I started out audio week by trying the sound effects story assignment since we had to do it. I decided to incorporate my character into this by making it sound like Manny was taking a trip to the park. As you all probably know by now, I’m not tech savvy. This was incredibly hard for me and I couldn’t figure out audacity even after tutorials, so I went to the Digital Knowledge Center for help. If you ever need to go, Chris is a huge help and almost always there.

Anyways, once Chris helped me figure out what the heck I was doing it was much easier. I used http://freesound.org to find clips of children playing, a car a car starting, a car driving, a car door closing, and people walking through leaves. Chris helped me figure out how to eliminate background noise, drag clips, and other helpful edits. Here’s the finished product!

I spent the summer working in NYC, so taking the subway was a common activity of mine. I got used to the hustle and bustle both above and below the streets of NYC, the swiping of MetroCards, and of course the rush of subways coming in. For my first Visual Assignment, Sound Effects Story (3.5 stars), I tried to capture the story of someone taking the subway in NYC through sound effects.

I first thought about creating a story involving NYC and then went to https://freesound.org/ to check out what sound options they had. I then stumbled upon a subway noise and decided to depict a story of someone using the subway to represent the iconic action that all New Yorkers can relate to. I then wanted to find crowd noises to go over the other noises because there are always crowd/ people/ background noises in NYC. I found some good, generic crowd noises that I used throughout the whole story, except when the subway noises are there because they are loud enough and tend to drown out background noises. I first pasted the crowd noises into Audacity; then I pulled in the subway noise. I cut the subway noise and inserted it about 15 seconds into the crowd noises.

Then, when I typed NYC Subway into https://freesound.org/ one of the sounds it returned was swiping the MetroCard in the machine, which was a great addition. I put the MetroCard noise in the beginning during the crowd noise but before the subway noise, and I cut it down to a much smaller size so that there would only be a few swipes. I then wanted to look for the turnstile noise for when someone is exiting the subway platform. I found one that sounded pretty good, so initially added that sound to soon after when the subway sound ends and cut it down to a smaller size. I then remembered that you have to go through the turnstile to get onto the subway platform as well, so I added it to the beginning soon after the MetroCard swiping.

I wanted to represent the person leaving the subway station, so I looked for a sound of someone going up stairs (since the subways are underground). I found the sound of someone going upstairs, and cut the beginning and end parts because they were too quiet, and the clip was too long. I added it slightly after the turnstile noise to represent someone leaving the subway station. I kept a little bit of crowd noises for the end after the stairs to represent the bustle of the city the person is returning to. I copied the stairs clip and added it before the MetroCard clip in the beginning because someone has to come downstairs to enter the subway station. I wish I could have made the crowd noises softer while people were in the subway station, but because it was all one clip, I had trouble figuring out how to make parts of it softer than others. I have never used Audacity or done any audio editing, so I have felt pretty overwhelmed about this week but I will try my best.

When I was finished, I exported the sound from Audacity as an MP3 and uploaded it to SoundCloud!

Check this out!

For audio assignment 70, I utilized Audacity and also freesounds.org to put it all together! I had the idea of creating the soundtrack for someone who is tired coming home, and then opening the closet door to put his bag down at which point everything came falling down from the closet onto him. This is relatable to me because I often return home late and end up stepping on a leggo from my son or tripping over something on the floor before I get the lights on.

I began by obtaining a recording of a person unlocking and opening a door (I had to record this part myself because I couldn’t find a good recording on freesounds.org). Following this I searched for a sound of a creaky wooden door closing, downloaded and imported into audacity, then I found a recording for walking footsteps on solid ground and did the same.

Once these two were in there then I had to find a sound for an opening internal door, boxes or other objects falling, and then of course the obligatory grunts of pain. I found all of those by searching for them (respectively and individually) then downloading them and importing into the audacity project. After that was done it was a simple task of organizing all of the sounds so that they made sense chronologically! I had a lot of fun putting all of this together. I think that there are some elements of storytelling in the recording, such as the climax of the person in the story (the boxes falling on him), and that the recording also has the build up to the action in the door being unlocked, opened, and closed. Personally I think that the footsteps are kind of creepy and build suspense too. Hope you enjoyed!

Just Zaying…

For the next 3.5 stars for my Audio Assignments, I completed the Sound Effects Story assignment. For this assignment we had to make a short story using only sound effects. I used freesound to get all of my sounds and Audacity for all of my audio editing.

