In 1982, Soviet nuclear bunkers had a computer error which falsely reported that US nuclear missiles were inbound, and Soviet authorities almost launched nukes at the USA. This story is about the first 30 seconds in the USA if Nuclear war had been accidentally started in 1982. https://soundcloud.com/user-579284186/ds106-story-assignment

Assignment: Sound Effects Story

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. Another example (by a UMW student): http://ds106.us/wp-content/audio/audio_story.mp3

This was probably my least favorite audio assignment only because I couldn’t capture what I was trying to make. I was trying to represent a sad life of a man with the same thing over and over again and then finally him realizing this and giving up and finding interests elsewhere. I couldn’t get the last part which was pretty sad for me but this is what I got oh well! I did use a lot of sounds which got very convoluted real quick so if you’re working with many files please LABEL it will save you time and energy!

How It Works:
1.) Opened audacity and created new project
2.) I searched on freesound.org and used these beautiful sounds:
a.) https://freesound.org/people/nebulousflynn/sounds/220939/
b.) https://freesound.org/people/shyguy014/sounds/462455/
c.) https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/431117/
d.) https://freesound.org/people/rohanpp786/sounds/319360/
e.) https://freesound.org/people/crz1990/sounds/135872/
f.) https://freesound.org/people/themfish/sounds/45810/
g.) https://freesound.org/people/avakas/sounds/172365/
h.) https://freesound.org/people/Lightnessko/sounds/390327/
3.) I then imported each of these sounds into my project (file>import) and cut and moved each to fit my story!

… 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!

This week we were asked to tell a story using only sound effects, following the guidelines of the Audio Assignment Bank assignment, entitled Sound Effects Story.  AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments70This week we were asked to tell a story using only sound effects, following the guidelines of the Audio Assignment Bank assignment, entitled Sound Effects Story.

In the spirit of our DS 106 Spring Semester theme, I chose to summarize Ferris Bueller’s Day Off using strictly sound effects. All the sounds came directly from freesound.org. Garage Band was used to link all the sounds together.

This assignment makes you think! In my case because I chose an entire movie, I had to be strategic in what scenes to include. Then came the real challenge – finding sound clips! This is by far the most time consuming part of the assignment. While overall very easy, I did run into issues with audio files that could not be transferred into Garage Band. It was harder than I expected to find sound effects that emulated the scene I wanted to create.

There are a few instances where I manipulated the volume inputs. For example there is one moment where I was trying to capture the scene where Mr.Rooney breaks into the Bueller household, while Ferris’ sister is also in the house. They both enter hoping to catch Ferris in his act. Instead they catch each other. For this scene I chose to chance the inputs of the two doors opening to differing sides (left and right).

Overall, it was fun to play around in Garage Band and tell a story in a different way.

Sniffing While Sick.wav, Sniffing While Sick.wav, Old fashioned phone ringing, Dude Talk.wav, Car Ignition Key – Engine Starting Running 3.wav, School bell.wav, Cubs at WrigleyField.aif, 20061124ParadeBigBand.wav, Door Squeak, Normal, D.wav, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, Gurgled Scream, Police siren.mp3, Reel to Reel tape rewind.wav, thud.wav,Glass Break, Destruction, Wooden, A.wav, Crowd shock.wav,  NPX Male Kiss Kiss 1.wav, running, Growled Dog.wav,  DOR OPEN 8.mp3, Running Up The Stairs.wav, lay down object, Kocking door and open door.wav, and Snoring 4.

#ds106

This is the point of view from my friend who was almost kidnapped. A car chased them down and they called me during it. They were able to escape into an open hotel.

For this assignment, I decided to once again use sounds from the vault and used a couple sounds to describe a typical friday for an 80s teen; The birds chirping signify this teen waking up, the car starting showing they’re going to school, the bell meaning school is out, the rustling of the leaves showing they are in a rush to go home, and lastly time to party (80s style, as that’s the type of sound I chose) 

I created this piece through audacity and using the align button to easily just match one end to the other. 

Enjoy!

I found this assignment to be super fun yet challenging. As I said earlier, I have very little experience when it comes to audio recording and softwares. In fact I hate hearing myself talk and can’t work a computer to save my life. A bonus for me was that I could just use sound effects for this assignment. Although I don’t have much experience with editing software, I have a little bit of knowledge on Garage Band so for the purpose of this assignment I used that. I pulled sounds that resemble what I hear throughout most of my days. I got these sounds from the Free Sounds that our professor linked in the original assignment. My day starts off hearing an alarm clock each morning to wake me up. It is then followed by the sound (and smell) of my coffee brewing. After this my day consists of nannying a 3 year old which I chose to portray by a girl laughing. I then used a “car traffic” sound to represent me driving around running errands throughout the day. Finally, I added the noise of brushing teeth and getting ready for bed. Enjoy a day in the life of Kayla!

so my original plan for the short story with only sound bytes was a titanic-esque drowning story, then i realized that was a little bit dark, and changed pace to a more lighthearted ooky spooky vibe, much like the popular cartoon scooby do!

and here she is, in all her glory, fresh from my soundcloud page!

The starting point for this story was the background spooky music, it was my inspiration for the rest of it! I started with the spooky background, and then spent time on this website searching for footsteps and roars and all of the other necessary sounds for a mini horror story! I then copied them all onto a single audacity file and moved them to fit and flow nicely and naturally together. I made a few minor edits to the volume of each clip, just to make it feel more real, but other than that its mostly the original sounds!

As for thoughts behind the work, I was really honing in on the Scooby Do “scary but you know nothing Really Bad is going to happen” vibe. In my minds eye, the storyline is that someone wanted to go exploring, so they did. They walk up to an old abandoned church building, open the door, see a scary monster which roars at them, they scream, freeze for a minute, then slam the door and run away to their car (but like specifically the mystery machine). The use of the Wilhelm Scream may have been a little bit in poor taste, given its known-ness and how easily recognizable it is, but I couldn’t help myself and I do not regret it!

I really enjoyed scanning through the different sounds and searching for exactly the right one for my purposes and then cutting and editing it to work within the story. Also I really do forget how fun and important audio is to a story, and stripping everything else away made that abundantly clear in the best way possible. Overall a really fun assignment and a concept that I sort of want to pursue further. It reminds me of those “x song” but its played in a Very Specific set of circumstances that just really strike my fancy. (theres an assignment to make one of those but for copywright reasons I decided not to do it).

stay safe -liz

I was tasked to make a story out of only sound effects. Quite an odd assignment, but I am up to the task. Here’s what I came up with:

It starts with a hard office worker who is fed up with his job, drives to the airport and takes a flight to the beach where he finds himself driving a nice Corona.

For this assignment we had to create a short story using only sound effects. I decided to get my sound effects from BCC Sound Effects. It was a lot of fun to listen to all the different sounds until I found some that I like. I decided my story would be about an everyday women who ends up getting into some trouble. I tried by best to tell the story with the sound effects but it’s a little hard to understand, but I’m sure the more I practice, the better I’ll get!

I hope you enjoy my sound story!