As a surf instructor I’m in the water all summer. Some days the currents is so strong it is extremely tiring to swim. Surf fins are really helpful on these days. I have a pair made by a company called Viper. This summer a local surfer came and decided he’d but my small flippers on his big feet. (haha don’t worry we’re friends). Yes, they did break. But, I emailed the company, told them what happened, and they sent me a new pair! How rad is that!? Of course, I am now a Viper Advocate!!  So, when I saw the assignment to write a jingle about on of our favorite products I knew what to do. I used my off the chain rhyming skills and conjured up this jingle.

One audio assignment this week was to make a popular song sound like it is being sung by chipmunks.  As i went through my itunes I contemplated what songs would sound funniest as a chipmunk. First, I chose a song from Mumford and Sun’s newest album, Babel. But, I decided there was too much instrumentals for a chipmunk song. Or maybe it’s just too soon to disrespect any of those songs. haha …So i chose Jack Johnson! First, I downloaded the song to audacity. Then, I used the app to change the tune. I tested a couple of options for chipmunk sounds. At first, I tried to speed up the song. This definitely made a squeaky song, but, you couldn’t understand the words. So,  I made the pitch higher. I then exported the file and uploaded it to sound cloud. WaaahhLAHhh

I came across the assignment Character Calls and thought it could be interesting to do. The only question was, which character should I do? I looked at some of the previous posts, however some of them the blogs had been deleted. I ended up discussing the assignment with my roommate. I explained to her what I was supposed to do. She immediately came up with Ace Ventura Pet Detective. And all I could think was how come I didn’t think of that one! It was perfect! I came up with the idea of combining animal sounds that stood out in the first movie to make one big animal call. I used a dog bark because in the beginning he saves an abused dog. I used the dolphin call because his big job is to save the dolphin mascot. The monkey call comes from his pet monkey as well as the macaw call. However, these calls weren’t enough to satisfy me. I ended up think of the “dun dun dun” signifying danger. Ace Ventura is a pet detective and rescues a pet in danger, so it only makes sense that his call would include some sort of indicator of danger.

I used audacity to put all of these sounds together. I had to cut most of the sounds down to try and get the perfect animal noise. I then had to rearrange the sounds in an order that sounded best and made sense. I put the dog first (in the movie he comes first), then the dolphin (he is the big job), and then his two friends in the end. I put them in order which I thought sounded best. I tried to change the pitch on the dolphin noise to get it to be louder, but it just didn’t sound like a dolphin noise so I took that out. Turns out, the sounds were perfect the way they were made.

Chipmunk’d

“The object of this assignment is to take a mainstream artist and chipmunk them.”

My most recent favorite song is Red by Taylor Swift. For this assignment I Chipmunk’d Taylor by uploading the song into Audacity, raising the pitch and speeding up the tempo. These changes make the mood of even a break up song more upbeat. I would say this version of the song is a more amicable break up then the original sad ending.

I have never been a fan of creating audio or even playing with it. For some reason, it just doesn’t click in my head. In our earlier audio experiences it wasn’t that bad. However, when I started to dive into the audio assignment bank I found a few assignments frustrating. I tried a few, and this is the best result. When I first came across the assignment, Chipmunk’d, I thought it looked really cool. I had always liked Alvin and the Chipmunks and thought it would be interesting to channel their voices into a modern day song.

I decided to use Yellow by Coldplay. I wanted to do a slow song to speed it up a bit (just thought it would be an intersting effect). I also already had the song on my computer so that takes out one step. I uploaded the song to audacity and started playing with it. Around 1 1/2 hours later I was still playing with it. I couldn’t get the pitch or the tone right. It just all sounded funny to me. I even tried a few other songs (Wannabe-Spicegirls, and a few Jack Johnson songs) but nothing seemed to work right. I have no idea why. I finally went back to my original song and started playing with it the best I could. I used the change tempo tool to sort of speed it up and then the change pitch tool to try and make the chipmunk sound. I found when I changed hte pitch, the music behind the lyrics changed also. It was just a funny sound for me and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. However, I worked so long on this I had to share what little work I accomplished.