We all have our particular sounds of the morning, afternoon, and night. The bang of a door or squeaky board in the floor may be familiar to us but jarring to others. In this audio assignment, I explored that blurry line of familiarity and alienness by recording sounds around me that are familiar to me. I took samples of my roommate’s cat meeping, the jingle of his collar (a very routine sound), the creaky floor of my bedroom and finally my very loud toaster. What I was really surprised about was how these familiar sounds sounded foreign to me when recorded up close and isolated. The floor board especially sounded very strange to me when it was recorded with a microphone so close to it. You almost couldn’t tell it was a squeaky floor.
I wanted to be able to communicate a story with this audio assignment as well. Through arranging the sounds in a certain pattern and cutting them down so they blended together, I tried to make an audio story of a typical morning of waking up and going to the kitchen to make breakfast. Hopefully this is clear through listening to it! It was fun thinking of which sounds to capture and hearing them in succession. I’d actually recommend doing this activity if you get anxious or are away from home for a long time. Listening to the sounds you know best can be very soothing. Check out my morning mix below!
The goal of this assignment was to record sounds that I hear daily, but may be unfamiliar to others and turn it into an audio story.
For this assignment, I chose to let everyone hear the sounds I hear everyday out on the farm. The audio clip below will walk you through the first half of my evening chores out at the barn. The clip will start with me leaving my house. You will hear me walking up the stairs, locking the house up, and starting my car. Then once we get to the barn, you will be able to hear the creaking feed room door, feed being dumped into a bucket, a stall door opening, horses walking, and the gator, which is a vehicle we use to drive around the farm. Unfortunately you will not be able to hear any of the horses neighing or calling for each other because they do not do that on cue.
Take a listen.
I created this audio clip by recording the noises with the Voice Memo app on my iPhone. I then sent each of the different recordings to my computer and compiled them using Audacity. I imported each of the individual recordings into Audacity and used the Time Shift tool to have one recording start at the end of the previous, in the order that you would hear them if you were actually at the barn during chores.
This assignment was worth 2.5 stars and the link can be found here.
I like how everyday sounds, when taken out of context, can turn into something completely different. This led me to try the Familiar Sounds assignment. I began by recording my bathroom fan in Audacity. The sound itself is very rhythmic, and has a somewhat industrial feel to it. This led me to the second half of the assignment: creating a story. I decided to compliment this industrial sound with other construction noises. Using the free sound effects library in YouTube, I found sounds for hammering, starting a baler, and air nailing. By combining these in new tracks within Audacity, it created a plausible construction scene. This reminded me somewhat of the Foley video, in that familiar items can be used to create the sound effects for an unusual scene. I’ve mentioned this theme before, but I feel that it’s worth mentioning how this also strengthens the idea of maintaining a somewhat skeptical mind. First impressions (in radio, the Internet, and other mediums) can be deceiving, especially with the editing technology we have at our disposal now.
These are things I’ve done to complete my two audio assignments.
I used audacity, freesound, and a basic mic for recording sounds. If you need more information on working with audacity and or want to work with an existing sound file, this page is a good place to start.
First, I downloaded audacity. To place sound files in your project you can simply drag and drop files or import the sound files. you will find this under the File options in the toolbar. Another way to place tracks in your project is by recording them.
Click on the record button (circle [it is the highlighted button above]) and it will start recording automatically. If you want to pause, but not stop, click the pause button (two vertical bars) and when you are ready to resume click on the play button (triangle.) When you are ready to stop the recording click on the stop button (square.)
Once you have some sound files in your project, you’ll probably want to manipulate them and move them around.
These are the main tools you will use to do such things. The four essential tools are the top two and the bottom two. The Selection tool, the Envelope tool, the Zoom tool, and the Time Shift tool. first, we will focus on what we can do with the Selection tool: this tool looks like the uppercase i (I)
Above is an example where nothing is highlighted of selected.
Below I will go over simplifying and cleaning your work station.
Select track – drag and highlight track Go to the desired area Select track again and press the
Copy – CTRL + C Paste – CTRL + V BACKSPACE key to delete it
Now for the actual simplifying, delete the row; that way there is less to scroll through and it’s easier to look at.
Now you are working with two rows instead of three! Doing this later in the editing process is really useful when you have an abundance of different tracks.
Moving on to the Envelope Tool:
this tool looks like the two triangles facing each other with a line drawn between them.
Above is a simple crescendo. How I accomplished this:
I clicked on the envelope tool and chose a place to start, I then had the option to make the track quieter (pushing the sound toward the center) or making it louder (pulling the sound toward the edges.) I kept the starting point the same, and I chose my second point to grow louder. The programs automatically draw a straight line from one point to the next, so it will always be an even crescendo/decrescendo unless you manipulated it to sound differently.
