As with the last post, I decided to work on my radio show when my group was still deciding on the parts such as the bumper, etc. I decided to work on another noise in the story that is not the background, as while the noise comes from somewhere not where the characters are, it triggers events in the story-basically it is the start of the rising action. It is the yowie call.

For this, I first decided to research “actual” yowie calls. I couldn’t find any calls for the yowie, but its cousin the Bigfoot I could. I settled on the 1994 Ohio Howl, which seems to be a pretty prominent, well-known Sasquatch call among Bigfoot researchers. I found it here: http://www.bfro.net/avevid/SierraSounds/911.asp#howls 

Then, I searched Freesound.org for a human yell, which is recognizable. The assignment I chose says to take a recognizable sound and turn it unrecognizable. A yowie call is pretty unrecognizable! I wanted an angry yell, so it was scary. I am not sure if the yell I used it from anger or fear!

I then: took yell, slowed it down twice, changed pitch to make it higher, as the Bigfoot recording isn’t that deep, copied it twice to mimic the recording, used reverb to make it sound echo-y and distant, made it a bit quieter so it wouldn’t sound crackly because it was hitting to edge of being too loud (of course, may make it even more quiet in the story), slowed it down even more, and changed pitch to make it better match the recording.

Despite all of the steps, it really wasn’t too hard to do. I wanted the call to sound scary, inhuman, and unknown, yet also human, since yowies “are” also hominids.  If it sounds different than the Sasquatch recording, well then, its because its a yowie, not a Sasquatch! (and because there’s no definitive proof of their existence or what their howl actually sounds like!)

This is the assignment that I made this for:

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/make-noise-from-a-normal-sample/

This is where the yell came from:

https://freesound.org/people/mariateresa_garcia/sounds/219719/

man-screaming.wav

mariateresa_garcia

This is where the Featured image is from:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yowie_Statue,_Yowie_Park,_Kilcoy,_Queensland.JPG

English: Yowie Statue, Yowie Park, Kilcoy, Queensland. Photo taken on 21 April 2013

Somersetpedia.paul

The Noise I Made:

The Original Audio I used:

So, for this assignment, I used my roommate’s electric pencil sharpener as the noise to change. Not only is it something we all recognize (I’m everyone has heard an electric pencil sharpener), but it is a steady noise, which makes distorting it and make the noise go up and down easier. Basically, it’s a solid base. The idea of a siren came from the tornado siren that I heard last week.

To get the noise I made, I used the recording of the pencil sharpener, cut it down to a smaller length, then I amplified it, so when it gets softer and louder the differences are more noticeable. I then slowed it down, which made it spookier sounding. I wasn’t necessarily going for that, but it worked in my favor! I then faded it in until about half way, and then faded out the second half. I added some reverb to further distort the sound, and then I repeated the noise 4 times to make it longer and actually sound like a siren. Finally, I condensed it, which amplified the sound some more and further distorted it.

Overall, I had fun doing this assignment. Audacity was simple enough to use. I’m still not sure what the different between distortion and compression are, as they sounded pretty similar to me. I’m definitely glad that the undo feature work well, so I could experiment and get what I liked! The only thing that I couldn’t figure out how to do was click removal. There’s still a click in the sound, and when I tried to use the “click remover” function it didn’t seem to work. All-in-all, I’m happy with what I created!

This is the assignment that I created this for:

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/make-noise-from-a-normal-sample/

This is where my Featured image is from:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/37642394231

Federal Signal Tornado/Civil Alert Siren

Tony Webster

Taken on July 28, 2017