Category Archives: AudioAssignments

Another day at the office…

For the Sound Effect Short story I had a hard time picking out what story i wanted to tell. So I browsed around on Freesound to see if inspiration struck. And it in fact did! I chose to do a story about two men in an office job, one of them is asleep and is snoring very loud, and the other is extremely annoyed by this (He does this everyday!)

I started with background effects of office noises from BBC Sound Effects, then I looked for a man sighing on Freesound(this was the first part of my inspiration the rest came later, and the rest of my sounds are from Freesound). Next I found another man snoring and I copied and pasted this sound effect three times in the full story. The next step of annoyance is the attempt to wake the person up but discreetly, so I used a man clearing his throat. Once again the man snores so the next step is to get up and wake him up! To do this I used a metal bed frame creak, to implicate the man getting out of his office chair, some footsteps walking over to the man snoring and a blaring alarm clock! Finally the man wakes up with a gasp and the other man laughs and walks away, mission accomplished.

Radio Bumper

We will be working with ds106 radio this week, and in some future weeks, so we want you to try your hand at making your first radio “bumper” – a 10-30 second short audio that announces the radio station that is played between songs to remind listeners what they are tuned in to. This should be saved as an MP3 file, and then upload it to SoundCloud. Make sure in Soundcloud that you enable the option to allow downloads (so we can add it to ds106 radio!) Your audio must be embedded in your blog post summary of this assignment. You can embed Soundcloud audio by putting the plain text URL on its own line, and when you publish, WordPress will create a player to allow visitors to listen. The radio bumper is an assignment in the Assignment Bank, so you should tag your blog post correctly when you’re done. You may be able to get Dr. Oblivion to help out, if you ask nicely. Tag: radiobumper

For this I naturally had to go for the Technoir vibe my first thought was all about industrial sounds however I switched to thinking more along an unsettling vibe. I used one of the sounds from freesound made by a creator called looplicator. It was just perfect with some additional modifications I made it more unsettling. I was far less sure of what to actually say unfortunately.

I did try to look ups some examples after a bit of trial and error I ended up with this.

It took a few tries, but I managed to get it done. Ended up coming out far shorter than I wanted since I wasn’t the most inspired and did not know much about radio going in. So, mine is not cool or anything more about telling the viewers to relax and just enjoy. Since my original one was too cynical according to a friend.

Audio Assignments

Soundtrack to Your Life – Assignment Bank

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLelZtVeDFv_i4bRAeAihpMVazQpc1NbzE&si=D2ZwDV_L4XXCfnT4

I decided to think back to all the songs that got me through life and showed I wasn’t alone to songs I just sung because they were complete brain worms. Took a lot of searching with lyric finders to compile this. I use YouTube music instead of Spotify and pandora, if I look back at either app, I am sure I’d get a blast form the past.

Auditory Hell – Assignment Bank

Freesound – Short_metal_screeching_sounds by Artninja

Freesound – z scream 26 mph 35 c.wav by ERH

Freesound – Harddisk scream.wav by sumsa

Freesound – 3-mod; 101Hz @ -10dB (AS) + 1111Hz @ -6dB (Sq) + 10101Hz @ -.5dB.wav by shimsewn

Well, I truly did not want it to be too long since it’s irritating in my defense, I get annoyed when something drops so doesn’t take much. So, I simply went with sounds that are annoying shoved them together and boom a horrible thing was created. Honestly harder to find bad sounds then good sounds. Still, I managed this took less careful layering since the intention was to make it sound bad.

My first Radio Bumper

Creating my first radio bumper was daunting at the beginning. Im still not sure how to use audacity and to completely honest I forgot that this was a tool I could use for this assignment. So I used iMovie and Voice Memo to create my radio bumper.

