This is a sound story that I put together about my days at work. I drive to the train station very early in the morning, take the train in to DC, work/drink tea from the keurig all day, and then take the train back home
I made this by downloading sounds from freesounds.org (links will be at the bottom of the post). I then used audacity to trim down the individual sounds and put them in order. So far I am really enjoying audacity and the audio work, even though it was very confusing at first.

Freesounds.org
K-cup brewing, typing, city noises, train, train noises, car noises 

Since it was my first time using Audacity, I kept this clip short and sweet. The assignment was to tell a story using only sound effects. This tells the story of the morning of elementary school kids. They’re always so chatty in the morning. As the school bells rings, the kids run up the school stairs into the front doors. Their sneakers squeak down the hallways as they continue to talk to one another. The kids go to their lockers and then go to their designated classrooms and another school day begins.

To make this clip I downloaded audacity and made a freesound account. Freesound was pretty easy to use. I just downloaded the clips and dragged them into Audacity. Since I’m not a huge fan of sitting through tutorials, I played around with the clips to try to understand Audacity a bit better. I used 8 different audio clips to create this story.I tried to publish this assignment to  twitter and soundcloud through known, but it wouldn’t upload the file

Here are the clips I used:

Kids Playing

School Bell

Sneakers

Busy Kids Chatting

Opening Door

Lockers

Paper Shuffling

Here is what my project looked like in Audacity

For this assignment I picked to create a story all out of sounds. This was so relevant to me because in social psychology, we just learned the impact of nonverbal communication.

This process was pretty easy for me this time! Luckily I had already had experience using Audacity from previous courses.

Thoughts:

I came up with all the sounds by mimicking my daily routine. My alarm goes of for a while, the I get into the shower, make my coffee, walk to class, the professor hands out papers, you can hear sighs all across the room, and the clock in the room is so loud!

Process:

I simply downloaded Audacity and then made an account on Freesound. Freesound was surprisingly easy to use! When it came to trimming, I got so frustrated! But I finally realized you had to hit the STOP button, not the pause in order to be able to delete a section. I literally spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out, I googled it but I was doing exactly what they said, minus the fact I did not hit the stop button!

After that I thought the layering would be the hardest part.. Luckily I watched a video that helped me a lot before I tried. It all became so simple! Audacity was no longer intimidating. Although, it might not be perfect, but it is definitely a work in progress (:

The story: Her heart breaks. The family she thought she had vanished in the blink of an eye. He punches her though she is already 6 months pregnant. Trying to leave, she falls down the stairs. With no help but a shove out of the door she manages the walk to her car in tears not knowing if her baby is okay. She has had the sensation of broken ribs before so she knows she is not okay.  She tries to find a song on the radio to distract her from her life that is no longer there. Nothing is on the radio. She gets out of the car and slams the front door to her house. She runs up the stairs and lays in bed just wanting this world to end. She hears a knock on the door and the only man who had ever been there for her in her time of need comes in. He gives her a hug as she rubs her belly. She thinks that she may survive through this hell.

The story behind the story:This is the story of a violent breakup, a true one. This is where I was July 14th of last year. I was pregnant with my son and I was as happy as could be but his father always has a switch inside him that sets him off mentally when things are going well. When I began this project I was so sure that this was a good story to do. I play that day over again in my mind so many times that the sounds were already there. It was a bit difficult not to use words but I hope I conveyed what happened with the sound effects. As I got more and more into the project I realized that this is just so depressing and I hope nobody actually sees this. By the end I was proud of myself for opening up and I think it has helped to vent about it.

How I Created It:

This is a screen shot of my final product in audacity:

I strung together quite a few different sounds, all of which came from https://www.freesound.org:

• My heart breaking was the sound of glass breaking
• A punch sound
• Person Falling down the stairs
• Person walking on gravel
• Slamming car door
• Starting the engine
• Radio static
• Home door slamming
• Running up the stairs
• Laying in bed
• Knocking
• Creaky door
• Rubbing hands(supposed to be rubbing my belly)

The links to the exact place I found them are embedded. All of the above I was able to put on one section on audacity with proper spacing after editing what I what them to sound like on a seperate section. I imported them all individually and after I was done editing the specific piece I cut and pasted it to the mother section in order.

