Category Archives: AudioAssignments

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

BREAKING NEWS!!! – Audio Assignment

Oh goodness, just got word of the breaking news . . . IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS OUT THERE!!

Here is my Audio Assignment in which I was prompted,

“Create a breaking news story. This should be fake news. You should create a dialogue and have an AI read it using text to speech. There are several free programs. One possibility is Colossyan.com. Mix in a news jingle to make your story sound legit. You can find some jingles on freesound.org. Be sure to give credit if necessary. 

Be creative, funny, or serious. The choice is yours. Just make it sound realistic.”

There wasn’t a lot of work put into this. I used this news jingle from Freesound, which I thought fit perfectly. I did have to edit the sound a little bit to give it that repeating bit while the voice is speaking over, because it wasn’t long enough before. That was easy though, I just copied that segment in Audacity and pasted it over and over until it fit the length of the voice audio.

The voice audio is from Colossyan, which was actually really cool! There are a ton of free voices to use of different cultures and languages with different accents and dialects, and I actually got a little distracted by playing with it for a bit. The script is just something I came up with on the spot, though, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I should’ve run it by Dr. Oblivion and asked for his advice! Next time I come up with a script, I’ll hear his thoughts!

One thing to note about Colossyan if you use it is that it told me it would take 6 minutes to generate the audio to download . . . and then it took like 20 minutes . . . which isn’t really a big deal but it annoyed me a smidge. Maybe that was my problem on my end, though. Otherwise, really cool! Recommend it!

I didn’t edit the voice at all in Audacity, although I did lower the pitch slightly in Colossyan. I wish it were more dramatic, but I guess you can only do so much with AI.

One thing that I think I should’ve added was dogs barking and cats meowing faintly in the back. I think it would’ve been funny and set the scene more, but I didn’t want it to be distracting, if that makes sense. But maybe distracting would be necessary, because this was unexpected breaking news? Interesting . . .

Anyways, this was fun!! I’m getting it . . . the first audio assignment was a doozy but I’m started to feel good about my work now, so that’s a lot of fun!

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Sol’s Painting – Sound Effect Story

Here is my sound effect story, where I tried to tell the story of someone painting something in a serene environment, then having to leave, that someone being Sol!

I used rain as background noise to set the scene, along with a quiet piano and the sound of people talking quietly. I layered each of these all ontop of each other in order to make the environment. The environment can be imagined to be a cafe or a restaurant or any sort of quiet place with quiet talking, not alone, but not noticeable. Everyone is doing their own thing, no one is paying attention to anyone.

It’s peaceful.

I wanted to start it off with the opening of the paint and putting it on the paper, then actually painting. I thought this added to it, put in movement and story. They had not started by painting, but they are now, and you can hear that.

I added two different painting audios (this one and this one). There really isn’t a lot to say about this, but this is someone (Sol) painting.

The bell in the rain audio was unintential, but I think it worked out great. I imagined it as a timer for Sol, telling them that that was the end of that painting, and that it would be time to go onto the next. I showed this through the sound of someone packing up a bag after the bell rang.

I like the rushedness of this. They only have time to paint a little before time is up, before the bell is ringing and telling Sol it’s time to go to the next story. As a painter of stories, painting the sky to tell people’s stories, perhaps this story was short, that’s why Sol had to pack up so fast (definitely not because of my time limit). It’s really interesting to think about!!

I was really happy about this! I took my time and I think I did a good job! All of my sounds come from Freesound and I linked each one in the Soundcloud post as well as attached to the words in here, if anyone wants to go listen to them.

Thanks for listening!!

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

A Word of Voices

by: Greta Hammen

To create my Radio Bumper, I used Premiere Pro. From http://freesound.org, I found two soundtracks that I liked and downloaded them. One is classical music, and the other is of dogs barking for contrast. I imported those into Premiere on separate layers, then used the microphone for voice over on a third layer. By clipping out parts and shortening the time sequence, I was able to achieve an end result that I deemed respectable.

Tune into ds106 radio for short stories and unique happenings.