I knew I wanted to add a voice over of introducing the radio show and having a little bop with it. So I created the voice over in the voice memos and it only took two tries! Then I went to iMovie and created the background music. I started out with the “bright” theme music and I thought it would be cool to have a bit of a tease into the not-quite-right feeling you have with the tech noir theme of the course. So I split the theme music and cut it in random places added some points of silence like the sound is cutting out. I really wanted the music to go out with a distorted shut-down type of effect to the music but I wasn’t able to find the right tools for that so I went with a record scratch and a telephone disconnect sound effect.

Here is the final product!

Keep it Closed!

While creating my sound effect story, I had wanted to use Freesound to find a sound of a door closing to convey the person in my story leaving their place of residence. I initially wanted a simple sound, but found only 4 present, with none being suitable for the story I was trying to tell. I instead went for a sound that including grabbing keys which turned out well, but that thought never left my mind. Why were there no uploaded sounds of a normal door closing, an activity we do countless times every day? For the assignment Sound Effects, I was tasked with uploading a new sound to Freesound, which helped me come full circle back to the sound I initially wanted.

In hindsight I probably could have made this and used it for my story😅 but it worked out for the best regardless.

Soundtrack to Krissy’s Life

I think this assignment was a really good exercise for developing my character’s personality. I was inspired by Live it Up With Liv’s version of this assignment and I thought it looked fun so I wanted to give it a try. For this playlist there were a few elements I wanted to apply: country, independent woman, and wanting more. For the country element, you can see that in songs like “Fancy” by Reba, “The Other Side of the Door” by Taylor Swift, and “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma”. I think she would like these songs because she works on a farm in a small town so country music is in her roots. The independent woman part can be seen in “Woman” by Kesha and “You’re Just a Boy (and I’m Kind of the Man)” by Maisie Peters. Krissy is a confident woman and that confidence will be important to have on her mission. The last factor of songs that give off the feeling of wanting more can be seen in the song “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast as well as “1985” by Bowling for Soup. I think the sense of yearning for more is a relatable feeling in the Innocent Bystander Archetype. In the beginnning of her story, she feels that she is meant for more but by the end, after all the action, she will be changed for better or for worse. Some songs have overlapping themes. For example, “Girl in a Country Song” by Maddie & Tae and “girl i’ve always been” by Olivia Rodrigo shows both elements of country and independent woman. Additionally, I made Krissy with very similar interests to mine, she is a strong, independent woman, so of course I want to feel represented by her. While reflecting on this assignment, I realized that Krissy has very similar music taste to me. I think in Live it Up With Liv’s assignment, Liv went out of her way to find a healthy mix of music that she regularly listened to and music that fit the vibe of her character. In constrast, this assignment went very fast for me because I would think “Oh! This song I like fits, and this one too!” so I see a lot of myself in this playlist. As I mentioned earlier, this assignment was a great way for me to develop my character’s personality, and in turn I hope anyone who reads this has a better understanding of who Krissy is.

A 9-5 Story of Sound

Using many different sound effects to create a story really helped me expand my knowledge of how powerful sound can be and its impact on everyone. I chose to follow someone day at work to make a connection between us hearing millions of sounds everyday, and a typical day experienced by many. Creating a piece that may not be all sunshine and rainbows was my way of emphasizing the different uses of sound and how it can convey many different moods and tones, even without any use of words. Please listen to what I made and feel free to leave a comment on how you would rate it!

After Dinner

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. Another example (by a UMW student): http://ds106.us/wp-content/audio/audio_story.mp3

Link to assignment: https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/sound-effects-story/

For this assignment, I used Soundtrap to combine different sounds and create a story. The scene follows a woman as she exits a restaurant, walks to her car, gets in, and drives home.

I really wish this assignment could have been longer than 90 seconds because I wanted to extend the story and include more sound clips, but I kept it within the time limit. I sourced all the audio from Freesound, and it was great to explore the variety of options available.

After selecting the sounds I wanted, I imported them into Soundtrap and applied fade-in and fade-out effects to ensure a smooth and natural flow. Once I was satisfied with the final result, I exported and uploaded the project to Soundtrap.

I hope you enjoy this very short story!