Category Archives: AudioAssignments

Breaking News

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.

I used HeyGen for the voice because I wanted to keep the tone light and avoid creating a serious or upsetting breaking news story. Instead, I went with something I wish would happen in real life. After generating the audio, I exported it and brought it into Soundtrap. From there, I made a few minor edits to clean it up and added a classic news broadcaster theme song to give it a “news” vibe. Overall, it was a pretty simple process, but I think it turned out well!

We will be right back

For my first audio assignment I did the Radio Show Intermission.

I see our radio show being more of a podcast situation. So I made my intermission similar to what I thought the intermission for Limetown Season 2 was like. Except for it going to commercial I make the intermission longer than just a few sounds.

I started with a sound of water dripping in a cave from Free Sound and duplicated the second drip as that was the one I liked better. I then went to a text to speech converter and had 5 different recordings of different voices saying each word of “Days of Crime and Roses will be back” and cut that together in Audacity. I then found a piano that sounded melancholy on Adobe Stock called “Who Takes Care of You” and once I heard more of the song and added it to Audacity I realized that I wanted to time the water dropplets to the beat of the music! So I did that and Im happy with how it came out.

Welcome, DOCAR!

I decided to modify the “Good Morning Message” assignment in order to make an intro for our radio show, Days of Crime and Roses (aka DOCAR).

I used Audacity to cut together Frank Sinatra’s Days of Wine and Roses in order to make it a little more tech noir. I used a video of a women demonstrating how to pronounce the word “crime” in order to get a human audio of the word, and then copied the audio and distorted it in several different ways. I used my favorite YouTube to mp3 converter to turn these into editable files. I also grabbed a static effect from FreeSounds just to make everything extra disorienting. My favorite part of all of this was finding the perfect piece of instrumental to go under the word “crime” to make it fit within the rest of the song.

1-800-kindred spirit

For “Create a Commercial,” create a commercial using a video editor such as iMovie, Adobe, ect. In this assignment, you should aim to make a commercial for your radio show. In the commercial, you can create a whole new product or use one that is already out, such as an advertisement for Apple Inc., Nike, Walmart, etc. Try NOT to make it too long or else your viewer will get upset, limit to 10-30 seconds.

Link to assignment: https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/creat-a-commercial/

For our radio show, which explores dating in the tech-noir, digital world, I decided to create a commercial that fits the theme. I came up with the concept of a fictional dating app called Kindred Spirit, designed to connect people in a digital age. To bring it to life, I used HeyGen for the voiceover, selecting a tone that suited the futuristic vibe of the app. After extracting the audio, I uploaded it to SoundCloud for editing.

I added commercial style background music to enhance the atmosphere and applied fade-in and fade-out effects for a realistic sound. I also adjusted the volume levels to ensure the voiceover and music balanced well together. The whole process was fun, and I’m proud of how realistic the final commercial sounds. It feels like something you’d hear on an actual radio station.

Podcast Ads of the Past

For this assignment, I completed the “MailChimp Message,” but instead with a more modern podcast sponsor. I listen to a lot of podcasts and have heard Quince advertised on almost every single one, so I opted to do that. Our radio show, Days of Crime and Roses, is now oficially sponsored by Quince! Hearing the MailChimp ad was so nostalgic, as I remember listening to it on Serial all those years ago!

To complete this, I used text-to-speech generators of several different voices. I ported everything into Audacity and spliced it all up. After that, I used Aiva to create the perfect backing audio for my ad and may propose using the same audio (or something similar) for our radio show!

Cyber 75 The vibe (Featuring the Fearless Femmes) Radio Show Intermission

Radio Show Intermission was the second Assignment that I chose from the assignment bank.

I created this intermission for the Fearless Femmes Segment on Cyber 75 The Vibe Radio Show. It was a little off script and last minute than what we had originally planned for but it is still on track with our story line and it’s almost 2 minutes long so if we need a nice filler or a piece to help build our story line, I figured this would be perfect and a nice option to have if we need it.

It’s only Sapphria Mae who is talking and it’s mainly about her spilling the beans for her own personal gain, while also intending to try to keep listeners engaged with “secrets” or “tea”. Sapphria also talks about the other characters by their names, giving more exposure to who is who, and also to get listeners excited for the next part/or half of our segments. Also – She is a femme fatale, so this is perfect for her archetype traits.

I created this recording on my iPhone and then uploaded it to Audacity. I looked up the sound effects and the background music all on FreeSounds.org. I started the track with “elevator music” and a DJ scratch to let listeners know that this is a “break” from the show. Then I just played around with the track for a little bit until I was satisfied. One thing I made sure to do was to turn the background music at a much lower level than my audio recording sound so the whole thing wasn’t overwhelming or hard to hear me.

Game show music

For the background music I wanted something techy but not focus grabbing since it’s only background music.

Of course, it’s not perfect but the point isn’t perfection.

Freesound – Crowd Clap.wav by GB01

Create a Place – Assignment Bank

Freesound – background music.mp3 by ZHRØ

Freesound – Buzzer sounds (Wrong answer / Error) by Breviceps

Freesound – 10661 bonus correct answer.wav by Robinhood76

I wanted to make the listener remember game shows they may have watched when they were younger going for the nostalgia factor. I made this using Audacity once again and sounds from Freesound. Made sure to add the sources above the sound cloud.

For this audio I was a bit stuck on how to do it since it’s not like I was going to make a mini game show. As the Audio assignment said I was trying to just create a place, and my place happened to be in a studio during a game show. I did more splitting and way too may adjustments. Learned something very unfortunate if the segment is too small it’s very hard to move and adjust! So, I had to keep cutting and pasting. Still, I managed to make it work with some good ol elbow grease.

One thing to another

For my second audio assignment of the week, I chose the Radio Show Intermission assignment, which consists of offering the listeners a break from the discussion that is going on during a show. I took a different approach to this assignment though, creating a brief intermission to transition to be able to go from discussion to another aspect like an ad or a different segment of the show. I wanted to make it quick, but also harsh, to show it’s not meant to blend flawlessly into the show, it’s meant to stick out a little to give the listeners an idea of something changing and to bring back full attention.