The Banana Peel: Assignment

Banana Peel
A sound effect story…

entitled ‘The Banana Peel.’

Here’s the link to the story on SoundCloud:

I had worked with sound files before, mostly when dealing with the soundtrack on videos. So I had been doing a bit of editing – things like splitting a track, cutting out bits and throwing them away, and moving bits of soundtrack around to place in the most advantageous position with respect to the video image. Also fading sound in and out.

But this assignment was a real eye-opener. I sweated over the 59 seconds of this one more than I would with the soundtrack for a 30 minute video. I found most of the sound effects needed from open-source sounds on the Internet, as listed it on the DS106 tools page. And of course I used Audacity to assemble the various sound effects into a sound story.

In order to be able to layer the sounds so that one effect began before the previous one finished, I ended up using a total of three soundtracks in Audacity. Many of the clips had to have noise removal of applied and most of them required an increase in amplitude. The footsteps and siren clips had to be duplicated in order to make them last long enough for my story. The slide whistle had to be speeded up considerably in order to provide the effect for that slide on the banana peel that I was hoping for. As for the squishy slipping sound on the banana peel itself, the Internet was no help there. I had to make this one up from scratch using my own oral equipment and recording with Audium on an iPhone.

This account of my work on audioassignment90 who was dictated using Siri on an iPhone, followed by light editing.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons, PD]

Sound Effects Story

For this assignment (assignments.ds106.us/assignments/so…effects-story/) I was to make a story using only 5 sound effects and it had to be less than 30 seconds. For some reason, the first thing to pop into my head was a car accident. So that is exactly what I did, I found the sounf effects on www.grsites.com/sounds/ and edited and put all of them together using Audacity. This was worth 4 stars

https://soundcloud.com/kelliwisbauer/sound-effects-story 

Sound story open to interpretation

Hey guys, this is my sound effects story I put together with sounds from freesound.org.  I made it related to the Twilight Zone with a spooky space tone that comes at the end.  I had a particular plot in mind when making this story, but I would like to see what you guys thought was happening.  Please let me know what you think.

Here is a link to the assignment.

Difficulty: 4 stars

Sounds make the story

This is a simple challenge just by using sounds! You use only 5 sounds to tell a story! I decided to tell the story of the episode Twilight Zone: Time Enough at Last. I used 5 sounds that I found on a website called SoundClips. I used my iPhone to record each sound and then hit pause then recorded the next sound. I used the app called SoundCloud to do this! SoundCloud is a life savor! I love sound cloud! I thought of 5 sounds that described this movie. It really tells this movie.

Listen to my sound story! What do you think?!

  1. Cashier Caching
  2. Pages being torn
  3. Explosion
  4. Glasses break
  5. Doom

Make a story with just sounds! Have fun!

Whats the total?

Stars:4

Total: 11.5

Sounds make the story

This is a simple challenge just by using sounds! You use only 5 sounds to tell a story! I decided to tell the story of the episode Twilight Zone: Time Enough at Last. I used 5 sounds that I found on a website called SoundClips. I used my iPhone to record each sound and then hit pause then recorded the next sound. I used the app called SoundCloud to do this! SoundCloud is a life savor! I love sound cloud! I thought of 5 sounds that described this movie. It really tells this movie.

Listen to my sound story! What do you think?!

  1. Cashier Caching
  2. Pages being torn
  3. Explosion
  4. Glasses break
  5. Doom

Make a story with just sounds! Have fun!

Whats the total?

Stars:4

Total: 11.5

Sound Story (Midnight Sun)

For this assignment, I want to try and tackle a sound story. I have learned A LOT about audacity this week. I stalled for the first 3 days just trying to be able to figure out how to load music anything into the program at all- but I think as the week is wrapping up I can safely say I learned a skill or two.

Here is my sound story:

You can first hear the sound is a crushing water bottle, and over that, you can hear continued sizzling. I included all the footsteps and door squeaks as a way to symbolize all the coming and going of the people in the story. Finally, in the end, the can hear wind blow and teeth chattering, suggesting that the heat was all but a dream….

