For this assignment, I pulled out hairs, said some pretty graphic words and shed a tear or two but i finally got the hand of it. I didn’t have a problem with downloading the sound effects but it took me a while to learn how to put it all on the same track and have them play in order. I found that it was much easier downloading and importing them in the order that i wanted them played in. As i listen to it over and over i realized there is a lot more that i could add to make it fantastic but time is $$$.
This is the 90 second sound effects story I made for the sound effects audio assignment for ds106. I followed Shayna Moreland’s and Ben Rimes’s lead and riffed on a Summer time theme, mine being a short story at the beach. The beach tells its own story in terms of sounds, and I love the idea of an envirocast wherein you can experience the sense of place and being through sounds—Shayna’s example did that beautifully with the pool. I grew up on the beaches of Long Island and the sounds bring back for me such a powerful feeling of carelessness and freedom that I can’t help but be transported when I hear them, which for me is the real power of audio—it’s like the heroine of creative mediums, it plays on your sensibilities instantaneously! In fact, the absence of the beach where I live now is one of my greatest problems with Fredericskburg (especially during the Winter). Anyway, all the sounds I used are from freesound.org, and the list of credits are below (thank you awesome people for uploading your sounds, ds106 should encourage more of this):
How did I do it? Well, Audacity is getting easier and easier for me to work with. Not that I am getting better, but it is seeming more intuitive. The things you need to know when working on Audacity for a project like this are the following.
Importing new tracks: Once you have your first track open, go to Project–>Import Audio to add the additional tracks
Aligning audio tracks: To align the audio tracks you need to place your cursor where you want a particular track and then go to Project–>Align Tracks… and then choose with cursor. This will allow you to start organizing the tracks along a timeline.
Adjusting Gain: To adjust the volume/level on aparticular track look to the far-left of that track and use the Gain “-” and “+” sign slider to adjust the level of the track. Also, you can mute the track in this area as well, which may be useful for isolating tracks.
Cutting and pasting tracks: You can highlight a part of a track with your mouse and cut it out. Or, if you want, paste it to a new track which you create by going to Project–>New Audio Track.
Save as mp3: After that I made sure I had the LAME encoder installed thensave all the tracks together as an mp3 file and uploaded it to Soundcloud.
So there is my list of pretty simple steps I used to make this 90 second story—anything I am missing that could be useful?
Here’s my sound effects story. All of the sounds that I used I got off of freesound.org. I made it by setting up all of the sounds in garage band and then just either lengthening them or shortening them depending on how long or how much of the actual sound clip I needed. I decided to go with a scary story/horror story style with these sound effects. It’s supposed to be a person walking through the forest on a rainy night (I had a rainy night sound effect and I just kept that going through the entire track underneath the other sounds), then they walk into a house and while they are walking through the house they hear a monster. They keep walking and the monster gets closer and closer to them ( I did this by increasing the volume of the monster growl sound affect every time I added it). Then they start running through the house and the monster eats them and the monster’s owner laughs at the victim. Hope you guys like it!
Here are the links to the sound effects that I used
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=55690 – Steps on a Forest Road by Robinhood76
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=7972 – Open Front Door Close Creak by Anton
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=77602 – Bare Feet Walking On A Creeking Hardwood Floor by Paul McNelis
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=44551 – Thunder and Dread by Hammerklavier
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=123357 – Horror Scream Woman Short by Klankbeeld
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=122183 – Dog Growling by Qubodup
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=49127 – Monster Growl by Aesqe
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=51163 – Running Upstairs by RutgerMuller
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=26720 – Running and Gored by Dogs by Leady
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=26729 – Insane Laughter Male by Leady
It’s the 4th of July here in the United States, a day to celebrate our independence, our freedom, but mostly in modern America what we celebrate is enjoying a little summer relaxation before the big fireworks show at night. Here’s a brief sound effect story for your ears that hopefully conveys my attempts to relax today. All of the sounds were captured by myself with the aid of my 19 month old son, and the voice memo app on my iPhone.
While I try to find out if I can use the music I’ve downloaded from Amazon and ripped from CDs I’ve purchased in the second mandatory assignment, I’ve decided to make my sound effect story include various portions of a drive to work. Cue “More” tag…
The first portion was hard to edit. I recorded myself starting my own car, but in the middle of the “diiing…diiing…diiing” portion after starting the engine, there was some annoying clicking from my Sansa Fuze. I wound up zooming in on various portions of that segment and using the Draw Tool in Audacity to level out those spikes manually. Very, VERY tedious, but what’s left is a much more realistic, softer noise, like setting something down in a cup holder.
