Project.band Project.band

Above is my theme song for Longs! I learned how to get garage band finally on my computer, so I was super happy to mess around with it. I am still obviously not the best garage bander and I will never be, but I love making music and this is really a start. I enjoyed this because I was able to make it noir like and fun. I made it piano because Longs always looks like the good guy when honestly sometimes he really can be up to no good. I also chose to end with the deep and start with the lighter sound because he comes off sweet, until you get to know him. I chose what I did because he is pretty down to earth and laid back.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-theme-song/ (5 stars)

The assignment I did last was Your Theme Song worth 4 stars about my character. What I chose was dramatic type sounds that I felt fit the image that I could see as being Caleb. I hope you like it.

I did an assignment the week where I created my own theme song. I did it based on my character, Conway’s life. I chose to use the instrumental “centuries” by fall out boys. This is a good song for him because he will be remembered forever. I added a countdown to the beginning of the song. Right after the count down ends a series of gunshots start followed by car alarms. After that a slow rain comes in and then the rest of the song goes on. I feel like this song is perfect for him. I used audacity and soundbible to create it. The original assignment can be found here. It is worth four stars.

Earlier this week, I tried to do a theme song for Isabelle for 4 stars. I ran into some copyright issues and thought I guess I just shouldn’t do this… But I still felt really inspired by the incredible job Tiffany, one of my group member’s, did with her character’s theme song so I decided I’m going to try again! I also thought it might be possible to work it in with our radio show so I decided to go for it!

Soundcloud is currently processing it so hopefully I won’t run in to the same issues as I did earlier this week. I chose to mostly pull from Lana Del Ray’s album “Born to Die.” The intros to her songs have beautiful instrumentation at the beginning. I felt the opening of her song “Born to Die” captured Isabelle’s mature nature and taste. I then also used the opening of “Video Games [Joy Orbison Remix]” to create a sense of rushing that accompanies Isabelle as she rushes betweens labs to get her work done. I then used several sounds from freesound.org. I found one longer bubbling sound that I overlaid most of the audio with. I used an explosion in the beginning to immediately catch people’s attention and contrast with the instrumental parts that play. Finally, I added another more vigorous bubbling sound. I used fade in and fade out effects to introduce different portions of the theme song. I also adjusted the volume of the various clips so that the sound is well balanced and certain parts wouldn’t dominate too much.

Figuring out what Sasha Kellogg’s theme song would be was very hard! I wanted to complete this assignment in the hopes that maybe my group could use it during our radio show, because characters in shows often have some type of theme or background music that always plays when they are on screen. For the assignment “Your Theme Song” (4 pts) I created Sasha’s theme instead of my own, but I had to juggle the fact that Sasha is a perky person who loves a party and the fact that she has led a traumatic life and moves frequently. Instead of choosing a side, I thought that a theme song should encompass all of her sides, which made it really hard to pick out a song. I decided to break the theme up into two separate songs that would each relate to one half of her life. The first song is “In The Mood” by Glenn Miller and shows how Sasha is the life of the party. This song is upbeat and jazzy, and is actually from the 1940s instead of 1950s, but still works. Next, there is a door slam (“Heavy Door Open/Close” by Pagancow) and footsteps (“High Heels on Marble” by differentieel) that I found on Freesound.org to show how she is constantly on on the move as people find out her identity and she becomes uncomfortable staying in the same place. This is coupled with “Melancholic Interpretation in G#” by Connum (also on Freesound). This song is sad, but also resolute and determined, which shows how Sasha will not let this sad life weigh her down too much. She is determined to be hopeful about the future. I combined the sounds with Audacity, which was pretty easy as I’m getting used to manipulating sounds. The hardest part of combining the sounds was figuring out when to cut each of the songs. I always feel bad stopping songs in the middle, but I guess sometimes you just have to. I heard about other people getting into copyright trouble with this and similar assignments, and wanted to make sure that my use of “In the Mood” would fall under Fair Use, so I made sure not to use more than 30 seconds of it before the door slam. Overall, the sounds worked out pretty well, so the hardest part of this assignment was picking out a mood for Sasha’s whole life.