Sound Story (Midnight Sun)

For this assignment, I want to try and tackle a sound story. I have learned A LOT about audacity this week. I stalled for the first 3 days just trying to be able to figure out how to load music anything into the program at all- but I think as the week is wrapping up I can safely say I learned a skill or two.

Here is my sound story:

You can first hear the sound is a crushing water bottle, and over that, you can hear continued sizzling. I included all the footsteps and door squeaks as a way to symbolize all the coming and going of the people in the story. Finally, in the end, the can hear wind blow and teeth chattering, suggesting that the heat was all but a dream….

The Invaders Return

Man, this has been a long week. Aside from the remodel I began on my house, we had family visiting and a sick wife to boot. So, my ds106 work had come to a relative halt. I worked on some here and there, but couldn’t really sit down and put in some time.

I decided to do a sound story in which the United States revisits the giant’s planet…and let’s say things go a little bit differently. The story is below.

This is actually about half sound effects from freesound.org and half from my own house remodel, with the different noises being used mostly for the machines that come out of the spaceship. The woman is caught off guard this time, and well…you tell me what happens.

In a perfect world, I would have had a design assignment to go along with this, but I’m just not going to get to it. If I do, I’ll be sure to post it.

Obruni Arrives in Africa – Sound Effect Story (Slight Variation)

Amber arrives in Ghana, Africa. The new “Obruni”, or white person, both delights and scares the young children of Takoradi, and she soon discovers the way music can transcend cultural divides. Listen to the original full length podcast episode the sound effects were taken from at www.rockylouproductions.com/Obruni.html

Audio editing is not for the faint of heart.  Especially if you can be a perfectionist or have a tendency towards OCD. [Guilty as charged...]  You can fiddle around and fine-tune forever.  (Note: The audio clip attached happens to be an updated version from what I posted earlier this morning.  I didn’t like that the car racing by in the beginning was inaudible on my iPhone. So I fixed it!)  But it can really be worth it when you come back months later to a piece you created and go, “Wow, I did that?”  

Inspired by LoDown episode 8, I jumped in to create my own sound effect story - Audio Assignment 70 with a slight variation of having a bit of spoken and sung text.  The assignment asks us to create a 90sec or less story with at least 5 sound effects.  I decided to use sound effects I had from a podcast I had created with my daughter, Amber, in the fall of 2010.  We really didn’t know what we were doing back then at moving her stories off the written page and making them audible.  I didn’t have any experience with sound editing software, and I didn’t even know what a Podcast was.  Amber had to suggest listening to StoryCorps and WYNC’s RadioLab to help me become familiar with the genre we were embarking upon. 

I’m a big Apple fan and went with GarageBand as my sound editing tool.  I wasn’t up to the VERY steep learning curve for the more professional stuff. (And I hadn’t heard about Audacity. I’ll have to check it out at some point during the course.)  I have plans for a future blog post (possibly a series or a LoDown co-hosting gig) that will go through the creation process for the entire podcast episode, but for this post I’m going to stick to the sound effect story.

A story needs to have a beginning, middle and end- now doing that in 90 seconds can be a challenge.  Finding the right sounds, keeping in mind copyright issues, [link to my YouTube playlist on copyright and creative commons] is also a big challenge.  We used freesound.org, pulled sounds off of creative commons YouTube videos, and even created some of our own sound effects if we couldn’t find what we wanted. But again… that’s a story for another blog post.  My storyline for my sound effect story could be an audio trailer for the larger podcast.  The over arching story is about how the people of Takaradi, Ghana reacted to this new white person in their midst and how she responded.

Let me take you through at least a portion of my process. Below is a screen shot of the final GarageBand file. I like to build my layers from bottom to top when possible. That way I know where I’m at, and it makes sense to me as I layer on my sounds. So that’s how I’ll be referring to them as I move along.

Master Garageband Screen Shot

GarageBand screen shot of layered sound effects

Setting the Scene (Layer 1 & 2) To set the scene we used a lively chaotic market place sound effect that is actually a combination of two different sound effects grabbed from freesound.org.  (Called Market Place 1 and Market Place 2 above.) Neither of them sounded right alone, but the combination was just what we wanted.  Experimenting with different combinations is a great way to find just the right sound you are looking for.

