I just finished completing the Sound Effects Story assignment, and wow was that frustrating! I could not figure out how to layer files in Audacity, so after 30 minutes of trying on my own I finally decided to look for help on the ds106 page and lone behold there was a video on how to layer it. Once I figured this out, it was fairly easy. I downloaded all my sounds from freesound.org and then just imported them into Audacity. The five sounds I chose were 1) dogs barking 2) gun shots 3) a horse galloping 4) opening a door and 5) people talking. I actually asked my roommate to listen and tell me if she had any idea what the story was supposed to be and she said “someone riding a horse to a saloon?”. She was right, this was Agnus’s ride to work earlier today. She left her house and saw her brother and father outside shooting in the backyard, as she was leaving the dogs were barking and the horse galloped off into town. Once she got into town, she got off her horse and tied her up and then opened the door to the saloon to all the chatter and started her shift for the night!

This assignment is a submission for the Sound Effects Story assignment.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/sound-effects-story/

I utilized the sound effects downloaded off of free sound in audacity to create my story.

This story reflects my characters need for a drink. He walks into a saloon. His footsteps are heard up until he reaches the bar. The bartender displays different bottles of alcohol in front of him until he chooses one. He drinks it and is satisfied. Rummaging in his pockets for change, he finds the right amount and then walks away.

The only obstacle to this assignment was converting certain media files such as WAV’s to mp3s. This was quickly remedied by looking for a program to convert these files. I happened to download MediaHuman Audio Converter to convert said files. Afterwards, I uploaded them into audacity and edited them together.

Overall, this was a fairly straightforward assignment with few complications.

In accordance with this assignment, here is a day in the life of Danny Keys through audio. His job is to play piano in a saloon, so the majority of the sound here is music. Here we go through his work day, warming up on the piano, playing through the day, and slowing down as people filter out until the music is done.

I admit, I feel like I could have done a lot better with this assignment than the final piece here, but I am still new to audio editing and this alone took me a few hours to do. I have learned a lot, though, so my goal is to be relatively proficient by the end of this week.

I used the program Audacity to compile audio clips from Freesound. The clips entail piano phrases and saloon/bar ambiance sounds, with a little guitar thrown in the mix to round out the music.

When I finished this assignment, I was surprised that my file was only 19 seconds long! For the amount of time I spent working on it I expected it to be longer, but I’m happy with the final project. The story I tried to create was that of my outlaw, Rose Oakley, running from the law. I used 6 different sounds from freesounds.org; 1) a gun shot from a pistol, 2) running through the grass, 3) horses running on grass, 4) dogs barking, 5) bushes rustling, and 6) a sigh. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, specifically going through and picking out the specific sounds that I wanted for my file.

For this assignment we were required to tell a story of only sounds while using our character. This story is of Sally and her daily life, just without words. All the sounds used are from freesound.org. I started off this project by writing this here post you’re reading and thinking of how I am going to show Sally’s everyday life. I decided that I wanted to start off with how she wakes up, the school lunch bell, she yawns. Since she owns a bar she doesn’t have to wake up early so she generally wakes up around noon, since she has late nights. She rides her horse down to the saloon – which is normally a 30 minute walk but since she got her own horse it only takes 10 minutes. She opens up the saloon and begins setting up the chairs and tables and setting the bottles and glasses. Once the end of school bell chimes, which normally means work is over, the place starts to fill up and there’s all sorts of business going on. Glasses are clinking and good times are being had. Around 1 a.m. there’s a loud whistle, almost like a train, that signifies you need to get up and out of the bar because they’re closing. Once everyone’s out all you hear are the crickets in the night and Sally galloping on home to get some shut eye and do it all again the next day.

This was worth 3.5 stars.

An audio assignment we had to complete this week was titled “Sound effects story”.  For this audio assignment I had to create a story using only sound effects. But, to add to the difficulty of this assignment, the story had to be based on my western character, Talie. In order to create Talie’s story I used the site freesounds and the software audacity. I first brainstormed a story that would fit the theme for my character. I then tried to find the sound effects that would fit into my story by using freesounds website. When I found the needed sound effects I downloaded them so I would be able to import them into audacity. This worked pretty well until I had to figure out how to move certain files so they would follow behind the first files. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure how to do this by reading directions and tips online. I figured out that in order to move files later in the audio sequence I have to select the individual file and use the time shift tool rather than the select tool. As such, I found this assignment quite challenging until I was able to solve that problem. However, once I did learn how to complete that task the assignment ended up being quite fun.

Since my western character is a cowgirl this short clip illustrates her taking a trip down to the bar to spend time with friends. She always rides Smarty (her horse) down to the bar after a long day working at the ranch. Smarty loves to ride down to town with Talie and expresses his happiness by neighing. Once, Talie gets into town she hops off Smarty and begins walking to the bar. When she reaches the bar she opens the door and is greeted and enjoys her time with her friends. Until, a larger commotion starts to breakout but, luckily Talie is there to calm everyone back down, so it returns back to a normal bar level. A little while later Talie is happy and had a great time relaxing with friends but knows she has to go because she has to get up early to work on the ranch. So, she says goodbye to her friends and closes the bar door behind her. She walks back out to Smarty and he neighs in excitement when he sees her. Then they gallop off back home to the ranch.

Below is my soundcloud clip of Talie’s bar adventure.

All sound effect clips I used I obtained from freesounds site:
For the galloping clip: prosounder galloping horse.
For the neighing clip: acclivity neigh2.
For the walking footsteps clip: inspectorj_footstepslight.
For the bar door and light restaurant noise: arnaud-coutancier_village-bar
For the larger noise commotion at the bar: barcelonetasonora_restaurant

This assignment completes 3.5 stars worth of this week’s 8 star requirement.