umwfa12s2 – Assignment Bank

Summarization: Week 7 & 8

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I always dread audio assignments. I like listening to music, but have never spent much time on editing or creating new things with it. However, it wasn’t that bad. Audacity (which I used for every assignment I tried) makes it a bit easier to edit music. This week I tried to do some of the more difficult assignments. I did two three stars and two two stars. I noticed the assignment bank for the audio section was smaller than it was for visual or design. I felt there wasn’t much to choose from and I had to opt to do assignments I normally would have passed over for something else.

Chipmunk’d- 3 stars

Character Calls- 2 stars

Context- 3 stars

Contest Nobody could win- 2 stars

For the daily creates, I created a separate post since there were so many

Finding recycled media was easy for me. I had quite a few left over from the design and visual assignments. I actually tried at least 3 other assignments but they didn’t work out. The first one is called “Create an Album Cover using the Links Given”. It was for the assignment Album Cover. I didn’t like the results of this project and found another assignment that I liked better. The next one was called “Awful Picture of Sunglasses for turning an everyday object into extraordinary. It was for the assignment Everyday Object. I did end up completing this project but with a different picture. The next was “Australian Flag not used in A Place I’ve Never Been”. I collected pictures for the assignment A Place I’ve Never Been but didn’t like the way this picture looked in the final product so I took it out. The last one was “Unfinished window for Your Dreams out the Window”. It was for the assignment Your Dreams out the window. I couldn’t get it to look right with the window so I found an assignment I liked better.

Finally, our radio show is complete and turned in! I feel that we have been working on this forever and I’m extremely satisfied with our final product. I really liked our idea of a RoadTrip Radio and our approach on how we put things together. I feel most people listen to the radio in the car so this fits perfectly. We also didn’t want to do just a boring story so we added in funny characters and sound effects. Our character’s points of view were also added into the story.

When we were discussing our topics, Kiersten mentioned that a possibility of a road trip drama could be cool. We all fell in love with the idea! We used just a canvas messaging system at first to communicate, but then a google doc was created and this was how we communicated our ideas from then on. I feel as an online class it was a bit more difficult to communicate. You don’t have that in class time to collaborate, get to know the people in your group, or set up meeting times. Also, checking emails and the google doc consistently for everyone was a bit of a challenge. We eventually did meet in person as a group to put the final product of our show together. That, to me, was the easiest part. We had fun getting into character and recording our pieces.

I tried to help organize and and get meetings times together. I am typically a very organized person so I wouldn’t say that is out of my comfort zone. When we met in person, we all came up with the script together. Everyone contributed evenly to it to develop each character to fit into the story. We also decided on sound effects and where to put them during this time. I downloaded a few, but I also had many sound effects already downloaded onto my computer which was convenient. I signed up for our show time and was going to do the skype call, however my skype is not working and had to opt out of it. I also tried to post updates about our progress and tweet about it.

Just met with my #ds106 radio crew! #RadioRoadTrip

— Brittany Parsons (@bpars915) October 18, 2012

I think our show accomplished exactly what we wanted. It’s funny and I feel that it will hold the listener’s attention. They will be on their toes about what will happen next and if the family will ever come together as a whole! I also really like how we added in each character’s thoughts in the beginning and the end. I feel that adds a bit more than just dialogue. I believe it really does allow the listener to connect with each character a bit more.

In the beginning of audio, I was not thrilled to be working with it. Audio is not in my comfort zone and seems to be that it would be difficult to work with. I have had my ups and downs with it, but feel now that after the audio assignments and putting the radio show together I have a basic knowledge of how it works and can do simple things. I am not a genius with audio, but I do believe that doing these assignments has improved my knowledge and understand about it.

EXTRA CREDIT: I’ve noticed that I had been slacking on commenting, so when this extra credit opportunity was opened up I took it head on. I was excited about it! I actually commented more than 7 times just because it was interesting looking at other people’s ideas. I have also been trying to tweet more.