The first “event” in the story was the addition of a car racing by on layer 3. Remember I’m counting from the bottom up. If you listen with headphones or good speakers you’ll be able to hear the stereo effect as the car goes whooshing by.  There are things happening in and around the market place.

Our story gets more personal when Layer 5 brings in the children laughing, while layer 3 changes over to shouting out “Obruni”.  Both of these effects were pulled from YouTube videos. So… why you might ask don’t I put each sound effect on its own separate track? (Track 3 has 3 different effects.) Because it’s a visual nightmare when you have to keep scrolling the screen to see where you are at. I try to limit the number of tracks I need to what can fit on my computer screen.  For our big podcasts that almost never happens -but we try. And labeling your larger tracks with something you understand, as well as the individual clips, is a good practice.  All things we learned the hard way!

With Layer 4 we hear a child crying and Amber fading in, softly humming “Amazing Grace”, to soothe the little one on Layer 6. Layer 6 continues and morphs into Amber actually singing. With layer 7 the choir joins in. Amazingly we found this little, slightly off key (just what we wanted) choir with a YouTube search. A set of congo drums joins the party on layer 8.  Then it’s back down to layer 3 with the audience applause.  Our final layer 9 brings the story toward a close with Amber singing alone again and the market place sounds coming back into auditory focus to take front and center stage.  Life continues on with one final master fade out.

Fine Tuning: But least you think we are finished… Oh No… you would be wrong.  You can consider this version of the audio file a rough draft.  But at least these aren’t just end-to-end clips. I’ve talked about some layering here. How these sounds are in relationship to one another is a big deal.  Blending one sound effect into another and adjusting the volume balance between clips can add a lot to your story.  Panning the sound effect into one ear or the other or the stereo effect like the car racing by are nice details to add.  You have to be careful with this though.  You don’t want to end up making your listener dizzy because what they are listening to doesn’t make sense. With the screen shot below I’ve opened up the track volume areas so you can actually see what I’m talking about.

Volume tracks visible

GarageBand file with volume tracks visible

Layer 1 & 2 market sounds fade in At the very beginning we don’t want to startle our listeners with an abrupt beginning.

The layer 3 car sound effect needed to fade out, and the clip we used for the kids laughing on layer 5 was too soft at the beginning, so I bumped it up and brought it back down when needed.

When the child is upset and crying (layer 4) at seeing this person with a different color of skin than her own, she cries full on.  Then her effect begins to trail off as Amber’s humming effect crosses over.  At this same time I reduce the background market audio (layers 1 & 2) so that the listener is able to focus on the next event in the story.  But since my story takes place in a market place, I don’t want to mute it completely.

As Amber is singing (layer 6) the people in the market place gradually join in (layer 7) and then someone fades in with a beat on drums (layer 7).  We linger just a bit on this climactic moment of the story then the audience claps. (Back down to layer 3.)

The clapping trails off.  Amber returns alone,(layer 9) but this time with a more ethereal sounding tone. That’s why this clip was moved to layer 9 instead of remaining on layer 6 with the other Amber clips.  I wanted to modify the basic sound effect to give the feeling of a dream or fade away into the distance.

There is more mixing or “Mastering” of the final audio that happens to give your audio file more life, but I’ll save that for another post. As well as, how to export your file so that you aren’t shocked at the low sound quality of what you post.  Scott Lo and I are contemplating a LoDown episode for audio week 3 entitled, ”How come what I posted doesn’t sound like what I made?” Any interest in that topic? In short it has to do with the audio file compression you need to do so people can download and listen to them on your mobile device.  This 90 sec story uncompressed (AIF) is 23 MB, while the compressed MP3 that you listened to above is only 2.9 MB.  And it could be even lower if I used the standard bit rate compression of 192 KB rather than 256KB which I prefer.

192KB MP3 Compression Settings

Typical “High” quality compression rate settings for GarageBand.

Okay… That’s going to wrap up this post.  It’s time for bed.  Let me know if you have any questions or would like me to explain in more detail how I did something.  Hopefully I’ll have the time to write up more posts on the subject.