Once upon a time there was a teenage boy taking a leisure walk through the forest.   As he was enjoying the beautiful sounds of nature a small bee stung him on his temple.  It did not hurt that much as he swatted the bee upon landing, so away he goes to continue his peaceful walk.  That is until another bee stung him.  SWAT!
“Hmm,” he thought, “maybe they’re attracted to the smell of the sandwich I just ate.”
Then all of a sudden, a SWARM of bees came out of nowhere!
The boy started running as fast as he could while swatting, easily out of breath.
SWAT, SWAT, SWAT, PANT, SWAT, PANT
What’s that he hears? A river! It’s a river! He can easily jump in the river to get rid of the bees!
Its coming! Its getting louder! He can hear it! Jump!!
*SPLASH*

Now for the technical stuff

I had a lot of fun creating this sound piece.  After going with the advice on the website, I downloaded Audacity and found all of my sounds at Freesounds.   The idea for my story literally came off the top of my head, it wasn’t inspired by anything it was just the first idea that came to mind, so I went with it.

Here is the list of all sounds used:
Small bee
Bee swarm
Nature sounds
Walking
Breathing heavy
Running
Water stream
Water splash
Smacking face

I learned how to loop all the sounds over each other to make them all one sound by watching a tutorial by Alan Levine.  It helped greatly!

Here is a screenshot of my process on Audacity which, surprisingly, wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.

To get everything looped together, one by one I inported the sounds and then copied and pasted them in the order I wanted them to be in.  For more specifics on how to do this I stongly encourage you to visit the tutorial I mentioned earlier.

I can’t wait to create more sounds with Audacity and I also can’t wait to see what everyone else comes up with!

Create a story made only of sound effects, the Sound Effects Story assignment — a story told in five or more different sounds.

This assignment will be interesting to think through a story without dialogue but the other examples worked well so I think I can do it. I like the alien one for sure but it did have a little bit of voices. So keeping with my theme of escaping, visiting Chicago, and excited about the weather I came up with my idea pretty fast. It helped the window was open in my friend’s apartment and he lives by the huge lake! So here is my story of hearing the sounds of spring calling you outside and the lake tempting you to come out and play. The story spine would go something like this:

Once upon a time there was a city that had long been frozen in a back winter. Every day, they saw nothing but white snow and wanted to spring to arrive! Until one day, spring finally arrived and everything thawed! Because of that, the birds came out and he was able to go on the lake and enjoy the nice weather. All is good with the world when he gets away and sits on the end of pier.

Here is my final file on leaving the house and going to the lake dock.

The files I used to construct it are below:
Birds chirping sound file: http://freesound.org/people/keweldog/sounds/184870/
Door closing sound file: http://freesound.org/people/JarredGibb/sounds/219481/
Cars: http://freesound.org/people/FreqMan/sounds/20049/
Lake waves: http://freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/67884/
Footsteps on a dock: http://freesound.org/people/joedeshon/sounds/78368/

The image is my own that I took of the lake in Chicago outside my friends house that inspired my idea.

I thought the tool was a little confusing at first but it worked well once I figured out you had to shift the sound files around and the layering. Here is my image of me having the files ready and starting to edit in Audacity. Not bad software and free!

Editing Sounds

The story I created is from the point of view of my loyal travel companion, Becki the backpack (see photos). Becki and I have been traveling together for a decade. This story is a forty-five second snapshot of a day in the life of Becki.

…I sit patiently, and empty, as she books flights on her favorite airline website. I wonder where we are going next and how soon. More importantly, what is she going to stuff me with? Hopefully, not the work laptop; it’s too big and I’m not equipped to provide the necessary cushion. Ahhh, no laptop. Just clothes and a travel pillow this time. And she remembered to remove the new Swiss Army knife before it got confiscated. Again. Whee! Off we go! I’m sitting on top of the large suitcase as she wheels us through the airport. I’ll have to say a temporary goodbye to Mr. Suitcase soon, as she’ll be taking him to the TSA folks for additional screening of checked bags. The trip through the x-ray machine was a breeze, on account of no laptop and no utility knife. I’m now safely stowed in the overhead compartment. I’ve got plenty of room since it’s not a full flight. But wait! There is disadvantage to this as I get tossed around during turbulence. Ugh, not good. Now I’m upside down. Three more hours to go. Yes, we have arrived! What a relief. And I’ve never been to this place before, so I expect I’ll be getting a new patch by the end of this trip. If only there was enough room…

