This is very similar to my other assignment where I created a place of sounds, but this one is going to be a story. From the trend I’ve seen with my other assignments, I had a bad habit of over doing each assignment. For my last assignment, I’m going to try to do this audio as nicely as possible. The issue with the last assignments was that there was too much going on at once. Hopefully, it will be different this time.

I wanted to do something very simple and calm, nothing crazy, and I figured something calming like walking though a sidewalk filled with leaves would be nice. The first story I thought of was that the character went to drink water from the sink, but it tasted horrible. So they decided to go to a well and get water from there instead. It was a random story that popped into my mind. I thought it was funny, so I decided I wanted to do that. Looking for all the sounds was a lot if work honestly. Trying to find the right sound came with extreme patience.

I made a list of what I originally wanted to put into my story. I was trying to have someone try to drink water from the faucet in the morning, and then because it tastes bad, they go to the well outside their house to get water instead. However, when I made it to the faucet scene, the audio was at 1 minute. I was worried that I wouldn’t make it under the 90 second mark, so I decided just to stick with the story being about drinking bad tasting water in the morning.

This took longer than expected, but that was only because I was taking care of my puppy while trying to do this. Let’s just say that was super difficult to do while trying to perfect my audio clip. I will say though, this is one of the best I’ve done so far. One thing I wish I did was lower the sound of the bed creaking, but I didn’t realize it until I was uploading this to SoundCloud.

I hope you enjoy this clip!

The character wakes up and drinks horrible tasting water from the sink.

Description: “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”

4 Stars

This assignment was much harder than I was anticipating. It was very hard not using dialogue move a story along. I ended up using a serene forest sound as my breakup in between scenes. The weird noise that is repeated several times is a fox noise. I was disappointed I couldn’t find a really good sound, but I guess we’ll never know what the fox says. This was not my best work, but for the first time doing major adjustments, it turned out ok. I used ZapSplat and SoundBible for my sounds.

For this audio sound effects story assignment I decided to take clips from Freesound to make a mash up of sounds that told the story of a morning commute.

First we have the person taking out their keys, they then lock their door behind them and begin their walk. They walk through a neighborhood with a few passing cars and a dog that barks. We can hear the birds around them. They get to the train station and get on the train to go to work.

I thought that I would do a morning commute effects story because when I commute to classes I always find that even when I’m not talking or listening to music, there are always sounds around me.

For this assignment I just needed the Freesound website and my phone. I was able to edit the sounds together on my phone using the recording app. I then uploaded it to Soundcloud!

This is worth 4 stars, which puts me currently at 7 stars. This is my story with only sound effects.

It is a dark and stormy night, the grandfather clock chimes and…you have to go downstairs and feed your cat

I used  http://freesound.org to find various sounds that interested me. I mostly made the story up along the way. Having something significant happen in such a short time frame was difficult, but I ended up with this! I’m starting to understand how to use Audacity a bit more. I liked the atmosphere of setting my mini story during a storm. The first time I tried to upload, it actually turned out that I was accidentally using a clip from a song in which there is a thunderstorm, so I had to replace it. During the process, I think something important to know is to adjust the volume of each track so one doesn’t sound too loud over the other unless it’s intentional.

I did the assignment “Sound Effects Story”, for 3.5 stars and decided to revolve mine around sounds from the 80s. In this scenario, a boy wakes up to his alarm clock, yawns, goes to school, skateboards, and hears music from the 80s throughout the day. This is supposed to be a representation of a high school kid from the 80s. I used about 6 sound effects from Free Sounds and really like the way it turned out. Audacity is getting easier and easier to use!

I decided to download sounds from the freesounds.org to create my project. I wanted to use only sounds from the woods or nature. I thought that this nature walk sounded pretty intense. I used an owl, foot steps, crickets, puddles and wind blowing in the woods. I really enjoyed how this came out! This assignment was 3 1/2 starts. Let me know your thoughts and feelings on this audio story.

This is my first audio assignment of the week – the required Sound Effects Story. The challenge of this assignment was to tell a story using nothing but sound effects!

Recently, I’ve been watching American Horror Story. So I was inspired to create a horror/suspense-related story. I hope you enjoy!

This projects was certainly challenging, as it was my first time using Audacity. I had to watch several tutorials on how to use it, but after a little bit of experimenting and making mistakes, I caught on! My favorite part was choosing all the different sound effects. My goal was to create a realistic sense of fear and suspense.

Below you can find the details of the challenge:

Ahahahahahahahaha.

M.J. Melody

Something evil’s lurking from the dark in this Sound Effects Story! In this Audio Assignment, we had 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.”

