“Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station.“
This was my first attempt at a radio bumper, and I focused my attention on creating a catchy phrase. I came up with “The best tunes with the best people” and looking back at it I could’ve made something more clever but this will have to do. Something I had to work through was the audio only playing through one side of my headphones but I soon figured out that I needed to go into the settings of Audacity and split the audio channels. You can never know too much about the software we use! I’m still an Audacity rookie, so there will most likely be more of these learning lessons.
“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.“
I used sounds sourced exclusively from Freesound.org to create a story where a man enters a spooky castle and potentially doesn’t make it back alive. There are some supernatural elements to the sounds used, such as weird alien noises that are indescribable in daily life.
The story starts off with a whispering man, then our main character is transported to the haunted castle. He opens the door only to find a void of black and the emergence of an unknown extraterrestrial being. Then his screams can be heard echoing throughout the castle, never to be heard again.
Audacity was surprisingly simple to use for mashing together sound effects clips like this, it made me feel more comfortable with working with the software in bigger projects in the future.
You wake up in chains in a room you’ve never seen, the last memory you have being of AI taking over. There is a soft Catholic church song being played in the back, so close that it sounds real, yet so distant in the echoes. The radio in the corner of the room is playing something, a message, but it never quite gets through. The bell tells you your time is running out.
I got a little bit eager with this one and skewed the rules a bit (not really, just went above what the directions were!) but here is my Audio Assignment, and here is the prompt,
“This media assignment has two parts. First, edit a song to sound like it is playing from another room. The audio should sound muffled and the bass should be prominent. Here is an example of this effect and here is a tutorial on how to do this. The second part of this assignment is to write a weirdly specific description of your song. Here is an example of a description.“
No one said I didn’t have to add more sounds . . . but I had so much fun with the other Audio Assignments and adding sound to add eerie vibes that I had to again! And this one I put a lot in, so here’s my walkthrough using Freesound, as always..
I used this Catholic church folk song that I found, because it already sounded a little faded and I thought I could make it eerie. I put this in Audacity, and instead of using the tutorial that the assignment had, I went in search of my own, because this one wasn’t on Audacity. I found this tutorial on YouTube, which just had me mess with the Low-Pass Filter. After that, I also played with the bass a little bit and then lowered the volume on it.
In the background, I also added a very soft wind sound. It’s barely noticeable, and mostly just adds white noise, but I think it’s nice and makes it feel heavier. I also put this in the Low-Pass Filter to make it sound distant.
Now, starting from the beginning, the first sound we hear outside of the song and wind is some synthy morse that is probably gibberish (but if it actually says something, pretend it doesn’t . . . or that it does, I guess!) I liked the different radio-like sounds this had, and I imagine in the room, there is a radio somewhere that is playing this.
The next sound is the slight rustle of chains. I imagine this is the protagonist realizing that they’re chained up!
Following this is just another muffled message from the radio. It’s incoherent, and over before you even realized it started.
Next is some knocking, that I added just to make it a little more creepy. This sound also got put through the Low-Pass Filter to make it muffled and distant, as I imagined it in a different room, like the protagonist is hearing it through the walls.
Directly after the knocking is some more morse code, yet this one actually has a message. It says “peace and love” which feels so eerie in this environment. I imagine this message is coming from AI, almost in a snarky, sarcastic way . . . reminds me of a certain AI I know . . .
And again, more knocking. This one is louder, more intense, more threatening. It’s beginning to get a little bit scarier, and you feel a lot more uneasy than before.
Following the knocking is the sound of chains rustling against something or dragging against something, and this sound was also put through the Low-Pass Filter. I wanted to set in the idea that there were more, that this wasn’t the only person, but also, this sound has a creepy feel, like it’s coming from the people (AI?) that put the protagonist here.
As soon as the chains are quiet again, there is a very soft sound of a clock ticking. It’s here to symbolize that your time is running out, that this is the end. It builds tension with each soft tick, despite the sound not changing in any way . . . until . . .
The clock is chiming. It’s time. Time’s up, that’s it. And as the clock chimes, as you realize you ran out of time, there is a synthy noise that starts getting louder and louder and more and more intense. The wind starts getting louder and heavier, still muffled slightly from the distance. All the while, you can still hear the clock ticking, and you can still hear the sound of the song, but it’s getting drained out by the synth and the wind, until there’s nothing else.
I think it’s pretty cool, if you ask me. THIS IS FUN!!! Sorry for everything I said about audio engineering, I take it all back, all I needed was a good night’s sleep and some motivation and BAM here we are.
