#1: Dr. Oblivion Mp3: for this assignment I was to get a Dr. Oblivion MP3 and insert something into it in audacity. I messed around with audacity a little and I’m still not very good and am not even sure if it worked but I gave it my best.
#2: Audio clip from outside the Twighlight zone.
#3 was make a study instrumental.
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!
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!
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?
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.
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.
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 used sounds sourced exclusively from Freesound.org to create a story where a man enters a spooky castle and potentially doesn’t make it back alive. There are some supernatural elements to the sounds used, such as weird alien noises that are indescribable in daily life.
The story starts off with a whispering man, then our main character is transported to the haunted castle. He opens the door only to find a void of black and the emergence of an unknown extraterrestrial being. Then his screams can be heard echoing throughout the castle, never to be heard again.
Audacity was surprisingly simple to use for mashing together sound effects clips like this, it made me feel more comfortable with working with the software in bigger projects in the future.
I used some audio from Dr Oblivion and had some fun with it. The words I isolated and played with are AI, do, need, and or take them. I layered this in with sounds from Freedsound.
This clip I made makes me think of a poltergeist. Take them! Not sure what Doctor Oblivion wants to take but there it is.
I didn’t have much of an idea of what to do for the assignment so I asked Dr. Oblivion really nicely and here’s what he said.
Following his instructions I then looked through Freesound for fun jingles to use that fit the theme of AI and decided on this one LoveOnRadio. I thought the electronic music and catchy tune worked well.
For the informative bit of the bumper I wanted to use Dr. Oblivion so I sent him this request: Can you say these things for me? “This is the ds106 radio show where we can all sit down and discuss important topics like AI usage and its place in our world, different forms of media production, and much more. Tune in now!” And of course, being Dr. Oblivion, he added some edits to my script to make it his own which was kind of him since he’s so busy these days.
Finally, I imported both files into Audacity, adjusted volume levels, trimmed them down, and added a fade to the end. I would definitely listen to this show.
For my story I decided to keep it simple and try and recreate what a morning routine looks like. I tried to mimic to the best of my ability what a realistic morning for me sounds like. I know this isn’t the craziest or most unique story, but I feel like everyone could relate to this. Hope you guys enjoy!