The prompt

(This is a folk song written in the 1800s that was recorded in 1922 and is now public domain. However, since it is a song that already exists, Soundcloud may flag it anyway. If it gets taken down, leave a comment and I’ll try to embed the file or something. Just so we’re all on the same page.)

The description: It’s been fifteen years since the virus began spreading. It’s been ten since the vaccines failed, and six since it mutated into a hyper-deadly, hyper-contagious variant that wiped out 97% of the population. You’re one of the last survivors on the planet. As you raid an abandoned house for supplies, you accidentally trigger a tripwire and the music starts playing. As you explore further, you find who set up the tripwire, at least what’s left of them: a skeleton on the floor of the bedroom, lying on a bloodstained carpet, the gun they used to take their own life still in their hand. You take the gun. You can’t afford to waste time and resources to mourn the dead. Not anymore.

The writeup: I have been thinking about apocalypses in relation to this song a lot recently, considering that was the long-form writing idea I came up with and I’m still planning to do something with it. The song is a folk song, so there are plenty of different versions of it. I originally tried to do this project with the Gene Autry version of the song titled “Red River Valley” because that one’s my favorite, but Soundcloud flagged it, so I used the version that’s old enough to be public domain instead. I honestly hate this version, but it gets the mood across. I like the juxtaposition of an upbeat song with the gruesome image of a suicide that was never found (honestly, one of the more grim images I could think of from an apocalypse).

I took the base recording and used Sony Vegas Movie Maker 15 to make the edits. I used the amplitude modulation to increase the wet out to 24 dB and lower the amplitude. I also had the low-pass start frequency set to 230 Hz. I then used the Track EQ feature. I honestly don’t know what it does exactly, but when I was playing around with it, I found that moving point 1 to (+15, 166) and 4 (-15, 169) came with a good effect.

… and It’s Raining Outside and Your Siblings Are Playing In It and Your Parents Are Making Dinner and You’re Playing Video Games. That’s the title. (Cover art by Matt Rockefeller!) Inspiration taken from the following (anyone else have a Minecraft phase?):

For this assignment, I decided to kind of combine two into one: the Sound Effect Story as well as the Played From Another Room assignment. For the Sound Effect Story (by Martha and Jim Groom), one is supposed to 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.” As one can tell below, I have kind of broken the rule by implementing vocals, but I feel like I used enough sound effects simply accompanied by music to tell this story: I added rain, footsteps, sliding door sounds, button clicking, video game controller mashing, kitchen noises, pots/pans clinging, and some voice acting (from yours truly). I recommend you listen to the whole thing and read the following description since there are some surprises –

Honolulu, HI (August 1988) – You watch your dad come out at the sound of rain, his dark hair tousled with fatigue from working all day. It had been oddly dry recently for Hawaii, though Tropical Storm Gilma had finally arrived and had suddenly unleashed the heaviest of rains. Your two younger siblings cheered, jumping up from their NES controllers and hopping over to the glass window. Ian decided to run back and squeeze in one last punch, almost finishing off your character while you were distracted. “Hey!” you exclaim with a voice crack, though he was already off at the window. Your father told them that he would call them in for dinner and they ran outside, baring themselves to the elements. You turn back to your video game, a familiar hand ruffling your hair before Dad went to join your Mom – your Ina – in the kitchen. Listen to fill in the blanks of what happens next:

Before I go into the technicalities, I will include the description of Played From Another Room: “This media assignment has two parts. First, edit a song to sound like it is playing from another room. The audio should sound muffled and the bass should be prominent… The second part of this assignment is to write a weirdly specific description of your song.” I assume the narrative I wrote could be considered a weirdly specific description. This story was inspired by love since it is Valentine’s Day. I don’t really know what it’s like to be with family like that, but this is what I imagine it is like. Something comforting, surrounded by noise and family, yet also having enough space to be alone. Having a mom and dad and siblings – laughter and light – all at once.

Cough. ANYWAYS, I talked about this song a couple of weeks ago and the nostalgia it gives me. My first step was actually to find the cover art, which took a while since I had originally planned to just find a picture of someone using a laptop in bed with a light on in the hallway. I stumbled on this picture by Matt Rockefeller and used what I saw to choose which sounds went into this mix. I converted all the clips I wanted using a YouTube to MP3 converter and combined the auxiliary/one-time sound effects into one track. The music, rain, button-pushing, and other constant noises had their own tracks. I wrote a little script and recorded the lines with Audacity in the Vocal Booth at my university to have the best quality. After that, I cleaned them up with the Noise-Equalize-Normalize process in my last post, though I targeted more bass for the man’s voice and treble for the woman’s.

After that, it was a matter of timing the sounds and balancing them. I had to quiet the kitchen noises when the parents started speaking and increase the volume of the rain for when the sliding door opened. To make each sound distant, I lowered their ‘gain’ before increasing the reverb so they echo throughout their spaces (thus showing distance). Then, I made the sounds more muffled by applying a Low Limit Filter at about 600 Hz to shorten the frequencies and indicate that there is some kind of wall between you and your parents. I used a ‘Studio Fade Out’ (which sounds much fancier than the ‘Fade Out’ tool) to isolate the ambient sounds at the end. That way people can enjoy a brief moment of reflection and lose themselves to this new setting. I wanted to add more sounds like a cat purring and the kids cheering, but it was starting to get rather complex and could take away from the music. I hope you enjoyed it and let your imagination wander!