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Quote 4 my Last Audio STAR

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For my final 10 for 10 stars I chose to do Based on 1-Quote-A-Day Project!! by Rimi ‘Kookaburra’ Morita. I chose to do this ‘one star’ assignment because I already had done [9/10] of my stars. (: This assignment was actually a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it! (: I just chose to use one of my all time favorite quotes that is in my room decor(: enjoy!

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive. ~Howard Thurman

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Country Girl, Dazed Father, and a Cranky Mother.

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WOW! I had a lot of fun with anagahama’s audio assignment called Multipersonality! [4/10]

For this audio assignment,you had to pretend that you are three to four persons having a regular conversation. I picked a dinner time scenario because that is what is most familar to me, because I try to be home for most family dinners. For my assignment I used a country gal, her dazed father, and her uptight cranky mother. I had a lot of fun with this. I had to edit a lot out because of laughter but other than that I was able to cut enough to make it work. I hope you enjoy the end product of my multipersonality. (:

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I Go Back.

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SongStory by Jerry [3/10] Stars

I chose to take part in this audio assignment because of the song, I Go Back by Kenny Chesney. I have country roots and this song is my home-run song… LITERALLY it makes me feel like I am back home. This song has so many lyrics that just mean the world to me. The song talks about church, believing, faith, lost of a loved one, young love. It pretty much describes me in a nutshell. I love this song and play it almost everyday. You can jam it to or even cry, this song brings you to emotions you didn’t even know you are feeling. It’s a powerful anthem.

I chose to first display the song to its entirety. For my actual assignment, my SoundCloud link is following the directions in that I played the song and then spoke a bit about it(:

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My boring spring break

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For the Spring Break!!! assignment, I decided to tell a story about how my spring breaks usually sound. First of all, I work in a Northern gas station that is known for its coffee, so the hissing of the coffee pot. Then, I usually get to see my boyfriend (he studies at another university thats across the state) thus my singsongy voice. Then I live in a very historic area next to the beach, so I had to stick the seagulls in there somehow. I really enjoy this audio assignments.

Honestly, I use them as procrastination for other homework… Don’t judge.

[10/10]

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2 Stars: My Very own Ringtone

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For 2 stars, I chose to do the assignment “Make your own Ringtone(s).” It was a fairly open ended assignment. All we had to do was choose a few audio files and string or piece them together using audacity to create an interesting sound for a ringtone.

I chose to use a few audio clips I took using snipmp3.com from the following youtube video.

Those guys crack me up. Anyways, I took the audio files and imported them into audacity and then took out the clips I wanted to use. From there, I used the change speed option on the middle clip in order to distort it and make it sound strange. On another clip I used the change pitch do distort the audio.

8/10 Stars down.

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Read to me

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Suess It

“Take a Dr. Suess book, or perhaps the Berenstain Bears, or one of your own favorites, and read it to us”

I read “Oh the places you’ll go” By Dr. Suess. I love this book, it’s a great graduation gift its inspiring, yet realistic. The jest of it is you’ll be great, you’ll have to work for it, but you’ll get there.

I made this recording on Audacity, deleted long pauses or awkward breaths, and then uploaded it to soundcloud.

Enjoy

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Exit, pursued by Creeper Oberon

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My One-Girl Shakespeare Scene ended up starring the creepiest version of Oberon ever (also a profusion of tinkly fairy sound effects). The scene I chose was from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and involves Hermia confronting Demetrius over the whereabouts of her lover, Lysander. When Oberon enters to discover that that his servant, Puck, has mistakenly enchanted another man instead of Demetrius, he decides to go about it himself, sending Puck off to find the lady who is actually in love with Demetrius while he completes the magic spell.

