Interview: First Time Photographer

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This post is about a recording of an interview of a photographers first time taking pictures and realizing she liked it enough to pursue the field. After recording the interview I imported it into pro tools and arranged the audio to omit all the stutters, pauses, laughs, my voice and words such as like, where they don’t belong. I put the audio back together so it flows continuously without those elements. I put very light automation decreasing the volume where the clips reconnect to create a quick fade where breathes were not being taken, but I wanted to combine clips to create statements or sentences. It was a little difficult to cut and paste trying to keep the breathes before and after every statement. The beginning is a little rough, but it smooths out later down the line. I had fun and hope you enjoy!!

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Ask Not What DS106 Radio Can Do For You

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It’s not a secret that I have a weird obsession with the late U.S. president JFK. The second I heard that we had to do a bumper, I immediately knew that I wanted to play with a famous JFK speech. Don’t ask why- there is no rational behind my love.

For this bumper I selected a snippet from one of JFK’s most famous speeches.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

The next challenge was to find a way to customize the speech and make it more relevant to the class. So I downloaded a sound clip called “The History of The Internet,” isolated the words “the internet,” and popped them in.

But then I needed to find a way to work “DS106″ into the audio clip. I really didn’t want to record myself saying it, and I searched a lot for sound clips that I could cut apart and piece together. I even briefly attempted to isolate sounds from a Bill Clinton speech to make him say “DS106.” As you might imagine, it did not go well.

But then I remembered that while perusing classmates’ projects, Sara referenced a text to speech program she had used to generate audio for her bumper. So I googled “text to speech” and came across this creepy site. I typed in my words, selected the voice I wanted, then recorded it into my Garageband.

It came out a little quiet and grainy, and not as clear as I would like, but I had a difficult time getting it any clearer.

I perused a lot of the standard background beats that Garageband offers, but after playing around a bit I decided to go with a song I already had in my iTunes. The song used here is “Express Yourself” by N.W.A, [warning, explicit language] and this specific recording is the instrumental part of the song copied and repeated several times to give a longer instrumental section. And ta-da! A pretty sweet bumper.

The only thing I don’t like about the final product is the end. Just like with the sound effect story, I feel like it cuts off a little randomly and isn’t very smooth. But other than that, I’m extremely happy with the finished product!

(I also whipped up a quick banner to go with the soundcloud. That came out pretty neat as well).

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DS106 Radio Bumper (a.k.a. my downfall)

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“Pfft audio.. anyone can do that, how hard can it be?”
Oh my goodness, I’ve nearly thrown my laptop across the room at least three times. Not only am I horrendously bad at anything in technology past Facebook and making a blog look relatively nice, but I also usually don’t have patience for long directions. For instance, board games: I hate reading the directions. I’d rather just figure it out as I go, which always leads to frustration. You’d think I’d learn by now, but nope (disclaimer: I did end up having to thoroughly read the directions for using Audacity, saving files, etc.). Am I an adult now?

Anyway, here is my 10 second long DS 106 Radio Bumper. I used the sound “Raven 2_loop” found on the website Freesound.org. I was in public so I opted to not record myself talking and instead used the website text2speech.org, in which I typed “DS 106 Radio” and used a robot-y mans voice, which the website then turned into an MP3 file to download. I uploaded both of these to Audacity, messed around with it a bit (I really wish I could intellectually recite everything I did, but the whole thing consisted mostly of pressing buttons and trying to figure it out). I moved the speech into the middle of the “Raven 2_loop” recording, saved it as an mp3, uploaded it to Soundcloud, and here it is! Phew!

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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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Guess the Song!

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I did the assignment called “Reverse Audio Quiz” which is a 3.5 star assignment. To reverse my audio track, I downloaded Audacity, imported the original version of the track, and added the “Reverse” effect. That reversed my track. It was very simple. However, it did take me some time to figure out which song I wanted to reverse since I wanted it to be interesting sounding, somewhat familiar, but not incredibly easy. I figure if you know this song then you will be able to recognize it reversed. So, here are my 3 hints for you all!
1. It is by a German/Russian electronic dance music producer.
2. It was released in 2013.
3. This song won a Grammy award.

Leave your guesses in the reply box!

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Sound

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So I’ve been playing with sound over the last few days. It has been a little frustrating partially because tools and devices that worked when a tutorial was built in 2008 or 2010 or 2012 may not be as useful as they once were due to the ever changing nature of software. It seems if you don’t use a program regularly it may be completely unfamiliar when you open it again. So I have used Audacity before, but it has changed a bit so I did have to play around with it a little. Soundcloud was an issue because I needed to redo my password. And stripping an existing video of an image but keeping the sound will have to wait until later tonight. (Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions!)

I am very pleased to have gotten my DS106 Radio Bumper done. I do like this song by the Heifervescents. I’ve used it before. I like the beat, the lyrics and the ahahahah. I did use a tutorial to help with the process. Originally I thought I would have to do an overdub but instead I used a narration tutorial which was a much easier process. I recorded my voice, trimmed it using the cut tool, amplified it and then added the track after I had cut it down too. I ended up cutting out the ahahahahs. I then used the time shift key to move my voice track to where I wanted it and then used the envelope key to soften the background music. I may have softened it too much. I also don’t like the way I said asleep but I can live with it for now. Off to strip a video!