At my house we have an electronic piano that has a ton of sound effects built into it. When my brother and I were younger, we used to spend a ton of time messing around with these sounds. A few of these sound effects included footsteps, a door creaking, and a woman screaming. I decided to get some updated versions of these sounds and make a short story with them and I’m pretty happy with the final product.

Featured Image

This track was created for my Sound Effects Story assignment.

The following sounds were used from FreeSound: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

I edited this track with Adobe Audition CC 2018.

This blog is For the required audio assignment titled Sound Effects Story (four stars). We had to tell a story using nothing but sound effects. That meant There no verbal communication, only sound effects. For my sound effects story, I based it around something that most people do. Getting ready to drive and face traffic! The audio clip starts off with the effect of a door opening and closing then a garage door opening. From there the engine of a car starts and drives off into the open road. After some time the car stops as it is faced with traffic.

When thinking about how to tell a story using only sound, I decided the best way to go about doing this was to depict a disaster in process, as we as a society have heard the sounds of disaster so much over the years within pop culture media that it would not be difficult to convey to most people what is going on within the story. In this audio story, I decided to depict a sped of version of the eventual apocalyptic calamity, first by showing normal everyday and peaceful life, then by showing the escalation of violence through gunfire, until eventually the apocalypse commences, after which there is nothing.

https://soundcloud.com/user-397749399/the-drop

Vacations typically start out stressful.  Ensuring necessary items are packed, meeting flight departure schedules, and accounting for unforeseen traffic delays can cause anxiety to even the most prepared and well seasoned traveler.  However, arriving at the destination can be a rewarding experience despite all the hassle that previously occurred.  Below is an audio story using only sound effects, depicting a long and chaotic travel day to a tropical destination.  This audio assignment is worth 4 stars.

The Sounds Speak for Themselves

The final assignment this week was more or less the equivalent to the audio version of a design effect: use audio editing skills to create a ninety-second­-or-less audio story without verbal communication.

Again, dealing with steam powered Detroit, I chose to continue where I left off with Hollis and Meg’s fight from my last post.

Tensions Flare at Home

Time to Go

Hollis finally reconsidered staying in Detroit. After a close run-in with protesters outside the plant, he realized that Detroit could no longer be their home. The demonstrators in Detroit had begun to follow the radical practices of the new domestic terror organization ANTISA, or Anti Steam Activists. All around the country, the group had been targeting power-plant and automotive workers in addition to the companies. Talk had also been spread of “big plans” for the coal-fired plants, ANTISA’s primary target for destruction.

It was Hollis’s last day on the job; Meg’s family would be showing up to help pack-up the house for the move. King George, Virginia, was the place they would be moving. Meg had found a small mobile-home for sale on Zillow that was within easy driving distance of a public university. She planned to find a job teaching middle school to support them while Hollis went back to school to get a degree. He did not want to go to work for the plant in that area; it too was one of the last coal-fired hold-outs, and he was not going to start working to just get laid-off when that plant inevitably closed like the other did.

Meg had tried to convince Hollis to stay home that day, but he had wanted to go in to say farewell to his coworkers before the move. She was uneasy that morning, after a bad dream had shaken her awake. Hollis assured her everything would be okay and that if any protesters came after him, he would give them a good knockout for her.

Lunch time had arrived, and Hollis had just sat down to eat the sandwich Meg had packed for him that last day. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two men dressed in black shimmy out of the lunch hall. What were they doing there…

ANTISA Strikes

How it all Came to Be

To make this audio story, I started with a blank Audacity project. The most important part was finding the sounds: lunch-time chatter, steam, rumbles, crumbling, explosions, gunfire, screams, and more screams. Once I had all the sounds (obtained from Freesound), I imported them into the project.

I used the Envelope Tool to fade down the audio for the lunch-room chatter.

Next, I began placing bomb noise throughout the piece. I used to selection tool to copy and paste the explosions and the Time Shift tool to put them in place.

Since I was working with a power-plant with steam, I added in the clip of steam twice, once for left audio and once for right. To split the audio into right and left from stereo, I used Split Stereo Track from the drop down menu on the steam track.

Then, I copied the steady portion of the steam noise to its own track. To do this, I duplicated the steam track and then trimmed the sound outside of the part I wanted. There I copied it again and kept pasting it onto its end until the new track was long enough to run the entire ninety seconds of the story.

To boost the track’s volume, I used Effect->Amplifywith the default settings.

Beyond that, I just did many shifts on the different clips and more work with the Envelope Tool to bring everything together. To finish, I saved the whole composition as an mp3, using File->Export->Export as Mp3.