For the RxR Crossing sound, I had to do some trial and error to make the short sound clip loop seamlessly without a sudden jump” that would identify a poor attempt at looping. I also lowered the dB gain to -15 dB to make the sound less overbearing against the approaching train. Yes, I actually merged two files together to create the illusion of a RxR crossing stop, adding a “fade-out” effect from the Effect menu in Audacity to the last 5 sconds of the RxR crossing bell to held transition to the next sound. Here’s the entire sequence described:
Get in car, start engine, driving, stopped at RxR crossing with train passing by moments later, engine off, get out and close door, lock car.
Sound Effects Story – Author: Jim Groom – 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.
So the process was this – went to Freesound.org and saw a clip for “morning in the Forest” and I loved that image, so I started there and then thought, well, what kind of story could go on from there? I heard Gregorian chant.. so I thought, OK, we’re in a monastery… peaceful beginning to the day… tolling bell, calling monks to prayer..a thunderstorm arrives – thunder/lightening – suddenly an alarm sounds… fire trucks, the sound of fire which slowly dies out, returns the forest to the peaceful sound of the birds…
We plan… but then it takes on a life of its own
So… when I imported the audio – it came in all at the same time and the effect was pretty startling – but serendipitous too… I liked it – chaos at the beginning all the sounds at once – slowly dying off, leaving the tolling bells, then just the sound of the birds… and I thought… I like it – signifying the chaos of humanity…and how it might be without all of our mischief-making…
Re-mix from freesound.org:
morning_in_the_forest_2007_04_15.wav
File added by reinsamba on Apr 15, 2007
church_bells_rain_6_6_06.wav
File added by Ionizing on Jun 7, 2006
Chant01.wav
File added by chipfork on Mar 19, 2008
extreme_alarm.wav
File added by sirplus on Nov 6, 2006
police.wav
File added by guitarguy1985 on Apr 11, 2009
THE CRASH.wav
File added by sandyrb on Apr 21, 2010
Fire_Forest_Inferno.aif
File added by Dynamicell on Apr 2, 2006
Thunder-7-9-1988-b.wav
File added by FreqMan on Nov 10, 2006
Today is the big day for the ds106 audio projects: everyone will be unveiling their 30 minute radio shows starting at 2pm! In the meantime, here is a small sample from the show Patrick and I created, Tales of the Town. This segment is a sound effects story, exploring an unnamed individual’s unusual evening on the docks. Check it out: On the Docks
One of the motivations behind this segment was to get a better grasp of Audacity, and it worked like a charm. Arranging, leveling, clipping, fiddling, and tweaking all those clips was a great learning experience, and helped immensely as Patrick and I got deeper into making our show. The one thing it did not do, however, was help me learn how to record voice in the field – that was a challenge in some of our other segments. I think the results in our show were good overall, though. Check us out at 3pm.
Music:
Night on the Docks – Kevin MacLeod
Walking Along – Kevin MacLeod
SFX: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
This is a slight twist on the ds106 Sound Effects Story assignment- a short story done with only audio effects. Rather than use ones from a library, I mixed together a set of voice-less sounds I made or got from my surroundings.
This little assignment has give me a lot of trouble:
1- Had to load some drivers for the sound device to be able to caption audio from the browser application. Sound mixer was not appearing in the device sound control in windows 7. Had to enable sound mixer and configure audacity to pick sound from this device
2 – Had to unplug the HDMI cable to the monitor and replace it with a DVI cable so us to have a control over the sound mixer device . Had to add the audio analog cable.
3 – Pick several sounds clips from Freesound.org and capture to audacity.
4 – Rename all the tracks , because i was getting confused with the timeline clips.
5- Repeat some audio tracks to fulfill the background sound
6 – Augment the wave track so to get the Killer wave.
7 Notice that , on the process of capturing audio from the mixer , some of the clicks from the mouse were also recorded. Had to redo all the work but had no energy spare …Maybe next year.
After 2 hours i could finally get the output. Here it is . It is 2 minutes and not the 90 seconds.
