Audio Assignments

Consult with your Doctor

If you give Dr. Oblivion (https://oblivion.university/) a question or directive, he will give a response of up to a minute, which may or may not be loaded with snark. For this assignment you should download the MP3 of the Doctor’s response, import it into Audacity and cut it up and insert your part of the conversation, which doesn’t necessarily have to match your original input. You may download a few MP3 responses from https://oblivion.university/ to get some personality variation. And you don’t have to let him have the last word.

Make some BOOM

One of the positive developments of artificial intelligence is the NEEDS MORE BOOM site (https://needsmoreboom.com/) which will re-script a movie scene in the style of Michael Bay. Actually it will turn any text input into a Michael Bay scene. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the site to generate a script, then make that script into an audio production. You can find sound effects at freesound.org and you can Google “open source music” for soundtrack music. Blow this assignment up!

Breaking News!

Create a breaking news story. This should be fake news. You should create a dialogue and have an AI read it using text to speech. There are several free programs. One possibility is Colossyan.com. Mix in a news jingle to make your story sound legit. You can find some jingles on freesound.org. Be sure to give credit if necessary. 

Be creative, funny, or serious. The choice is yours. Just make it sound realistic.

Recite a story

Record yourself reciting different sections of a novel to quickly give the jist of the story or a subplot. They can be bits of dialog or exposition, but make sure they’re spread throughout the novel, so you’re getting a full storyline. Add music or sound effects in the background if you want, just make it engaging!

Album Mashup

Create a mashup on GarageBand or comporable with multiple songs from the same album.

Chrome Music Labs

Using the crome music labs at https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/ , Specifically the Song Maker application make a song that’s at least 20 measures long. Then share your Piece on your blog or tweet it and explain your artistic process.

Eat Your Hear Out Beethoven

Take an existing piece of mucis and and change the instrumentation. This could mean taking an a capella piece, and turning it into a piece for string quartet, or taking a beethoven piece and adapting it for electric guitar bass and drums. You could even take the alma matar and turn it into a bag pipes piece (im sure the school would love that). Once you’ve change up the piece, try playing it, blog about your choices and the thinking behind them, or post a recording on soundcloud.

3’s A Band

Using a Free Notation software (such as musescore) Create a piece of music using 3 instuments. The piece can be as long or as short as you would like, in any style but It must have 3 seperate and distinct instruments.

Create a ds106 radio bumper

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.

Sound Effects Story

Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds. Another example (by a UMW student): http://ds106.us/wp-content/audio/audio_story.mp3