For my very first audio assignment, I decided to do Phone Conversation with Myself because it looked very fun but simple to do. I started by thinking of ideas for conversations. At first I was thinking of a conversation with a friend who I haven’t talked to in a while so the conversation would just be those two people asking to hang out soon to catch up. But then while prank dialing friends I thought of the idea to do a prank call between two people as the phone conversation with myself. I then wrote the script for both parts and used Audacity to record it. Then after I finished recording, I changed the pitches of the two characters, one’s pitch went down by ten percent, and the other’s pitch went up by five percent, to give the effect of two different people talking.

Have A Phone Conversation With Yourself

“Using Audacity or another audio editing software, record yourself holding down both sides of a conversation. Using the pitch changer and/or other effects, change your voice so it sounds like two different people are talking.”

This is by far the most embarrassing assignment that I have done. I know I am not the only one who hates the sound of their recorded voice. It honestly makes me cringe when I hear my voice on a video or recording. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed this assignment because I was laughing so hard from it. Once you listen to it, you’ll understand why.

I decided to go with a conversation between my “dad” and I. This is the conversation we usually have when my dad decides he is technologically inept enough to call me. I thought it would be easy and phone to recreate it myself. Just so everyone knows, my actual does not exactly sound like this recording.

In order to recreate a phone conversation with my father, I had to download the wonderful Audacity software, as well as the other plugins that go with it in order to import files and export files.

I also signed up for freesound.org, in order to get sound effects if needed. In this case I did need a sound effect! I wanted the sound of the phone ringing. So I listened to a few ringing tones until I found the perfect one. I downloaded it, then imported it into the file.

Next I wrote out the conversation on paper so I was able to read directly from it so I would forget anything. I also made sure to pause after each different speaker so I could easily edit the one I needed to.

After I was done recording, I needed a way to change the voice that was supposed to be my dad. I selected a portion meant to be my dad and I went to effects then change pitch as you can see in this screenshot. I lowered the pitch to make a more manly sound out of my voice and it worked perfectly! To change the rest of the talking parts for my dad, I just repeated the same steps. 

After exporting the file as MP3, I uploaded it to my SoundCloud account. Now you are able to hear the final product. *feel free to laugh at me*

I really enjoyed this assignment because it gave me a chance to laugh at myself as I sit in my room having a conversation with myself. It also reminded of how much I love and miss my family (and pray that they never find this clip).

Hey everybody!

This week is all about audio and we were required to make at least 3 audio assignments worth a total of 8 stars or more. All assignments can be found in the Audio Bank on the ds106 website. For this assignment, I chose to do a conversation between “two people”. Both people are myself and the point was to alter the second voice so that it sounds like a different person. Here is a link to the actual assignment which is worth 3 stars: Phone Conversation.

The Story

I wanted to do a conversation between a daughter and a father because I believe that the dynamics between children and their parents have really changed over the years and are vary between cultures. In this audio story, a daughter is calling her father and asking for more money with an air entitlement. Specifically, she wants to buy more shoes. These two things are very relevant to some of the problems our modern, American society faces like the need to constantly buy “stuff” and the sense of entitlement that many of us (including myself) have as a result of the privileges we are born with. I don’t think anybody can argue that spending money we don’t have and feeling like we are entitled to whatever we want is a good thing. The conversation between daughter and father also includes his reaction which we hope is something along the lines of “absolutely not!” however, in this scenario, he spoils her by offering an obscene amount of money to spend on more shoes. We see this kind of exaggerated behavior in many funny movies and books and pictures because we know that these things actually happen. On a personal note, my father didn’t even like giving me money to go and buy ice-cream with friends and in a way I feel that he taught me a lesson about the virtue of working hard and providing for oneself to the best of ones abilities. I believe that media today should be showing more images and stories of people who work hard and earn their keep instead of watching wealth fall into somebodies lap.

The Product

The Process

Please watch the instructional video below on the programs I used and steps I took to make this audio file. It is a very helpful visual for the procedure and goes well with my brief summary. For this assignment, I had to look up a YouTube tutorial on how to change ones voice in Audacity and make it a male voice. I found a good video by Layla. I opened audacity and recorded the whole conversation in one sitting. The next step was to go back and highlight the areas of the voice that I needed to change and to go into “effect” and “change pitch”. The YouTube video has a slightly different version of Audacity but the basics are the same. Change the “semitones” to a -4.00 setting and then to move the “percent change” to -19.00.

After I finished changing the voice, I simply selected the whole clip and exported it as an MPR3 format file.

A phone call with myself!