This week was a bit rough but interesting. I have literally no experience editing sound so everything was a long learning process. My audio creations I think came out alright though and I enjoyed seeing the finished version of each one including my radio bumper. So in general I think I am now more comfortable doing basic level audio editing with sound effects, but I wouldn’t trust myself completing anything too long without making mistakes.
Learned how to make an Ai generated voice on Canva
Daily Creates
This week required making 3 Daily creates. All of them allowed me to be creative and make something using Canva, traditional art, and just my creativity for the last one which was a poem. All of them can be found on the post called Inside My Creative Mind.
Assignment Bank
For audio week I made 2 creations and also a sound effect story that required editing with sound effects. For Celeste City I created how I imagined what the place would sound like. For Dysfunctional Home I tried to replicate what a kid hears in a home that has a lot of family drama. For The Eye of the Hurricane I tried to tell the story of my character Runa on a mission.
Audio Reflection
This week I learned about how sound effects can have a big impact on storytelling. I talk more about this in my post called the Power of Sound where I discuss how Moon Graffiti and also the ds106radio’s story of Limetown was able to successfully use sound effects. In it I also showed the Radio Bumper I created.
Radio Show Ideas
I had two fun ideas for a radio show for my character Runa Starr. They can be found on my post called Mission: Probably Impossible
Idea #1: Runa Starr is one of the greatest mercenaries in her rebellion called the Claws. Working solo is how she rolls without anyone holding her back. But this preference gets challenged when her boss assigns her with a random group of people she’s never met on a mission to steal top secret files from a high security government building in Celeste City. This ragtag group with clashing personalities must somehow get over their differences to get the job done.
Idea #2: Runa Starr can take down almost any foe, steal the most guarded treasures, and spy on anyone without leaving a single trace behind, but when her boss sends her on her wildest mission yet she thinks she might’ve finally met her match. She must win a silly game show that requires answering the most bizarre questions. Not only that, but the show is team vs team and her boss unknowingly paired her up with the rebellion member that she absolutely hates working with. Hopefully she can overcome this obstacle and still complete the mission.
Preference: Since Runa is a very headstrong and strategic character I think it would be funny to have her work with a more laidback and nonchalant guy character who intentionally makes mistakes as a way to tease her, but he secretly has everything under control because he cares about completing the mission too. For either idea I would prefer doing a more lighthearted and fun approach to their storytelling.
Sound is all a part of life. Even with your eyes closed your brain can easily recognize the sound of bacon as it hits a sizzling pan, heels clicking against tile floor, or even splats of rain against a window. This is how so many creators are able to use audio to bring their stories to life without even adding the visuals of a video. So lets test it out and see if you can visualize what I am doing in my room right now with only audio as a clue!
Even without being in the room with me you can use the audio to easily imagine the scene. I am literally listening to music right now while the racing clicks of my keyboard subtly play over the muffled snores of my sleeping dog below me. And that’s the power of SOUND! Amazing right! Film, radio, and even audio books use sound effects like this to help tell a story. Even with all our world’s advances in technology like music apps with instant queue we still have radio . . . why? Well Jad Abumrad explains it pretty well in a RadioLab video, its all about connection. That feeling a viewer gets when they feel like the speaker is talking directly to them. Kind of like a parasocial relationship that makes people feel included and engaged. Its one of the same reasons podcasts thrive so well in current day with apps like Spotify getting over 32 million listeners.
Here are two other good examples of how audio is used in storytelling. The first is Moon Graffiti, on the Truth Podcast they use sound effects to help narrate the story of what if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin crashed instead of being able to land on the moon. They use radio static, electrical beeping, button clicking, loud explosion sounds, etc to all help their viewer visualize the scene effortlessly. They are capable of making you feel like you’re in the room with the Mission Control team tracking the spacecraft itself. Even in this other example from the ds106 radio, they played the story of Limetown about journalist Lia trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the hundreds of people who disappeared in Limetown. The storytelling and voice acting is done amazingly well and I highly recommend listening to at least the first episode to try it out. But what stands out the most is how they used sound to set the atmosphere and mood for certain scenes. From the how voices start quiet then slowly get louder to portray someone getting closer or the sounds of crickets to show that they’re outdoors at night. Even the shift in the voice actors’ tone helps to show fear which drives the storytelling for many scenes. In other cases besides story, creators are able to use sound effects to make an impact. Radio bumpers are a good example of this. They are only a quick announcement lasting a few seconds reminding their viewers what radio station they are on in between songs, but they can still be entertaining with the use of audio editing.
Radio Bumper
Here is one I created myself inspired by the assignment bank for the ds106radio. Since this radio station is used by a college class I wanted to keep that theme by making mine based on a wild college party. For my audio editing I used Audacity and added rave music found from TikTok. The voice acting is Ai generated from Canva where I wrote out his script and spent like 30 minutes searching for the closest voice I could find that matched similar to young laidback guy. Lastly, I added the effect of party people cheering while he was making his announcement. Originally the cheers triggering early was a mistake in editing, but I kept it because in real life situations young college students would probably interrupt him with their cheering while partying anyway so it made it more realistic.