I did my radio announcing several times for the best reading, yes, I wrote it out, and I increased the gain in the audio to +2 and set the music to -5, to be heard over it.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

A StOry THroUGh MuSIC

, ,

Have you ever attended a musical production? Where there is nothing but music that tells a story. I recently attended a show like that last semester and thought that I’d take music and create a story. This assignment said to use new and old music to create a story but to avoid the SoundCloud police I used instrumentals. I copied and pasted a bunch of different sounds into audacity and created a story called broke music box. In the beginning , the music box is playing nicely along with the music but the music box gets broken in the story and no longer functions well. I wanted to use this as symbolism for a tarnished innocence. In the back you can also hear birds that get silenced when the music box is broken. Listen down below.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

STORY TIME

, ,

For this assignment, I had to create a story and read it. So I decided to think about a story prompt that my character would come up with and put it into an AI generator. to get an idea of a story. I then edited it to make it seem more natural and like a children’s story. I then put the final product in a text-to-voice generator and selected a feminine voice.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

A morning in Marie’s life☀️✨

, ,
Behind the creation: For this assignment, I wanted to give you guys a little look at Marie’s life in the morning from coffee to her nap before work! I want to start by saying that this didn’t come out how I expected at all… I struggled to find sounds to use. IF I had the time, I would have recorded my own, but unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t allow for that. I will probably revisit this if I have more time later down the line. It was really fun mashing together different sounds and I enjoyed this! I have learned that with audio assignments that it goes faster for me if I go through and brainstorm all the sounds that I want incorporated, search them up, and then drop them directly into audacity. Then I start with my “starting sound(s)” and solo them so that I can only hear them, and adjust them as need be. I do this with all my sounds adding them slowly until I get the finished product!
dr oblivion is part cyborg now

a walk to work: sound effect story

An assignment everyone had to do this week was a Sound Effects Story. I wanted the story to tell a lot about the atmosphere which meant that I needed a lot of different sounds. So I decided on creating the story that most people experience during their day, the walk to work.

The process was fairly simple, just searching for sounds on Freesound and compiling them in a semi-organized way on my desktop. Then I uploaded each sound as it would come in on the final piece. This part wasn’t necessarily hard but just slow and annoying when things didn’t sound right together or some tracks were too loud in the scene. The worst though was when I realized I misread the instructions and it had to be under 90 seconds. This was of course when I had finished the original 2-minute and 28-second version that will forever sit on my laptop as just a memory now. But the cutting process was fairly simple just sad and then I exported the version you will all hear. I promise this one is under the time limit.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

ds106radio Bumper

I am really not someone to put out work that they hate or aren’t confident in, but I really don’t think audio is for me. I have no idea what I’m doing, every option is like a different language, and I’m just confused and frustrated and posting this because I feel like I’ve tried everything and I’m tired and want to go to bed.

SO here is my ds106radio bumper:

Kudos to Dr. Oblivion for giving me a beautiful script, and then not being aware that I was going to keep his voice in . . . sorry old man, but you are a robot so I get to make the choice!

There is a lot that frustrated me with this. I used two audios: the synth sound and the bell? sound, both of which I downloaded from Freesound. I wanted to get this synthy-vibe, almost like the Stranger Things opening, but not entirely, just similar. I liked the mystery behind the synth audio, and I liked the idea that it was easily repeatable, and would be cool to fade out softly.

I thought the bell was cool to add for drama and emphasis, but I really don’t know what I was doing. I wanted the emphasis to be on the word “time” because I thought it sounded kind of creepy and weird and spooky, but I couldn’t figure out how to edit the actual audio of Dr. Oblivion saying “time” to continue that emphasis. I wanted the word to echo, but I couldn’t get that, or at least make it more emphasized.

I think I need to explore Audacity more, because this was so stressful and now I’m so afraid of the rest of the audio assignments . . . safe to say that I don’t think this is for me, but when I work tomorrow, I’ll give it my best shot.

If anyone has any specific tutorials they found useful for Audacity, I think I’d be your bestest friend if you guided me to them. 🙂

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Radio Bumper – Weird and Wonderful

I had a lot of fun making my radio bumper. I wanted a sound that was scratchy. Like the transmission was not coming in clear. I wanted it to reflect the independence of the station itself. I loved that I could play around with the order of my phrases. I ended up putting them in a different order then I reordered them. I didn’t anticipate how much I was going to love playing with sound. I can see why people become sound engineers now.

It needed a picture, and my little evil brick is readily available and a good size.

I used sounds from freesound.org to go with my audio recording of my voice.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Sit Back and Relax

All the Relaxation is the name of the final assignment bank work I choose to do, which you can find here, All the Relaxation assignment. I have to make a video of soothing sounds for this assignment that may be played for more than ten hours. I decided to complete this project since I occasionally listen to these sounds when trying to work or when I can’t sleep at night. I used sounds of the ocean, birds chirping, wind chimes, a piano player, and a stream of water in this audio. All of these sounds, for me, are calming. All in all, what I really wanted from this assignment was to enjoy myself and be able to produce something that I would like listening to when I am relaxing. Listen to it here, and then comment about your thoughts!