If you had the opportunity to create your own theme music, what would it sound like? Get creative and create your own sounds or select an instrumental from Youtube or any other source that represents you well. If you are going the youtube route, remember to use VidtoMp3. Once you have selected your background music, find some sounds/effects to incorporate into it using Audacity or other editing software. You can find free sounds at SoundBible. Once completed, upload to Soundcloud and share it with us.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-theme-song/

4 Stars!

For this assignment I was going to choose a song that fit my character but I chose to go with a tune that fits me. The song of choice was “Livin’ part of life” by Eric Chrurch. I know the assignment said to keep it to an instrumental but the lyrics are so perfect that I couldn’t cut them out. My favorite part of the song is “So tomorrow I’m takin me fishin, hang a sign on the door of my life, tell the world that Ive gone missin, An I wont be back for a while”

I converted the clip from youtube so that it could be uploaded to Audacity and then submitted the final copy to sound cloud. Enjoy!

For this audio assignment worth 4 stars, I had to make a theme song. I decided to use a theme song for my character Johnny Corner Pocket McCormick instead of doing one for myself. In this audio, it starts off by Johnny picking up a pool stick and putting some chalk on it. The intro music fades in and then breaks all the balls to signal the pool game has begun. The song would be perfect back ground music for one of Corner Pockets heated pool matches (and yes, pool matches can get heated). The instrumental I used is from Drake’s song called “Trophies”

I pulled the chalking the pool stick and the break sounds from freesound.org and found the instrumental on YouTube.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-theme-song/

Theme Song (4 stars)

If you had the opportunity to create your own theme music, what would it sound like? Get creative and create your own sounds or select an instrumental from Youtube or any other source that represents you well. If you are going the youtube route, remember to use VidtoMp3. Once you have selected your background music, find some sounds/effects to incorporate into it using Audacity or other editing software. You can find free sounds at SoundBible. Once completed, upload to Soundcloud and share it with us.

Story Behind the Story

I used this towards my character Stella. It was a lot easier to create a theme song for my character because I created her and I know exactly how she should be portrayed. I feel like if I had tried to make a theme song for myself it would have been all over the place and I probably would have spent hours trying to get it just right and then given up on it all together.

Stella is supposed to be peaceful and reassuring on the surface and then diabolical and scary underneath. I generally listen to rain or a piano playing while I am doing work just to tune our distractions, so I wanted one of those sounds to be the main base of her theme song. However, I also wanted the fear and deception to show through so I had a more intense, thriller soundtrack fade into the main sound towards the end.

I love having the two contrasting sounds because that is what Stella encompasses. She is a deceiving and manipulative person, but no one would ever see that until it it too late. That is why all the action occurs towards the end of the theme song. Once you realize you should start running, it is too late.

Work Itself

Narrate the process

This was a lot of playing around with sound effects and figuring out which ones worked well with the piano track. Surprisingly, not everything sounds good contrasted with a peaceful piano, so it was a lot of searching. I had a friend recommend the track that I ended up using, but I still took time to explore and see if it was the best one to use.

I also had to go through quite a but of sound effects, which I found at SoundBible. I just kept going through pages. I really didn’t know the kind of sounds I wanted to use. I dragged and dropped a lot of them until I found ones that seemed to fit with the tone.

ONE MORE ASSIGNMENT worth 4 stars! This assignment is called Your Theme Song. The task is as follows: If you had the opportunity to create your own theme music, what would it sound like? Get creative and create your own sounds or select an instrumental from Youtube or any other source that represents you well.

I decided that Blair needed a theme song more than I did, and by doing that I was able to hit my 10 stars and even did 6 in honor of the lovely Blair Morgan.

I did all of my editing on audacity, which has proven to be EXTREMELY helpful this semester. I started out with two songs for background music.

I used THIS scary music, and THIS sneaky music. I then went to freesound.com and downloaded the following sounds.

Sweeping

Man Yelling

Water Splash

Gun Shot

I did a lot of cutting with the music, to find pieces I thought fit the best into the theme song. I felt that making it simple would be able to tell a better story, and I was able to have the drama I wanted as well. Sometimes less is more, and I think that when you have a theme song, you don’t want to add TOO much so you don’t give away the entire story.

A little background: Blair is a crime scene cleaner. This is where the gunshot and sweeping comes into play. Blair also killed her husband by pushing him into the pool, hence the scream and the splash. The entire middle of the song eludes to the darkness of her killing her husband while the time before the first gunshot, and after the second gunshot allude to her everyday life as a crime scene cleaner.

I feel as though I did a good job with this assignment. It was super challenging, and it definitely took longer than I expected, especially with the layering and timing issues I was having.

Here is the final product!