The Rubbing hands had to be slowed down. The walking had to be sped up and more loud. The radio static was a section cut and pasted three times a second apart. The other were left the same besides being trimmed.

• Woman crying
• Girl trying not to cry

The two above hade their own sections because they played the entire time. I faded in and out the breathing and crying and also adjusted the volumes to where I felt it was appropriate.

After editing all of the sounds I uploaded the story to soundcloud. I then chose the picture to have as the story picture because it seemed like the heart was broken but also bruised.

 Assignment

All the men are below deck as they wait as they nervously wait out this midnight storm. In the middle of the Atlantic with no help for thousands of miles the men sit quietly in patience. They done this dozens of times throughout the duration of their journey trying to make they’re way back to England. Each man is scared, but won’t show their true face to the vicious storm as they know showing even an ounce of weakness mother nature she will strike you down. The storm never seems to end as the night passes as one sailer knows tomorrow may never come. He thinks of them never making it home leaving his family to wonder what happened to the ship. If they were to sink the last sound ever heard would be the ships bell with no one left to remember it ringing.

I love the water, ships, and storms, so why not combine all three to make a great story about them all? Storms can be fierce, but majestic at the same time. I love when they come around because the challenge they bring between us and mother nature. Riding out a storm whether at sea or on land can be exhilarating, but dangerous. Combining these sounds brings those feels together and allows us to imagine being stuck at sea in the middle of a monstrous storm. If that doesn’t give you chills then I don’t know what will.

The process was rather simple. I used freesound and Garageband to make the track. Stacking the audio allowed all five sounds to play and record simultaneously making a sweet combination. These are the five sounds that I used:

Ship in storm

Thunder

Ship Bell

Ocean wave

Ship Creak

I have used Garageband a few times in the past before, but not on a regular basis simply because I don’t usually just use audio. However, this assignment in particular was a lot of fun combing all the different sounds to make a story. Again I just stacked the audio recordings so they could play simultaneously. Additionally, for a few of the recordings like the thunder and ocean wave I had to copy and paste the recording several times to make it repeat themselves throughout the duration of the track.

I hope you guys enjoyed this sound story, let me know if you have any questions or just leave some comments below.

This Audio tells the story of a man walking in the jungle.

At first everything is fine, just calmly walking through the Jungle. Then that all changes. First the animals start making noises, randomly and with a eerie presence. Then the storm starts and the animals getting louder. His sense of time is off and all he wants is to return to that calmness that is eluding him.

Seconds pass, minutes; and then it happens, the light shining through the trees. The rain stops and the animals settle.

The man continues on his travels, enjoying the peace in the jungle, while it last.

I created this assignment by using sounds from Freesound.org; I signed up for the free account. I searched for keywords for my story; “jungle” and “rain” being the two main ones.

I then used audacity to edit and put the sounds together to create the story.

Hey guys so I have created a story, using only sounds. I decided to make mine like a little quiz. Can you guess what my sound effects is about?

Anyway, lets get down to business. Without giving away the answer, I decided instead of using a random selection of files I wanted to try to portray a process. From my perspective, I feel like I have accomplished that. I started by downloading the audio editing software Audacity. From there I went ahead and got sounds from freesounds.org. To choose an audio file, I just searched it in the search bar. Here is an example of an audio file search. 

In the picture above, you can see the search bar highlighted in red and below the sound file, there is a big yellow button to download. After I clicked download, I opened up my file in Audacity. I did this for each file. The next step was to edit them all together.

I copied a selection of the audio file and hit ctrl+c. Next I went to my main file page and clicked paste. I did this for each sound clip. As you will notice when you listen to my sound, there are a few pauses. This is to portray action transitions. Also at the end I decided to use an effect on my file.

To do that I highlighted a small portion of the end of my file and I selected fade out. Its not a special touch but it helps with the awkwardness of an abrupt ending. Finally I exported the file as an MP3 file (pictured below).

Then my project was complete!

I chose this process because it is something that every person alive goes through everyday. I thought that it would be cool to document it. Without further or due, here is the finished product.