Take at least 3 household sounds (things you hear everyday during your commute, work day, school day, etc.) and take them out of context. Mash them up, combine them, remix them any way you want, as long as the final product does not resemble the things the sounds came from.
For this assignment what I did was take a song I knew how to play on an instrument, such as piano in this case (but it can be any instrument you please), and then I made some changes to the way I played it. What I challenge you to do is learn a new song on any instrument that you play and change it up and just see what you get, and if you end up liking it.
Create a new mashup by combining any two songs you feel fitting for a mashup! You would be surprised at some of the results!
Below I completed this assignment by mashing Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” with Letting Go (a popular electro song back from 2011)
Record glimpses of different sounds you hear throughout the day, at university, your job, or your city. Compile as many sounds as you would like (ideally in 10 second burst), this makes it easier for editing, chopping, and creating. Then, lay the sounds on some background music you borrow or create yourself, if you borrow the music make sure to give credit. Use audio editing software like Audacity or Logic and share the assignment through Sound Cloud or other medium. Lastly, have patience and have fun with this. If you choose this assignment, please share!
Say any tongue twister as fast as you can and include a background sound to layer it.
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
For this assignment, you should create a story using the lyrics from various Disney songs. For example, if you start with “did they send me daughters when I asked for…,” from Mulan, you could follow it up with “happy snowmen!” from Frozen. In no way does your story have to make logical sense. Be creative!
A short audio advertisement on a podcast for the email service Mailchimp went viral; it uses simple audio technique of one message being read by people with different voices, and editing it together. See if you can replicate it with 2-5 sentence message for something you care about. Write out the message, get 3-5 people to record the whole message, and edit to have it be seamless with different voices. Good luck going viral!
Mixtapes can come in different forms–sometimes a mixtape is just a collection of one’s favorite tracks, sometimes it is a collection of tracks put out by a sinlge artist. Sometimes they have small edits made to them, like a DJ saying their catchphrase.
Try creating a mixtape of your own. Mixtape is broadly defined in this case. It can just be a collection of songs with some theme (genre, etc.), or you can mess with the tracks. You can add a small touch here and there or edit the tracks to your heart’s content, adding outside sounds using tools from your favorite audio editing software.
I’ve been playing around with Audacity, which is free, so that cold be a good place to start.
For this assignment you want to choose a song, and using just itself and editing tools such as pitch change, and bass boost, change the song to have a unique sound or feel. Some edits used to do this could be bass boost, pitch changes, play speed changes, reverberations, echos, fade in/out, and overlays of the song.
