to shorten it, as well as the voices sound and the chewing sound. The typing a really just left alone, as a timer to mold the other sounds around. I had to repeat the writing sound 3 times for it to be a length I wanted, and I also repeat the knocking sound and thud sound so I got the 3 repetitions each.
The assignment that I created this for:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-a-place/
These are the sounds I used:
https://freesound.org/people/freemaster2/sounds/195202/
Air conditioning 1
https://freesound.org/people/winsx87/sounds/152021/
garbage track.mp3
https://freesound.org/people/Ligidium/sounds/193826/
Door Knock – 12.wav
https://freesound.org/people/LampEight/sounds/402465/
Door Open Close Heavy Wooden Hard Loud Creak Seal Theatre
https://freesound.org/people/rivernile7/sounds/234016/
Writing On Paper.wav
https://freesound.org/people/FunWithSound/sounds/361162/
Typing at Computer.MP3
https://freesound.org/people/adamlhumphreys/sounds/115386/
GroupOfCollegeStudentsInClassroom.wav
https://freesound.org/people/ancorapazzo/sounds/181618/
Crisps_open & crunching.wav
https://freesound.org/people/Reitanna/sounds/332668/
big thud2.wav
My Featured imagine is a conductor, as the title is “Symphony”. In addition, I don’t want to take a picuture of my room, as that is a safety risk and I like my privacy. My room is far too messy for anyone else to see! I also just like this picture!
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=2698&picture=the-conductor-type
For this assignment create a place by just using sound. For example, make the listener know where they are if outside use birds, cars, etc. You can get sounds from https://freesound.org