The top is my starting point and the bottom is my Her I made a decrescendo after the initial crescendo.
ending point. I manipulated it to show a crescendo I simply chose the third spot and pulled it down
Thirdly I will go over the Zoom Tool:
This is probably the most self-explanatory tool. It zooms in and out to make editing easier.
After you select the Zoom tool, which looks like a magnifying glass
Original Zoomed in Zoomed out
(nothing) (left click) (right click)
Lastly, I’ll be going over the Time Shift tool:
The symbol this tool uses is two arrows pointing opposite of each other
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I call this the moving tool because that’s what you do with it, you moving tracks around with it.
Here are some visual examples of me using the timeshift tool:
If you click on the track and you are unable to move them, take a look at this:
If your bar looks like the picture on the left, press the yellow stop button. When it looks like the picture on the right you should be able to move the tracks around.
As all of you may know, Blair is my host character this semester for DS106! I will share a little background information with you all regarding Blair..
She is super shy
She has hallucinations
Blair shows schizophrenic like symptoms however, has not actually been diagnosed
Her parents were found dead in their mansion a few years ago & the community thinks Blair is to blame
Blair sees, feels, and talks to people and objects that aren’t actually there
She believes that demons are taking over her body, which cause her to be the blame for countless bloody acts
The voices she hears demand for her to follow their orders, or else bad things will happen
For this 25 second recording I found different sound clips off of YouTube and uploaded the clips onto audacity. I used these clips because it gives you a little sense of what Blair hears on almost a daily basis. Blair goes to therapy and will do anything for these demons to leave her alone. But… they keep haunting her wherever she goes.
For my third audio assignment, I chose one that was always created. This assignment called to create sounds that are familiar to us, but may be strange to others. I included crickets chirping, frogs croaking, an airplane, and a ceiling fan. These sounds exists at my house. The crickets and frogs are pretty noisy every night especially in the warmer months. I live in the woods and in front of our house we have a small pond where the crickets and frogs live. I live close to an airport so every few nights I will hear an airplane taking off or landing. Finally, I like to sleep with my ceiling fan running faintly, so that is why I chose the sound of a fan. Here is the link of my assignment to Soundcloud and Twitter.
Here is the Familiar Sounds assignment that is 2 points. I wanted to do another sound that I hear a lot, besides my dog. I did my fan. I always have to sleep with noise on and for it to be relatively cold in my room. So, the fan gives me noise and makes it cold. Here is a sound of my fan running in the corner of my room.
For this assignment I decided to use all the sounds that you would hear in the 1940s but not so much today. I started with a rotary telephone since they emerged in that time. Next a typewriter, an important tool during World War Two. After that a radio clip I found on YouTube. And lastly a jazz clip also from YouTube. I used Audacity for the editing and this assignment was relatively easy. The hardest part was deciding which sounds to use and the order they should go into.
This is the Familiar Sounds assignment that is two points. When we were asked to record something that people don’t usually hear on a daily basis but is familiar to us, I though of my dog. I own a pug and they are known for having problems breathing because of their squished faces. Pugs snore very loudly. I live in an apartment so his snoring can be so loud at times that we have to turn on a fan to drown out the noise. Here his snore is a little muffled because he is in a corner of the apartment. I hope you enjoy!
The Familiar Sounds assignment was a great choice for my first audio assignment this week. I have to say I was/still am very nervous about these audio challenges. After playing around with Audacity for a good hour and a half last night, I walked away equally impressed with everything the application could do and terrified of trying to do anything on it. It’s a pretty complicated tool, but a pretty useful tool once I figured out how to use it. A good tip I’ve discovered in this course is that there’s nothing a good Google search can’t fix Plus, Audacity has its own, incredibly helpful wiki page that offers all kinds of tips and tricks – and, yes, of course I shared my discovery:
The Familiar Sounds assignment, though, seemed fairly simple. It didn’t require any intense effects, but still let me get my hands (or…ears?) dirty with recording, cutting, and rearranging audio on Audacity. I went through my day recording the sounds that seemed both random and usual to my days (often I would hear something and then re-do whatever I had just done in order to capture the sound).
From there, it was pretty simple to cut and rearrange the audio so that it told the story of my day. I did make a few mistakes though, but, once again, thank goodness for that heavenly ctrl-z. I found a really important aspect to my editing process to be removing the excess noise, such as clicking record and stop record on my keyboard. These seemingly un-noticeable sounds actually interrupt the sound I was trying to capture, so I had to make sure I took those little clicks out of my audio.
The final result is a pretty good compilation of the sounds I encounter on a fairly daily basis:
-My morning alarm (a.k.a. the most dreaded sound of all) -Clicking on my lamp -Opening my door -Starting the shower -Running downstairs (because I’m probably running late) -Starting my car -Shuffling books and papers -Typing away at my computer -Shuffling for my keys at the end of the day -Returning home, dropping my bag, switching of the lamp, and hitting the pillows.