This assignment was challenging to say the least! How do you tell a story with only sounds? I searched through the audio resources, http://freesound.org and BBC Sound Effects archive to formulate a plan. I conceptualized stories about being a hip young person in the 80’s and ready for a night out on the town. Arcades, malls, movies, and hanging out in parking lots all seemed pretty 80’s, but I had a hard time finding the sounds I wanted. I also didn’t have very long to tell my story, so I honed in on the idea of going to the movies.

My first thought was to have a car pull up (there is certainly no shortage of car sounds), and the car would honk, a woman would walk towards the car, there’d be indistinct chatter between the two, and then they’d drive to the mall, and then they’d go see a movie. All of this was obviously not feasible given the time limit, and also the only sounds of chatter that I could find were of crowds, not of a couple of people. I decided to cut my idea down to just driving off, whereby the driver would arrive at the movies.

I simulated the movie theater by adding crowd sounds. I added shush noises to the end and did a fade out on the crowd (my favorite part because the shhh! was not part of the crowd sound effect, and I think it’s a cool touch). I then added an old projector sound to signal the start of a movie, and added some cinematic sci-fi/horror music and sound effects to give it a tense vibe. During the movie, the movie crowd (and the story listener) hears our protagonist in some kind of distress, and the crowd reacts in shock at what they’re seeing (we can only imagine what). I end off with some end credits music and the indistinct chatter sounds from the audience as they talk about the movie.

I originally thought of ‘Stranger Things’ when I was thinking about what movie my Story crowd would be watching, but when I started writing this post, I couldn’t help but think of M.J.’s ‘Thriller.’ Even though the cinematic sound effects have a kind of sci-fi synth feel to it à la ‘Stranger Things,’ the monster could certainly be anything! A demogorgon, a zombie, the ghost of Michael Jackson, who knows!

Here’s my final result of Sound Effects Story:

(Fun fact: Sci-fi/horror (or fantasy/horror) is the best genre. But they have to be combined just like that. Plain horror isn’t my cup of tea. That’s not really a fact, just a thought I wanted to throw out there).

I made a sound clip that tells a story through noise and different sounds only. This assignment was to create a story in only 90 seconds that was interesting for 4 stars. I had to use at least 5 different sounds I found online, and mash them up to one clip. I used free sound and BBC sound effect website along with audacity. This inspiration comes from being woken up in the middle of the night for a call and hearing those tones drop and the story that plays out afterwards. I did have a learning curve with this assignment. Sound is definitely going to take the most time to complete because I know the least about it.

This was an assignment I used audacity to create then uploaded to soundcloud. I started with the idea of the alarm clock then moved to work and the fact we had the fire alarm go off last night in my dorm to the point of the fire department coming. I downloaded a bunch of different sounds then looked into working with them, I got some walking to the truck and hospital, indistinct chatter for the hospital, sirens for the ambulance, and a washing sound because that’s how we feel on a call in the middle of the night. I was able to play around with a bunch of effects like the envelope to figure out where I wanted the sound to be louder or softer, I also decided to silence parts of different sounds but not delete them.

I think I did a good job with this assignment. I learned a lot more about the software than I knew from the beginning. I figured out how to layer sounds better and have them tell a story. I feel like I am starting to really understand how it works and the creativity that it encompasses. I learned how to work with the sounds and I felt like the sounds started to tell a story by the end and that was an exciting feeling. I make a good story and it sounded real. I was able to create the story using only sounds and no words.

I did notice that the blog for this class said 3.5 stars and the assignment said 4 stars, I am going with what the assignment said. Let me know if anyone else has the same confusion and how you are figuring it out.

For my audio assignment Sounds Effects Story which was to tell a story only using sounds effects, Rated 4 Stars

For my 57 second sound story I decided to tell about the day my friend and I adopted a kitty named Wawa (Another Previous post on Wawa) For this I used 7 different sounds from the Free sound website which is full of sounds and effects. The story starts by us opening the door and closing it, next we hear the birds chirping outside, after that we are stuck in bad traffic which we hear bikes, a train and cars honking. We get to the animal shelter and my friend is humming and thinking about which kitty she should adopt while in the background you hear kitties softly meowing. Then after that you hear signing papers which meant my friend pick her cat and she was signing the adoption papers. The last sound is a kitty purring which Wawa loves to do now. It was my first time using Audacity and let me tell you it was NOT easy. I had a difficult time and after watching and reading several tutorials on how to better use Audacity I was able to produce my story. This story is not great because I was still learning on how to use Audacity but I hope to learn and use it more in the future.