The Last Chance

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The second audio assignment I chose to do was Sound Effects Story, which is 3.5 stars. For this assignment I had to tell a story using nothing but sound effects. I could not use verbal communication, and I had to use at least five different sounds that I found online. Lastly, the story could not be longer than 90 seconds. So what I did was I came up with a story idea and then headed over to freesound to find the clips I thought would be most useful in telling the story I wanted to to tell. Once I found the clips that matched the sounds I wanted to have conveying my story, I downloaded them and imported them into Audacity. There, I moved the clips into their proper locations for the plot and shorten one of the clips that was too long. Once all of my clips were in place, I exported the project as a .wav file (since it was complicated to save it a .mp3 and I found a site that convert .wav to .mp3 if I needed to convert it).

As you see below, this is my final result! It is a 45 second long story that uses 5 different sound clips.

Clip citations:
1. WALLA Ballpark Chatter by AshFox (trimmed down duration)
2. Dragging baseball bat by anochrist
3. swing1.mp3 by Taira Komori
4. Glove Catch 1 FF014.aif by martinimeniscus
5. BaseballHitAndCrowdCheer.mp3 by AmishRob

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A Slow Life’s Sound

Let me be honest here: I was dreading this sound effects story after that bumper. I was thinking it would take me hours of drawing out the sounds, finding the right layering, getting the right effects. UGH.

Finally I decided I just need to start thinking about what I want to do. I listened to a few examples from the assignment bank and got some ideas.

Then I spent a few minutes with my eyes closed as I tried to think of a memory that is mostly sounds.

After lots of “Oh I can’t do that without someone speaking,” I finally came up with a convenience store. The sound of the door chime, the slurpee machine, the refrigerators, the cash register–that would make sense!

So I started at the beginning, opening the door. I searched on FreeSound.org for a ringing bell. Everything had talking in it, though! That’s when I spotted this gem.

So many memories of hearing that bell during Christmas time, I wanted to do a story with it.

Now, I’d prefer that everyone listens to the sound effect story before reading about how I made it.

So listen to it first!

Click here to learn more about the story.

Like I was saying before the sound clip…

I started off with that bell ringer.

Then I started to think about where the person who is hearing it came from.

How did he get to the place where he would hear this person ringing the charity bell?

I made up this story in my head of a lonely man on Christmas Eve who had nothing to do. No family, no friends, no pets. So he goes to the mall, hoping to take in some of the warmth from the other people there.

Of course it’s raining on this lonely night.

He gets in his car and drives silently to the mall. He parks, gets out of his car, and opens his umbrella. Walking into the mall, he starts to hear the sound of the bell. He knows that he won’t just pass this time. He puts a few coins of spare change he had in his pocket into the tin bucket and feels a little bit better about his choice to come to the mall.

It’s a stretch, but I like it.

So where did I get all these sounds? FreeSound.org!

Click here for more on the sounds I used.

The rain at the beginning and end of the clip

Opening the car door at the beginning

Shutting the car door at the beginning

Rain hitting the car/windshield wipers/some of the driving

Car starting/most of the driving

Opening and closing the car door at the midway point

Opening the umbrella

Footsteps on wet pavement

Light rain on the umbrella

Salvation Army Bell Ringer

One part of dropping money into the can

The other part of dropping money

And here is a screenshot of all the sounds put in Audition for this particular audio story.

I had a lot of fun making this after I got my story in my head down. I originally couldn’t find just walking on pavement sounds, so I adapted to an even sadder story where it’s raining.

My Nightdream

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A 3-star assignment of Audio Dream Stories: This is a variation off of AudioAssignments70: Sound Effects Story, except the main goal of this assignment is to create a story using only sounds (no words) found on the Internet that tells the story of a dream using audio. Restrictions: use only sounds from freesound.org and a max of 2 minutes. Please remember to credit those who you have sampled. Also, please refrain from having 6+ “layers” in a dream. We all know from watching Inception that by that time, you’re way beyond the normal dreaming mind constructs and into the subconscious.

Nightmare by melindakumi

My dream: I have this recurring dream that stems from childhood fears. This dream is always the end of a sequence (because I wake up during this dream and not parts before it) and the events that lead up to it is always different. I am running up the side of my grandparents’ home to the garage door and it is locked but I know that there is a fire right inside of it. I knock and try to shout but there are no voices from the ones inside or me on the outside. Eventually the fire crumbles the front “facade” and I run out of the garage basically into my own garage at home, confused. At home I am fleeing from the police (I know them by their uniforms because the siren never matches) and running circles around my house hoping that the orange/tangerine tree will fall on them as I pass it over and over and over and over again. It is usually this time I wake up. I am even more alarmed to find myself a young adult again and not a child.

The clips were from d20w, martian, payattention, cksned, and ifartinurgeneraldirection. All the sources are linked to the exact sounds that they were ordered in.

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I think I just made a bumper… woot woot

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AHHHHH! Okay, so I’m way excited!!

One of the most difficult assigments in week 4 for ds106 was to make a bumper. I know, I didn’t know what it was either but a little research goes a long way. So basically a bumper is a small introduction that many radio stations have. It basically plays cool music and you say the name of the radio station. I used SoundCloud and FreeSound to make my amazingness happen.

For my bumper I decided to use the introduction to a Buckcherry Broken Glass Song, and said “Y0u’re listening to ds106 radio.” It sounds kinda boring when you think about it BUTT my curiosity led me to something BEYOND COOLNESS.

SO I was clicking around and then somehow, don’t ask how cus I have no idea how I did it, I was able to make my voice echo/overshadow it? I don’t know but it’s pretty cool.

My bumper is about 6 seconds long, I think that might be too short, but I didn’t want to ruin it so I just left it how it was.

I hope you guys like it

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5 Sound Story: Heart Attack

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Okay, this assignment started off to be a pain in my ass (excuse my language) but I managed to fight through it and learn to love Audacity. I’ve never used it before but had a BLAST making this clip. I started out with about fifteen different types of clips from Freesound, but narrowed my selection down and found the right ones to use for my clip. I managed to make it 1:30 and I think it sounds really really cool! Definitely a lot of tension but check it out!

When I first opened up Audacity, I had no idea what I was doing. I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to look up directions, so I played around with it until I was comfortable enough making my own clip. Then the fun began. I used Thunder on a loop, Heartbeat on a loop, a door opening, a creaking floor, and a crash for my five sound clips. I think that I used them all appropriately and actually got wrapped up in the assignment I lost track of time.

My main goal was to create something that made you sit on the edge of your seat. Being my first attempt at this, I believe that I most definitely succeeded. I’m going to Tweet this out for sure and try to get people to comment on this because I’m proud of what I made. It’s amazing what mashing a couple of audio clips can get you. Definitely something fun and exciting to play around with. I’ll be doing this a lot more with other clips in the near future.

If I had to choose, I would say that this was one of the best assignments that I’ve done so far this semester in this class. It was a lot of fun to be able to mix and match different clips and create something of my own based on what I thought sounded the best in each spot. I hope that you all enjoy the clip and comment for me please!

I was unaware that it was only supposed to be 60 seconds and instead, I made it 90 seconds. I hope that Professor Burtis lets this one slide! Just think of how much less intense it would be without those extra 30 seconds