Auditory Hell

I chose this two star assignment from the audio assignment bank. I instantly chose this assignment because off the top of my head I could think of a few really annoying sounds.

I first went https://freesound.org/ and searched for the most annoying sounds

1. I could find the first sound I found was a woman yelling really loud, no one likes to hear yelling and I thought it would get the annoying point across.

The second sound I used was nails on a chalk board, every time I listen to it, it makes the hairs on my neck raise.
My grandparents had an old grandfather clock, that had a bird chirp at the top of every hour. This is quite annoying if you are trying to take a nap or are trying to sleep through the night so I used the alarm clock bird chirping sound.
Guess what the fourth sound is, a baby because the damn grandfather clock woke the baby up.

5. I used a sound from an old computer game, I feel like it is the sound that is made when you keep on losing your life, like you fell off the cliff because the cliff pixels were so crappy and you fell. And now the computer game is making fun of you.

6. Is another annoying computer background sound I figured tied in well with the others.

After finding all sounds I wanted to use I then went to Audacity Tutorials and used this to help me figure my way through the Audacity App. Once I had all 6 sounds downloaded I was able to drag and drop the files into the App and was able to manipulate these files to intertwine with each other to make the product I have posted above.

For this assignment I had to think of the worst sounds I’ve heard or could think of, and put them into one soundtrack which would make anyone cringe.

The process:

Firstly, I thought about the sounds I disliked or make me cringe. I then went to find them on YouTube where I could convert into MP3. I had tried to use royalty free websites, however a lot of them I had to install things onto my computer which I wasn’t too keen on with viruses and all sorts of things I could actually end up downloading instead.
From YouTube I would then use a online converter by copying the URL into the converter.
I would repeat the process until i have 4/5 sound as briefed.
Next, putting the numerous files together. By importing them into audacity I was able to trim sections down using the trim tool.
Most of the sounds are pretty painful to listen to as they are so I havent changed any settings.
Then, just a case of overlapping them at the ends/beginnings so they smoothly change.
Finally, for an added horror I decided to place all the sounds on top of each other to play over each other.

Converter Website – One converted the file is downloaded.

Editing programme – Audacity

Why I used these sounds:

Nails on the Chalkbord – I went with an obvious one here admittedly. This is a typical sound people tend to dislike. I does quite make the hairs stand up though so it might be obvious but its also a classic!
Pitch Frequency – This one is just brilliant! The build up is just so painful and sounds like it lasts forever. The way it gets higher and higher is quite unbareable. I even chopped this file down as even I could listen to the full thing, but if you feel like it the link is below!!
Alarm – come on… no-one like the sound of their alarm!
Baby Crying – I got this idea after once watching a programme called SAS: Who Dares Wins and one of the torture methods they use to try crack the participants is to sit them in the stress position and listen to a baby crying… non stop, for maybe a couple of hours. This gave me the idea to use this as a distressing sound one might hear.
Screaming – Scream is associated with fear and the sound can be quite shivering and I think partly thats knowing that a person is also in harm. Again, this is more of a distressing sound.
I decided to put these all together as one at the end just to get an overwelming feel of discomfort.