Category Archives: AudioAssignments

Assignment Banksss

“Auditory Hell”

“Chrome Music Labs”

“Mashup”

Reflection

I honestly had a hard time picking out some assigments I wanted to do. I wanted to challenge myself and I did the auditory hell without listening to any of the sounds. I thought of the most gross or annoying sounds I could think of and masked them up in the most annoying form and it was the most annoying sound it make me jump. So after that I did the chrome music lab one because I love being about to make something and hear the outcome for the first time. being able to draw something and then hear my drawing was really cool! Then I wanted to do a mashup with some music but I didn’t want it to be too much since I have never done anything with music involved. I mean for my first time, I think I did pretty good! It was hard to find the right songs to maskup but I just did whatever song popped up on my TikTok for you page and used those songs. I know that may not be apart of the assignment but I could think of any songs in the current moment so I resulted to the music hub, well… not so much thanks to universal.

Overall, I think this was a very fun assignments to do for this week! I loved everyones as well!

-Reese Kubricki

totally not an ad. right?

I had a lot of fun with the TV Product Placement Radio Ad because it combined two of my favorite things to do, watch silly sitcoms and ridiculous ads. These two feelings kinda crashed together into this assignment because of course somehow the best ads either come from the Super Bowl commercials or sitcoms. This assignment was perfect for me so that I finally had a use my infinite knowledge of sitcoms to a weird radio ad from a TV show. Listen to the genius of the Arrested Development writers and some slight editing work by me here.

TV and movies are full of product placement these days. Take a clip from a TV show or movie where they discuss a product (food, technology, movie, restaurant, etc. and turn it into a radio ad for that product.

TV Product Placement Radio Ad

I wanted this ad to feel less like a scene taken straight out of a show but more like an ad you could actually imagine on the radio one day where they try to be casual and just talk it up. I was first going to use a clip from 30 Rock because I’ve always loved the wit they use combined with just thinly veiled (it’s a glass wall) exhaustion over having to rely on such tactics to make money. But Arrested Development won me over because of just how silly and out of place their product placements are. So of course I had to use their Burger King scene that completely comes out of nowhere and adds nothing to the story but amusing and confusing feelings about Burger King. Should I like their food now that my favorite show says so? I guess I will!

The process of making this clip was a little more frustrating than I thought it would be but I’ve learned more about Audacity’s quirks and interesting tools so I guess a win is still a win. To start this assignment I found all the clips I wanted to use and downloaded them. Then I imported them into the all-powerful Audacity and cut them down until there were no awkward gaps, the scenes blended, and the volume was consistent. I exported it and was about to upload it to Soundcloud but first I gave it a good listen to check for any errors. It was all smooth sailing and I started thinking to myself, “Wow I might actually be good at this.” But then my small ego was immediately bruised by the impending sound of static on my audio. It hadn’t been there before when I was editing right? I checked in Audacity and the sound was clear as day. So I searched and searched forums, tutorials, and Audacity’s own manual and found nothing. To fix this I tried lowering the volume because of potential clipping, using the noise reduction tool in case there was a sound I missed somehow in the original clips, and changing the sample rate to help match my computer’s sound system. Nothing worked until as a last-ditch effort I exported it as an MP3 instead of an AIFF file. This option didn’t occur to me because it’s generally recommended that you export your file as either a WAV (Microsoft) or AIFF (MacBook) because they export with better-quality sound. But after making the audio export as an mp3. it was suddenly crisp and clean. So then I just uploaded it to Soundcloud and now it exists in the void. Success was achieved!

If anyone can solve my problem of the disappearing static I would be overjoyed but for now, I will live in perpetual fear of it returning.

Assignment Bank: Movie Voice Machines – Dr. Oblivion Leaves a Voicemail Message

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/movie-voice-machines/

 "Create a voice mail message for a character in a film or tv show"

This was an assignment to create a voicemail message for a character. I couldn’t really figure out how to use one of those AI voice copiers to put in my course character’s voice, so I just used Dr. O to create me one. I would like to find out how I can create my course character’s voice soon, as this will help in the storytelling assignments in the future.

Dr. Oblivion gave me some snark and filler at the beginning and end of the clip, so I had to manually remove those so that it fit the assignment. It wasn’t a hard task, but I didn’t expect him to be so annoyed at me giving him a request!

Assignment Bank: Sound Effects Story – Hopefully my Character Made it out Alive…

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/sound-effects-story/

“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 actually did this assignment using the spooky story, but I realized that the spooky story falls in line with another preexisting assignment in the assignment bank, so I repurposed my scary castle story towards that assignment and made a new story! This one is about a dude that goes into a bar and has one too many drinks, ends up driving under the influence and gets into a crash. Afterwards, the ambulance rushes to the man to save his life.

A little grim but honestly the impact sound of the crash didn’t sound too bad so hopefully my guy makes it alive. I used many fade in and fade out effects to mix the 4 different audio clips together, and it turned out pretty good!

Assignment Bank: Consult with your Doctor – I Asked Dr. Oblivion About AI Taking Over CS Jobs

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/consult-with-your-doctor/

“If you give Dr. Oblivion (https://oblivion.university/) a question or directive, he will give a response of up to a minute, which may or may not be loaded with snark. For this assignment you should download the MP3 of the Doctor’s response, import it into Audacity and cut it up and insert your part of the conversation“

Dr. Oblivion with the snark! I thought I asked a pretty straightforward question about the worries of AI taking over coding jobs. This is a topic very relevant to me, as I’m worried that during my time in the CS field, there will be a lack of jobs with the advancement of AI showing no signs of stopping. While The Doc did give me some snark, he also replied with some very insightful takes on how AI is built by us humans, and we will always use it as a tool rather than a replacement. However, I’m worried that the intent of AI creators will take a greedy turn, as many things in this world do. What if AI is used in a way where the betterment of society isn’t upheld?

Sound Effect Story

I decided to play around with Audacity and use Freesounds to tell a story about navigating the airport and a flight taking off.

I had never used Audacity (or any other audio editor) before, so I found it somewhat challenging figuring out the formatting. I ended up just playing around with it for a while until I got my desired audio story! The story is pretty mundane, but recognizable enough to get the listener to understand what is going on.

Assignment Bank: Creating a DS106 Radio Bumper – Best Tunes with the Best People

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-a-ds106-radio-bumper/

“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.