I’d like to say that this is slightly inspired by a teaser for a song by the KPOP group ATEEZ (thank you ateez i love you ateez). They did this teaser live and out of nowhere with no context at all, and it was just creepy and weird and all the sounds were random and then there was suddenly morse code. While this teaser also pairs visuals to paint the scene, when you look at the unchanging scene for 30 minutes, you start focusing more on the audio. I tried to take a similar approach that just made this seem so weird and creepy. There’s also a bell that plays in the teaser, and I wanted to find a bell to fit for mine too, but none of the audios clicked well for me. The clock was the next best option!
But yeah! I hope this was cool! I also hope I helped some people with the assignment with the link to an Audacity tutorial!
“Within this assigment, you must find some spooky sounds and create a scary audio clip. Select more than four sounds and overlap them on a program like Audacity. You can use Freesound to select your sounds. Make them as spooky as possible. Good luck!“
So, obviously, I did just that.
I wanted to keep it kind of anonymous, let your brain fill in the story. I got all of my sounds from Freesound, as always (what a good source of sounds).
I wanted a white noise sound in the background that would stay the entire time, something eerie and creepy . . . weird, even. It’s there to build ambience, to set the mood rather than setting the scene. To set the scene, I added wind noises to create an environment. I also added footsteps to create texture, making sure the audio I found was on concrete or at least something hard, because I imagined it as such. Maybe it’s an alleyway, but I think it’s just an abandoned road, because the wind isn’t bouncing off of anything and the ground is hard.
One little thing to paint the story with the footsteps is that I paired them with the eerie environment. I stopped them, paused them and cut out the audio there abruptly, as our main character pauses after hearing the baby laugh. Another little thing, I kept the main character breathing shakily throughout it, but upon hearing the laugh, she not only stops walking, but she stops breathing, holding her breath.
She keeps going after the laugh stops, catching her breath again, and it’s just her breathing with the white noise, wind, and her footsteps, until there is the distant, barely there sound of a child singing. Only this time, she does not stop, and she doesn’t run ahead, because just after the child sings, there are two sounds that play out that create tension, one like a catherdral, and one almost like a jumpscare. But you keep hearing her footsteps and you keep hearing her breathe: she’s still going.
And then it ends.
What happens next? I don’t know, maybe she starts running as the child laugh gets closer. I was originally going to end it with a “boo!” from a child, like it jumpscares her and that’s the end, but I couldn’t find a good enough audio for that, so the end is ambiguous.
This was so much fun . . . I don’t like creepy things, but I play horror games and if there’s one thing that is so important about horror, it’s sound. It’s the ambience. It’s the scene that you make through audio to fuel visuals in your brain, to let your brain freak you out more and more over the littlest of sounds. It’s so so cool.
Also, I believe this was a student from a few years back, but I listened to this as inspiration (I was going through the assignments) and I just think they did a really good job and that was really cool, so I just wanted to promo it!
I’d be interested to see if anyone from this semester does this assignment . . . I wanna see all the creepy scenes we can build through audio!
“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!
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.
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.
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.
I didn’t expect much out of a quick color inversion, but boy did it change the vibe of Hwei. Other than the alien-like glow that comes along with using color inversion, the emphasis on green and yellow hues is a complete overhaul of his
I’d argue that the glow on his body is actually a pretty cool visual element that can portray a transcendent being emitting light.
Here is a skin for Hwei in the original game League of Legends.
To be honest, this isn’t a great in-game skin. It’s quite lazy and it was only shipped out due to every character needing a skin upon release so that Riot Games (the company behind League) could profit from early release sales. It feels forced to push him into a winter theme for his first skin to portray him as some sort of “ice prince”, when they could have taken this concept in a much more sophisticated manner accurate to his lore.
I feel as though my simple color inversion has produced a better idea than this lazy Disney rip-off. The light green emphasis symbolizes Hwei’s connection to organic beings and the laws of nature, which contrasts his dystopian cyborg outlook that he currently has. As an alter ego, maybe Hwei can be an individual seeking to lead the natural world, using his art to move the core emotions of every living being around him.
Doing this assignment has given me some ideas for revisions to his story, potentially highlighting the conflict between his ideologies of natural beings versus the virtually perfect AI prototypes.
I did the Say It Like The Peanut Butter assignment from the assignment bank because I’ve always wanted to learn how to make gifs. I chose the movie Black Swan because when I was thinking of movies with scenes that capture its essence, Nina’s wing flutter movement immediately came to mind. I think this movement she does completely captures the movie as it is the character’s move key move during the ballet.
To make the gif I used this Animated GIF Maker I found where you compile all the images and with a few quick settings choices, it makes a gif. I tried this a few times as I knew I needed a lot of snapshots to create a gif that’s not too choppy but I severely underestimated how many I would need. I uploaded both of my attempts, the second one being the better of my tries and I stopped after that one because it felt like a smoother gif would require me to basically just record a video.