Is this song REALLY played from another room?

Nope! I edited this song to make it sound like it was being played from another room! I cranked down the bass and treble to make it sound muffled.

The Original Song:

As you listen to this song, imagine yourself having no stress in life, no assignments, no worries, no insecurities, no negatives! Just positives! There is nothing to worry about! All you have to focus on is having fun and enjoying life! Live the way you want to and experience the world how you want to experience it! Live life to the fullest!

Enjoy and let your imagination flow as you listen to this song played from another room!

Push It- but you are hiding in the bathroom at a club your friends convinced you to come to for “80’s night” so you are texting your boyfriend to come pick you up because you would rather be at home with a cup of tea cuddling your cat.

This was the first audio project where I had an issue uploading my assignment to sound cloud. Sound cloud immediately deleted my posts, even when I tried to change the frequency and name the mp3 a different name. I was not aware that the website would detect it that fast! I wonder what types of cyber security sound cloud uses to fend off copy write infringements.

All of the sound effects were found on freesounds.org, and I downloaded the original song from this website. I used Audacity to layer the four different audio clips. To create the muffled sound, I used the Low-Pass Filter option in the effects tool bar!

This assignment challenged me to edit a song to make it sound muffled as it was coming from a different room! This is worth three stars.

I have never used audio editing software before so it was definitely a learning experience. I downloaded Audacity, a free audio mixing application. I followed this YouTube tutorial to create this effect. I selected the song “Sanctuary” by Hikaru Utada because I think it’s very beautiful and ethereal sounding song. I thought it would sound really cool from a distance.

The first effect that I added was called a “low-pass filter” The tutorial gave me certain numbers to input in this section, but I also played around with a few to see how it would change. Once I applied the filter, the audio sounded significantly more muffled. It already sounded like it was coming from a different room, but I decided to mess with it more and add distortion and reverb for more of an echo-y effect.

You’re 8 years old tucked into your bed and your older sibling and their friend are sitting on the couch in the room over at 1am playing the Kingdom Hearts 2 opening song over and over again because they finally beat it after several hours of attempting the final boss

For my first audio assignment, for 3 stars, I did one that I’ve always been drawn to on social media; the “playing in the other room audio”. I’ve always found it soothing and cool to listen to. Following along with our 80’s theme, I chose my favorite song from Pretty in Pink, “If you leave”. I turned up the equalizer to “Walkie-talkie” on Audacity and boosted the bass. This was my first time doing it but it was very fun to learn. The first couple of time I guess I didn’t edit it enough so it got taken down. I think with this one it will stay up since I edited a lot. Crossing my fingers!

Here is my description for the edited song: You’re spending a quiet night in while If You Leave plays downstairs in the living room. You’re sitting in your room on the windowsill watching the rain outside. You’re relaxing and calm.

I honestly felt that this would be really simple, but as I looked through Audacity, I was in the biggest stump ever. I don’t know how to edit audio at all. Before attempting this, I thought to myself, “You can do this, it shouldn’t be so hard.” I was so wrong. And this was my first assignment for the week, so I already started freaking out about whether I could actually accomplish what I need to do. What a great start to the week, am I right?

I used Audacity in high school because my French teacher graded us on assignments we did through the program, so I understood the very basic knowledge of the program. However, when it comes to actual editing… I became stumped right away. I didn’t know what to do. I played with so many effects: limits, low-pass filter, bass and treble, etc. I just couldn’t get what I wanted. After two hours of not being able to figure out what I needed to do, I sought help from my amazing and talented suite-mate. I just didn’t think my edited clip was good enough.

When she came back from class, she said my audio clip isn’t horrible. That I actually did really good for someone who didn’t know what they were doing. That warmed my soul.

Then, she played the original song in her room, blasted it, and closed the door. I figured the bass would be a lot higher than the treble, but in fact they were roughly at the same sound level. That actually made me feel a lot better, because I couldn’t figure out how to make the bass much more higher than the treble without the bass practically blowing my speakers out.

When we listened back to my original edited clip, I realized how similar it was to real life. It’s not perfect, but really near to what it sounded like when we played it through our speakers. I felt proud of myself, though I had no clue how exactly I did it. I just know that I used low-pass filter and edited the bass and treble off Audacity.

The original song sounded like this:

And after many tears and confused screams, this is my final result:

It’s 1 am, and you’re laying in bed, looking at the ceiling in frustration. It’s supposed to be quiet hours, and while you’re trying to go to sleep, you can’t because of your lovely neighbors and their partying. You start to think to yourself, “How long until my suffering ends… but I can’t deny, this is a good song.” as you tap your feet along with the song.

Description: “This media assignment has two parts. First, edit a song to sound like it is playing from another room. The audio should sound muffled and the bass should be prominent. Here is an example of this effect and here is a tutorial on how to do this. The second part of this assignment is to write a weirdly specific description of your song. Here is an example of a description.”