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ds106 Week 4 Audacious Audio

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Week 4 is all about experimenting with sound by listening, creating radio bumpers, and stories using sound effects. Here are two radio bumpers I created for #ds106 Radio using Garage Band.

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Audio Submissions for the @scottlo The Driveby Show

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In follow-up to the Scott Lo (@scottlo) request for .mp3 audio submissions (see “Audio Assignment 985: Scott Lo The Driveby Show Interactive Audio Contribution “ for his new #ds106radio The Driveby Show show (avlid RAS syndrome by not using acronyms!), here are some files that I’ve posted:

Apparently it’s the weekend (Thursday, Frida) in Saudi Arabia today and tomorrow, so Scott was not driving to work today. Keep your eye on the Twitter and #ds106radio for the next instalment of the @scottlo The Driveby Show show. As I understand it, we should get it hear at about 10:30 pm on Friday.

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The #ds106radio @scottlo Driveby Show. He’s in a Yaris.

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In what promises to be yet another wonderful ‘slice of life’ internet production, our friend-in-the-field, Scott Lo (@scottlo), has launched (at 6000 RPMs!) The Driveby Show.

‘Casting early in the morning from his considerately time-shifted home base of Saudi Arabia, after a bowl of his favourite Grape Nuts cereal, Scott begins his day with his friendly voice, sharing his thoughts over the ds106radio airwaves as he heads off to work in The Yaris*.

“The @scottlo DRIVEBY SHOW” animated GIF by aforgrave

If you’ve not yet tuned in, you have only to dial in to experience the barrels of black gold that Scott is pumping out. Get the down-lo on the lo-down every day that he broadcasts, arriving here in the EDT at 10:30 pm. Note: We spring-ed forward here Sunday morning, so you folks need to refer to it with the D and not the S for then next nine months or so!

While the complete format new show is still evolving (we want an interview with the Urdu Tea-Master some day), Scott has indicated that he will accept listener contributions for inclusion in the DRIVEBY SHOW. There is now a ds106radio.us Audio Assignment in support of this effort, “Audio Assignment 985: Scott Lo The Driveby Show Interactive Audio Contribution “. In an effort to support this new series on #ds106radio, Scott will find a short 3-minute audio clip later today in his email when he awakes. You’ll have to listen in to hear what he makes of it.

As always, when Invoking Enthusiastic Participation, please be sure to always Practice Safe Broadcasting!!

*A note regarding The Yaris.

Were it not for the fact that I’d had a rental car just last week (for the first time in years) I would not have had a clue what Scott was going on about when he prepended his characteristic “the” to the utterance Yaris. As it turned out, I had just driven in one (and my thanks go out to @timmmmyboy, @mbransons, @DrGarcia, @noiseprofessor for their company and the info about where to find the fuel door release switch!) and so I’ve had that context to frame my imagination when Scott mentions it. That, and a coincidental yet synchronistic re-watching that same weekend of Code 46, where Tim Robbins drives a solitary compact car on huge, abandoned desert highways.

"Conceptualizing the @scottlo Yaris DJ Space" animted GIF by aforgrave

“Conceptualizing the @scottlo Yaris DJ Space” animated GIF by aforgrave

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Chipmunkd’ my favorite artist…..mixed emotions.

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The first Audio assignment I chose to do was called Mainstream Chipmunkd’, worth 3 stars. Its goal was to take one of your favorite songs and chipmunk it to make it sounds cool. Anyone that is my friend could tell you that my favorite artist of all times is Rascal Flatts. The first thing I did was open Audacity and go into File and select a new template to create this skeptical master piece! I went into the File tab and selected import then Audio which then led me to my itunes playlist. I selected the song Feels Like Today by Rascal Flatts and imported it into the audacity template. I selected the song with the curser then went and clicked onto the Effects tab and scrolled down until I found the Change Pitch selection and proceeded to click on it. I then adjusted the scroll bar to the right and clicked ok. I pressed play and was shocked to hear my favorite artist come across in chipmunk voices. I was really happy with how the adjustment came out. The next step that I did was to click on the File tab and click export, naming the file: Chipmunk Rascal Flatts. I then opened up soundcloud.com and uploaded the new version onto my soundcloud.com account. Once it was uploaded onto soundcloud I added the tags AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments494, Rascal Flatts and ds106.

I even had soundcloud hook up to my twitter to let others view my creation

“@AshStegemiller:

Chipmunkd’ Rascal Flatts…kindof cool #ds106 #soundcloud Chipmunkd Rascal Flatts http://soundcloud.com/astegemi/chipmunkd-rascal-flatts …on #SoundCloud”

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS:

Mainstream Chipmunkd’ (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/mainstream-chipmunkd/)

The object of this assignment is to take a mainstream artist and chipmunk them. As we reflect on our childhoods we realize that all the chipmunks were an awesome bunch and it is really easy to do this assignment. All you need is any kind of musical editing software like MIXXX and Virtual DJ (which are free). Second either raise the BPM (beats per minute) or edit pitch of the track. If it is a slower track just raise the tempo and try to give the song an upbeat personality. Make sure to tag your assignment and have fun!

If you complete this assignment, share it! If you are signed up with a blog that feeds the main DS106 site just use the following tags when writing the post on your own blog to have your example added below. (You must use BOTH tags!):AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments494