Category Archives: AudioAssignments

“This Feels like a Movie”

I had a grand ole time getting this playlist together. I think it not only fits with who I envision my course character, Bethany, to be, but it also brings out some interesting parts of her character.

  1. Marlene on the Wall: This song reminds of her of her deceased partner, and the bond that she’ll have with him no matter what actually happened.
  2. You Send Me: Their song- it just feels so warm.
  3. Christine: She sometimes feels like Christine, disintegrating, someone with multiple faces.
  4. A Means to an End: Besides just liking Joy Devision, Bethany likes the particular brand of melancholy that this song is.
  5. I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You: In her line of work, it stands to be a good reminder that she doesn’t want to be like those around her. This song is an after-work palate cleanser.
  6. Good News: One of the more modern songs on her playlist, it serves to knock her out of her funks and remind her that there is a world outside of everything in her head.
  7. Over and Over: She likes to turn up this song while she’s cleaning. She just enjoys singing along and pretending she’s on stage.
  8. Don’t Renegade on Our Love: The title is perhaps too indicative- she loves this song but hates that it makes her feel like she betrayed everyone around her.
  9. Fallingwater: This song is either a “cry alone at night” song or a “scream in the car on the way to work” song.
  10. Sabotage: Her guilty pleasure is Beastie Boys!

I’m Someone, and You’re Listening to Something…

Now presenting, my ds106 radio bumper! I used an AI text-to-speech generator to get the “you’re listening to ds106 radio” audio clip, and then used the tools within audacity to cut that up and make it more interesting. I had some difficulties finding an online program that would let me download the audio clip for free. I’m sure there were ways around this (free trials, screen recording), but since I didn’t need that much precision from the TTS tool, I opted to just keep looking for one that would let me download it with no hassle. Following that, I sourced a variety of weird, eerie music and sounds from Freesound and continued to chop these up and distort them. I was a big fan of the “distort” tool and changing the pitch.

Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out! I used to listen to the radio all the time as a kid (and still do now), so I tried to emulate what I heard there. However, I think ds106 is a little bit more retro/techno/weird than Elliot in the Morning, which led to the decisions to make the bumper a little unsettling.

Lunch with Evelyn

This assignment is the All the Relaxation assignment. Truth be told I had an idea for what I wanted to create with my character. I just needed to find an assignment that fit what I wanted to create!

For this much needed relaxing break from work you join Evelyn for lunch. So you sit in a park with a beautiful view and start to take our your lunch to enjoy. Its been a busy day at the office and you both just need some quiet time. Evelyn brings out her lunch and Stephen Kings You Like it Darker book as you both enjoy the sounds of the park and sit in peace. Even if it is only for an hour.

I once again used Audacity and Freesound for this assignment. I knew that I wanted to incorporate my character by doing a day in the life of the sounds around her. So I created just a simple lunch with her. I started with park sounds. I wanted to convey the steps of eating lunch at work. Taking your sandwich out of its ziploc bag, so thats exactly what I did. I found a ziploc bag opening and a soft crunch of food being eaten. I then wanted Lynn to be reading a book since that is something she enjoys doing when she needs a peace of mind so I had a sound of a bag being opened and closed for her to get her book and then flipping through pages to find where she left off. She finds her page with a final flip and starts to read. I then repeat the ziploc bag, the soft crunch, and another page flip and the rest of the park sounds.

I personally feel like these park sounds and the comfort of reading in the company of others is very relaxing. Especially the page turning!

If a Man is Stabbed Alone in the Woods, Does He Make a Sound?

I utilized Audacity and FreeSound in order to construct my project, and opted to tackle it bit by bit. I started with my ambiance/background music, and then just added on the story. It goes as follows: a man approaches an area in the woods, builds and lights a fire, and begins to look through his backpack. As he does this, branches crack behind him as someone else reaches him. The stranger stabs the man, he falls, and he is stabbed again. The stranger retreats back into the woods.

The most challenging part of this project was just trying to find the right sounds effects for what I wanted to convey, as I often had an idea of what I wanted it to sound like but had to dig for the “perfect” sound. Overall, I enjoyed this, and the learning curve wasn’t too severe!

Relax on the Beach

This is the Create a Place assignment. This is a Day on the Beach

In this place you are sitting on the beach listening to the seagulls and waves. There is a slight breeze in the air but you don’t mind. The air smells like salt. The sand is warm on your feet as you stand on the beach looking at the horizon. Eventually you take a calm breath and put on your earbuds and listen to you favorite orchestral track until you fall asleep.

I created this using Audacity and freesound.org. I started with the underlying sound of the beach and added the seagulls next. I wanted to take this assignment one level up rather than just describing a place so I added a relaxed inhale and exhale and found a beautiful orchestral sound to add the end of the story. I had a lot of fun making this and I feel relaxed after hearing it for a while. Im also a lot for comfortable with Audacity.

ds106 as Music

For one of the audio assignments this week, I created a song in Chrome Music Labs. I played around with a couple of diffrent ideas, but ended up creating a song that was mapped as the text “ds106.” I’m not sure it sounds the best- all the straight lines make it kind of garbled and agressive, but I had a lot of fun with the program! It is quite user friendly and intuitive to use.

Dr. Oblivion Podcast Intro

I asked Dr. Oblivion to create a podcast intro for my podcast, Liv Loves Movies. I made this podcast for my intro to digital studies class, and have been planning on continuing it. In the podcast, I talk about the cultural significance of certain movies, compare them to each other, or even just talk through ones that are just fun to watch. Dr. Oblivion did a perfect job at explaining what the core purpose of my podcast is, which is to dive into cinema through a cultural lens. I also would like to add that I loved his comments such as “a podcast, ah so original” and “go make the world a better place with your podcast about movies”, I appreciate his sarcasm.

There’s a Huh in the What? – Guess My Favorite Song

This assignment told me to remove the lyrics from my favorite song for others to guess the song. I love these kinds of games so I wanted to provide! This isn’t my all time favorite song, but I’ve been listening to this artist a lot lately and it’s definetly my favorite from her discography. Here are some hints to guess the song and I’ll put the answer at the end of my blog. Each progressing hint gives the answer away a little more.

  1. This singer is a country artist
  2. She was on Radio Disney
  3. This singer is on tour right now and is coming to DC very soon. This song is on her setlist.
  4. The title of this blog and picture are both hints
  5. The song was featured in my “Soundtrack to Krissy’s Life“
  6. ⛳🍾

To make this song without lyrics, I uploaded the chorus of the song I wanted to Stemify. The app uses AI to seperate the vocals and the different instrumentals so once it worked its magic, I turned the vocals all the way down and from there I uploaded the song to Soundcloud.

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The song is Hole in the Bottle by Kelsea Ballerini

(the emojis from hint #6 are supposed to say “hole in one bottle”)