Anyway, creepy fairy king ahead. You’ve been warned…

My first exposure to Shakespeare was through a set of tapes my mom bought for me and my little brother that all featured one guy reading through abbreviated versions of the Bard’s greatest plays. I wish I could find an example of his excellent narration, but sadly this was years ago and I can’t recall enough about the name of the cassettes to even begin searching for them. I do remember listening to those tapes over and over again, especially “Midsummer,” which has been my favorite to this day. When I saw the one-man play assignment in the audio repository I knew I had to try a scene from that play.

Technically I did ask a friend to help me out on this one–he and I both recited Oberon’s lines at the same time, creating a really nifty effect that didn’t involve any technical tinkering to achieve. Recording Hermia and Puck’s voices was similarly simple, but Demetrius, the guy Hermia is supposed to marry and attempts to run away from, proved a challenge. My voice is pretty high-pitched naturally, and while talking like a dude is less about pitch and more about tone, cadence and vocabulary (seriously. Check out the concept of gendered language in any sociolinguistics textbook. It’s fascinating stuff!) I still ended up re-recording his lines; I also lowered the pitch of those audio segments just a bit in Audacity. Unfortunately that led to Hermia’s lines sounding more echo-y, since I recorded them right outside of the kitchen, and Demetrius’ lines sounding more muted since they were recorded in my bedroom. I didn’t have the time (or the technical skill) to properly remedy that problem, but I hope it doesn’t detract too much from the overall piece.

As usual, Freesound.org proved invaluable in adding depth and nuance to my little snippet of audio. The first (and most essential) scene-setting sounds I needed were some nighttime background noises. I also knew I wanted some tinkly fairy sounding stuff to act as sound cues for when Oberon and Puck showed up. By searching for “fairy” I found some really nice wind-chime noises that I layered under Oberon’s lines, as well as a fantasy flight sound effect that I used for Puck’s exit and even an entire fairy-themed soundscape that was perfect to signal the fairies’ entrance, as well as Oberon’s magic spell.

Once I’d downloaded everything I needed (and converted a few files into .WAV format with the ever-useful Online-Convert.com) I imported everything into Audacity and got to chopping, cutting and rearranging. The things I learned from the radio show proved incredibly useful here, especially the ability to add tracks and move sound clips around as I needed them. Overall the technical parts of this assignment weren’t too difficult, but I wish I had a bit more experience with this program so that I could at least appease my perfectionist side (the levels of all the sounds aren’t as balanced as I’d like, for example).

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Charlie, You Won!

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This is 4 star audio assignment,”The One-Man Play.” It is audio assignment 567.

The instructions were:

“Act out a scene from a play by yourself, using different voices for different characters. Have fun with this!”

I loved this assignment! The hardest part was choosing which scene to actually do. After lots of time looking at different scenes, I finally decided on the last scene of Willy Wonka. It begins in Wonka’s office where Mr. Wonka is testing Charlie. Charlie passes the test and wins! Not only does Charlie win the life time supply of chocolate. HE WINS THE WHOLE FACTORY. Wonka wants a child to take over the factory, not an adult who may want to change things.

I really like that part of this scene where Charlie places the gobstopper on Willy Wonka’s desk instead of giving it to sluggworth. It showed what great character Charlie had!

I googled a script for the musical. Then I used Audacity to record the final scene and export it as an Mp3. I seemed to struggle with the voices. I tried really hard to sound like a man, but I don’t think I am fooling anyone. Its funny to hear me try though!

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3 Stars- Who hates moving it?

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This is 3 stars? I guess I shouldn’t complain. I got a kick out of this assignment. Mind you, I couldn’t listen to the track I made for more than a minute before my tolerance for the high pitch was gone, but it sounded hilarious none-the-less.

Anyways, this was the “Mainstream Chipmunk’d” assignment from the audio assignments repository. The goal was to give a mainstream artist or song a high pitched voice that sounded reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks. So, I downloaded his real song using keepvid.com into an mp3 and then used audacity to change the pitch to an A level. Real easy.

Here’s the real song, by the way:

6/10 Stars! More to come tomorrow!