I love horror movies. The creepier and gorier, the better. I also love a good monster. So, why not combine the two together into an audio horror story?
This was the second audio file that I have created, and it is SO much better than the first. After I got used to Audacity, I felt more comfortable using more sound files and I finished this one in about half the time. As a side note, I recommend using headphones when you are previewing sound files that involve screams, shrieks, and growls.
My take on this assignment was probably pretty basic, but I had so much fun doing it. I used a total of 6 different ~scary~ sounds from http://freesound.org. I’ve been having a lot of fun messing with the envelope feature, so when the person opens the door, you’ll notice the footsteps appear to be coming closer.
Honestly this is a stretch, but I guess this could go along with our course theme. Since I really enjoy watching horror movies, doing this assignment was my “Joy of Painting.” Because the roles have been reversed. I’m usually the one listening to other peoples scary sounds, but now people are listening to MY scary sound.
Hopefully I scared you enough!
“Within this assigment, you must find some spooky sounds and create a scary audio clip. Select more than four sounds and overlap them on a program like Audacity. You can use Freesound to select your sounds. Make them as spooky as possible. Good luck!”
It is always Halloween in my heart, it is always time to be spooky.
I did make the mistake of doing this assignment at night, so I hope I didn’t accidentally manifest any ghosts, but my dorm is already said to be haunted so I am already all ghosted up.
Speaking of, I started with something called the ‘Ghost Frequency’, a certain frequency that can’t be recognizably heard, but one that causes fear in the listeners. So I recorded a couple versions of that for a baseline. I used Audio Hijack to grab all of the sounds from youtube.
Then, I did some research. I found a couple of historical sounds that were used to create a fight or flight response. The one I chose was a sound used in a war to scare the enemy out of their hiding places. I don’t know if it worked, but I could hardly sit through it, so I added it.
Then I thought about jumpscares. Pretty easy to do with sound. I put static under the whole thing and made it really loud at the beginning and end. Just to spice things up, I also added some sirens. I know for me personally, hearing any sort of siren wailing causes my heart rate to increase, and I think the feeling is pretty standard for humans. And probably other animals too. I don’t think many dogs like the sound of tornado sirens. As a final touch, I put in some sounds of a ghost man crying.
As we all know, the first virtue of our patron saint is that “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” In this case, that is more than applicable. Any ‘mistake’, any part of the audio that is disjointed or uncomfortably edited is all the more perfect for this prompt. You are supposed to be unnerved. If that is by my poor editing skills, so be it.
Hope your bones are sufficiently chilled,
I used a few audio tracks from http://freesound.org as well as a .bmp image as a raw data file in Audacity to make this creepy ambiance.
I used the fade in, fade out, and amplify effects to mix the tracks together and get the balance I wanted. I really liked how the .bmp file added a really unsettling, glitchy static noise over the whole thing, and at one point I let the train sounds get overwhelmed by a distorted laugh that sounds like an alien creature. I can imagine this playing over a scene of a character trying to make their way from one care to the next of a speeding runaway train as a monster of some kind rushes up the line towards them.
Original sounds:
https://freesound.org/people/fluierasAnaCristina/sounds/500249/
https://freesound.org/people/Creeper_Ciller78/sounds/339189/
https://freesound.org/people/lennyboy/sounds/244417/
https://freesound.org/people/supersound23/sounds/350497/
The .bmp was a Minecraft screenshot that I converted to that file type.
I figure I should cite the work in here that isn’t mine. The music came from AudioBlocks, a website for royalty-free music and sound effects, and the Bob Ross quotes came from a GoodReads list here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/102372.Bob_Ross
The prayer is just the Hail Mary in Latin, and all of the sound except the music are me.
Within this assigment, you must find some spooky sounds and create a scary audio clip. Select more than four sounds and overlap them on a program like Audacity. You can use Freesound to select your sounds. Make them as spooky as possible. Good luck!