A day in the life of Runa as she finishes another mission with her rebellion.
This post was interesting and fun because it was inspired by two people so I combined the ideas together. The first was the Sound Effects Story where the directions said to tell a story without words and the second inspiration was Elizabeth Byrd who gave the instructions to hum a song stuck in your head for her assignment called Humming Away. For mine I edited audio using Audacity and I added a twist to mine by making my character Runa hum a song that she is listening to in her headphones while she is walking through a battle completely unbothered. The humming is upbeat but there is still a slight tone of sadness showing that she is aware of the violence happening around her. The humming audio is from TikTok, and for added sound effects I used angry mob yelling, boot steps on sidewalk, gun shots and also laser gun sounds because in a futuristic city I am sure they would also have futuristic guns. To portray movement I used the boot step sounds and also stopped the gun shots sound effects midway of the audio as a way to show that she passed them and when she makes it to the end she stops humming before she leaves to signify that she doesn’t need to drown out the noise anymore. Also the title of my post is called The Eye of the Hurricane because Runa is calmly walking and humming along while fighting is happening around her, and the eye of a hurricane is known as the moment of calmness during the storm.
You can’t choose your family nor control their actions as things easily go from bad to worse in seconds. Being a kid while hearing your family fight can be unbearable so I dare you to spend a few seconds under the roof of a dysfunctional home. Beware that the sounds chosen may be slightly triggering if you’ve been in this child’s position before.
So how do you feel? Stressed? Overwhelmed? Those are the first words that come to mind after listening each time for me. For this post I got my inspiration from the assignment called Auditory Hell where the directions said for you to create your worst sound ever. For me, I hated family drama growing up so I tried to replicate the sounds using Audacity. I used the sound of adults arguing, a baby crying from hearing all the loud noise, a fire alarm blaring because no one is paying attention to the food burning in the kitchen, and a dog barking as a reaction to all the high energy of the drama around him. My original audio clip was supposed to be longer but I found the sound upsetting and thought the short version still proved my point about how stressfully overwhelming a dysfunctional home can be.
Welcome to Celeste Cit- HEY! WATCH WHERE YA GOING!
Listen come here. I’m gonna give you a little tip. This bustling city ain’t for the weak so you better toughen up or get eaten alive. If you see anything, no you didn’t. Its none of your business so stay out of it. The cops come snooping around like starving hounds on the prowl every now and then so it might be in your best interest to avoid ’em unless you wanna be interviewed every time to see what you know. Any secrets about the rebellion and what not. Oh, speaking of the rebellion, their name’s the Claws. They do underground work tryin to overthrow the government and their members are scattered all across the city. Trust, you do not wanna get in their way. Especially that smug brat they call the Shadow, she may look young but I witnessed her easily take down three cops with my own eyes. Aye don’t give me that look, there’s nothing to fear. They’re good folk on an actual righteous mission to save people like you and me while those rich pigs in the government try to keep us beneath their boots. But that’s all for now. So once again, welcome to Celeste City. And good luck . . . you’re gonna need it.
The Inspiration
This post was inspired by Create a Place from the assignment bank which gave the directions of using sound to create a place. For mine I chose to bring Celeste City to life since that is where my character Runa Starr aka the Shadow lives. I used Audacity for my audio editing. Since it is a cyberpunk themed city I thought it would be cool to make it based off of New York city so I used audio sound effects from the city like sirens, people talking, car alarms, and the sound of footsteps are also included to portray walking on the sidewalk. Lastly, I added in spaceship sound affects in the background because in a futuristic city I am sure they would have highly advanced technology like aircrafts. My script above was originally supposed to be included in the audio with an Ai generated New York accent voice, but none of the free voice generators sounded realistic enough and the other apps like Canva required payment for using long scripts for voice acting. So instead I just made the script readable while the Celeste City sounds play in the background.
For this Daily Create I was supposed to think of a mini golf course design. Since water is considered a hazard in golf I thought it would be funny to have a hard course that is entirely water. I used Canva to design it by getting an image of a kid waterpark playground and I edited in a illustration of a girl playing golf and across the other side of the pirate ship there is the flag with the hole.
Friendly Dino
For this Daily Create I was supposed to follow along with a tutorial to draw a dinosaur. Creating him wasn’t as simple as I imagined it would be but I think he came out looking like a friendly cartoon character. His legs, arms, and tail took me multiple attempts but at least in the end he’s still recognizable as a dinosaur.
Ol’ Timey Poem
For this Daily Create I was supposed to create a poem using the anti-spam word, “starve ye.” For mine the first thought that popped in my head when I saw the word was how people talked in the past, so I made my poem similar to a person from the past making an announcement by using the words, “Hear ye, Hear ye.”