I downloaded over five minutes of audio from FreeSound to create this Sound Effects Story Assignment. I tried the other websites, but found FreeSound to be the easiest to work with. After considering the story spine, I excluded three of the audio files originally downloaded and using Audacity, further edited the files I ended up using to create a story that is roughly 45 seconds long.

Below is a screenshot of my Audacity project for the Sound Effects Story:

Sounds Like an Adventure (Sound Effects Story screenshot)

Below is a matrix that maps each track to the audio file used for this assignment:

Since downloading the LAME library, in order to get the MP3 encoder, I’ve had trouble with my Internet Explorer, and other web browsers. This slowed down considerably completion of this and other assignments this week, which added frustration to an already trying week.

To complete this first assignment for the week, I decided to start with the story before exploring the sounds. I thought about a story that I wanted to convey through sound, and wanted to incorporate something that everyone could relate to. I thought about how I am often running from work to meet friends for dinner and the obstacles I often face along the way. I then built a story spine around that concept.

Once upon a time, Sally worked as a administrative assistant in Washington, DC. 

Every Tuesday she met her friends for dinner across town. 

But one day Sally realized that she was running late and had to rush to make it on time for dinner. 

Because of that, she quickly closed her computer and grabbed her keys to go, but the phone rang one last time. 

Because of that, she had to run to catch her train. 

Until finally, she made it onto the train and was able to relax on her way to dinner.

And ever since then, she set an alarm to remind herself to start getting packed up on time on Tuesdays.

Once I decided on the story, I began exploring sounds that might fit in this story.

I began my audio story with the sound of a busy office, then overlapped the sound of a gasp as Sally realized the time. I then added in the sound of Sally grabbing her keys to go, but then the phone ringing and her answering. I then included the sound of Sally running down the hall to catch the metro.  I layered the sound of a metro station with the sound of a metro announcement (I could only find the old WMATA announcement in audio file). Finally I added in a sigh of relief from Sally as she sat back and listened to some music in her headphones.

I saved the files as I downloaded them to a folder on my computer and was able to drag the files right into Audacity for editing. I renamed the files once they were in Audacity so I could better track them. After that, it was pretty easy to cut and paste the pieces of audio I wanted across the one minute clip. Many of the sound files were longer than I needed for this project, so I simply cut the length I did not need. I added in a face out effect to the longer sounds for a smoother transition. I then exported the project into an MP3 for uploading onto SoundCloud and embedding into this post.

This was my first time using Audacity and I found it relatively easy to pick up. I would like to continue to learn more about the sound effects available through the program and find unique ways to use them to add depth to my tracks.

The sounds effects story assignment requires the user to find a collection of sound effects online and any self-recorded audio to create a story using only effects and no dialogue. For my sound effects story I chose to convey a stressful mood of someone then change that mood into relief, or happiness. From a story spine perspective the story itself could go something like this:

Once upon a time there was a man stressed out from work and traffic, he felt like nails on a chalkboard would be better to listen to all day. Every day, he listened to heavy metal to try and relieve the stress but it never helped. Until one day when he decided to finally go on vacation. Because of this, he was able to clear his mind.

When creating my sound effects story I wanted to capture things that are irritable, annoying and are indicative of things people may do when stressed (like listen to loud music) then phase into a more pleasant and relaxed setting. The effects I used were downloaded from freesound.org and they included fingernails on siding, heavy metal music, traffic, a man yawning, birds chirping, a front door opening, and an ocean splashing. I self-recorded the sound of the bottle filling up with water.

My sound effects story:

I used the tool Audacity to create/edit the audio, see my reaction and project in my screencast o matic video..