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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
This singer is a country artist
She was on Radio Disney
This singer is on tour right now and is coming to DC very soon. This song is on her setlist.
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.
.
.
.
The song is Hole in the Bottle by Kelsea Ballerini
(the emojis from hint #6 are supposed to say “hole in one bottle”)
For the radio bumper assignment, I based my bumper on the iconic “You’re watching Disney Channel’ ads that would air when I was younger. I thought the idea was creative and nostalgic, but mainly because of Defunctland on YouTube. When I looked into what a radio bumper was, the assignment description explained that it is a “short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into.” It reminded me of Defunctland’s “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery” where the host, Kevin, talks about Network Identifiers. Kevin goes on to explain that bumpers are a fascinating liminal space that is able to tell viewers, “Here is where you are, here is what you’ve been watching, and here’s what’s next.” The video is all-around amazing, so I encourage anyone reading this to watch it. That being said, because this video taught me what bumpers were when I first watched that video, I wanted to reference it by using the Disney Channel theme for my bumper.
To make this bumper, I recorded myself saying my name and saying, “You’re listening to DS106 radio.” From there, I uploaded my recording and the audio clip of the Disney Channel theme to Adobe Audition to start editing. Because the audio was so short, editing was easy but I did run into one challenge. I wanted some music to play first and then for me to talk, but to do that, I had to set the clips at different audio levels and then have them fade into each other. The frustrating thing about Adobe Audition is that I couldn’t figure out how to do a fade transition for the audio. What kept happening was the first audio clip would fade into zero, and the next audio clip would fade from zero, but it was jarring and didn’t sound good. The solution I found told me to set the two clips to different volumes and then overlap each other. That is what I ended up doing, but I am keeping my eye out for a better way to do this.
I like how my radio bumper came out, and I’ve enjoyed listening to everyone else’s. I’m excited to maybe one day hear it on DS106 radio!
For the sound effect story, it made me think of one of my favorite activities when going home for break, going to the beach! I am from Virginia Beach, so I was practically raised on the water. Some of my happiest childhood memories are being at the beach, swimming in the ocean, building sandcastles, even boogie boarding on the tiny, non-existent waves. When creating the story, I wanted to incorporate the usual sounds I would hear when trying to sunbathe at the beach, kids playing, seagulls, water splashing, lifeguard whistles, and the wind blowing. It starts off with the slamming of the car door, then walking on the sound, slowly starting to hear the crashing of the waves and the shouts of the children. Then, I decided to add a little dramatics with two girls getting swept into the tide and needing to be saved by a lifeguard. But, of course, it has a happy ending of the girls being saved, and everyone going on with their lives. I found most of the sounds off of the free sound effects sites that were given.
Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music. Link to assignment https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-a-ds106-radio-bumper/
For this assignment, I wrote a bumper and requested Dr. Oblivion to recite it, as I wasn’t comfortable using my own voice. After receiving the audio file from Dr. Oblivion, I uploaded it to Soundtrap for editing. I removed the unnecessary parts, which I found amusing, and added an upbeat song on a separate track. To enhance the listening experience, I incorporated a fade-in and fade-out effect, giving the impression that Dr. Oblivion was speaking live. Additionally, I adjusted the volume for a more polished final product. This editing process was enjoyable, and I look forward to potentially hearing it on the radio show!