This week was definitely a lot more work than last week when it came to setting things up, creating the blog posts, and finishing up the assignments that were required of us. As usual, I started off the week by creating my first daily create of the week (we were required to do 3), and so the first one was to create a new word that represents a dreamy and disorienting time. I decided to come up with the word “dreamfuzzle,” and you can find the whole post with an explanation and picture at this link. My second daily create of the week was to write a poem about lemons but not using any of the words that they said in the prompt. You can find that post here. My final daily create was to create an image of something one-handed, half-minded, and miniature version of something you do. I decided to create a mini tennis player since that is something I can do one-handed, with half my mind, and have it be a daily practice. You can find that link here. After doing my daily creates, I decided to get cracking on some of the assignments that we needed to do this week. As a result, I went and downloaded and experimented a little bit with Audacity. I have used Audacity before but only at its simplest uses and so I took some times to try and figure out where all the important functions are located and what the user experience was like working within the application. The next step was to create a free SoundCloud account, in which case, I already had one and so this step was relatively easy, I just made sure I had access to said account and then moved on. Next we were tasked with watching two videos from RadioLab and listening to a audio clip on SoundCloud and giving our thoughts on audio storytelling and the connections and meanings that may be present within the sounds of a final audio clip. I wrote out my thoughts in a blog post that explains my thought process on the youtube videos as well as the audio clip, and you can read all about those thoughts there. My next task for the week was to create a radio bumper for the DS106 Radio Station. For this assignment, I created a radio station bumper for the 106.1 radio station because the “106” from DS106 matches with the radio station frequency that I did. I just created a bumper for the radio station with the top hits, pop, rap, etc. This was fun to do because I always heard these bumpers growing up but never really took any interest in them until now. Either way, you can find, read, and listen to my radio bumper at this link. The next step to completing this weeks assignments was to listen to the DS106 Radio Station to gain insight into various audio productions and we were tasked with creating a blog post about it that discusses our thoughts. You can find that post here. Moving on, the next assignment we had the chance to complete was a sound effect story, which means that we had to tell a story with just the sound clips that we could find on freesound.org. This was an interesting assignment because it was cool to see what sounds could come together to create a final story that actually had a meaning. The next assignment we were tasked with was to create a brainstorm blog post that talked about various ideas that we came up with for a short radio show group project that we will be doing in the future. I decided that since Julius Lawrence, another course character, was interested in investing, maybe him and Xander could work together on a new project.
Now that the required assignments for the week are done, I moved into the three other audio assignments we were tasked with completing. The first assignment that I chose to do was to create a breaking new story. I chose to complete this assignment in regards to my course character, Xander Neoteric. I used a third party website that was listed in the assignment description to complete this assignment and you can find that post here. For this assignment, I used a AI chatbot to generate a background image of a news set and one of the avatars the third-party website had and allowed it to speak the words that I typed out using their built-in text-to-speech software. My next assignment was to create a relaxing sound using the sounds available on freesound.org. That post is linked here. I tried to use sounds that I already knew were relaxing and put them into audacity and fiddled with the timing and length of each sound clip to make one final, relaxing sound. I enjoyed this process as it allowed me to mess around with various sounds and figure out which combination created the most relaxing sounds. Finally, my third assignment was similar to the second in that I had to create a spooky sound with at least 4 different sounds from freesound.org. My spooky sound assignment turned out really good and I was able to conjure up a final product that when listened to, really evoked a sense of fear and created a spooky atmosphere. Finally, I finished off my week with some commenting and made sure to try and look through a variety of posts and comment on a few as the week went on.
I did not encounter too many issues this week when completing my assignments. I thought things went pretty smoothly this week and I enjoyed doing all of the assignments. However, the only issues that I can think of for this week was the fact that when I first downloaded and starting using Audacity, it took me a while to gain the proper knowledge on how to use the application and entailed a lot of googling to try and figure out where certain settings and functions were located. But after figuring that out, I was able to continue smoothly with the rest of the assignments for the week and really only hindered me on the first assignment using the application which was the radio bumper. From this week, I would say that creating either the relaxing sound or the spooky sound was my favorite assignment. This is because I found it very interesting how the various sounds could come together to create a final product that was better than all of the individual sounds. It took some trial and error, however, that was enjoyable because I got to see a bunch of the possible combinations I could create with the various sounds and how they worked together to produce differing results.
I definitely think that I accomplished all of the requirements for the assignments for this week and I think I did them to the best of my ability. Like stated before, I enjoyed most of the assignments for this week and really allowed me to be creative with the sounds that I was using and the final products I was coming away with. Again, I really enjoyed the creation of the spooky and relaxing sounds, however, I enjoyed all of the assignments from this week. I would not do anything differently for the work that I did this week as it was completed with effort, time, and creativeness. I believe that there are no larger issues at hand with my work. I think that the assignments were done properly and with effort. I do not have any further questions at this time for the class. One thing I will focus on in the future, it just to get better at working with and understanding audacity and the various functions that the application has to offer.
