“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!
That time of week! Can’t believe I made it here, did not expect that at all. MAN do I deserve a good nap after this
I’m currently writing a draft of this at 12:03 am on Friday . . . I still have one Daily Create to do, but it won’t come out until 5 AM (boooooo), but otherwise, I’m finished before Friday ends! Mostly because I will be gone all day Friday and knew I wouldn’t have time.
I also realized that people write such smaller blog posts than me . . . but in my defense, I have a lot to say all the time and I want to walk people through every step! (but for real, tell me if i need to shut up)
So here’s Week 4!
(For the sake of not having to embed all my audios, I’m just going to link the posts and you can click on them to find the audio embedded there!)
Saturday and Sunday and Monday were doozies . . . I played Lethal Company instead of doing work! ACTUALLY Monday I did some commenting.
On Tuesday, we got some work done! Sort of . . . I listened to the ds106radio session in the evening and did some more commenting and browsing the blogs of others, but I didn’t make any posts yet. I also watched the videos from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad and was very pleased to about how audio creates a story! We’ll get into in a second.
On Wednesday, I started off with a Daily Create. The task was to make an image of a plane with a banner in the sky say a message, and I thought about being snarky (my inner Dr. Oblivion is coming out) and made this.
I also finished up my reflection on the ds106radio segment. This post was a lot of me going “oh my god this is so cool i love little things wow” and also having my eyes really opened! Unfortunately, now every video I watch or every song I listen to, I’m listening for sounds in the back and trying to see what all is there . . . I’m overanalyzing things now!!
I also made my ds106radio bumper. This was like fighting a war. I’ve never wanted to slam my head into a table over an assignment more than this once, mostly because I just wasn’t happy with myself. I hated what I made and I couldn’t figure out how to make it better. BUT some nice people gave me some suggestions in the comments about seeking out the DKC (which I did not do . . . but that’s okay) and also relating to my struggle, so I gladly wasn’t alone!
Naturally, I was not excited for the rest of the audio assignments . . . little did I know that I was about to have the best time of my life the next day!
I also did some commenting, of course.
On Thursday, I gave myself the heaviest workload and a dream. Lucky for me, my first class was canceled, so I had more time to do some work.
I spent my morning starting off with the Daily Create, which I made up a little story about the opening that the Daily Create tasked me with finding the entrance to! I decided that there weren’t any known openings, and they were destroyed. This is a dystopia! The one opening, the last opening, leads to dark tunnels . . . what stories are in there? spookyyyy
I also listened to “Moon Graffiti” and posted my reflection. This was a lot of repetition from what I had said in my ds106radio reflection, just that I loved picking up little things that painted the bigger picture. My favorite thing was how the audio was portrayed outside of the astronauts’s heads, until suddenly, Buzz was so anxious and we were in his head. We could hear the buzzing (no pun intended) in his head, the white noise getting louder, the intensity. The way they were able to portray that stress, portray that switch into his head, all through audio so quickly . . . I felt it! It was really cool.
The next thing I did was my Sound Effect story, which I made about Sol! I used a lot of audios using Freesound, which I used all week, to build a soft ambience and environment. I portrayed them painting, as they do, with some soft piano in the back. It was actually really fun to make! This began my arc of actually enjoying audio engineering . . . life was good again.
I followed this assignment with another Audio Assignment, which I made a BREAKING NEWS audio segment using an AI voice and some news jingles I found to explain to the world that IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS!! Just because I wanted it to be a little ridiculous! This one wasn’t too difficult.
Next Audio Assignment was to make a spooky audio, which I did just as such. This was sooooo fun. As someone who enjoys horror games (but not really anything else horror), I know just how important audio is to set a scene. I used a lot of little things to set this scene, to provide depth and texture and that fear emotion. I focused on allowing the sounds to communicate with each other rather than communicating apart, and I think that’s what made this so successful for me.
For my last Audio Assignment, I created an audio with a song that sounded like it was playing from another room, and this one I had the time of my life with. I spent way too long on it, but it was worth it because I think it’s so cool. Again, what I learned is to have the audios communicate with each other. Don’t allow one to overpower another unless it is necessary or you need to draw attention to it. Let the audios coexist.
I built a creepy scene when I wasn’t asked because I wanted to build on the story that the second half of the assignment asked for. I put a lot of audios in here. Throughout all of these assignments, I kept a notepad open with all of the sounds and their links so that I wouldn’t lose them! It was really important to me to give credit where credit was due, even if it was the tiniest sound. Here’s my messy notepad to help me keep track of the audios!
My last assignment of the day was my brainstorming assignment for the radio show. There’s really nothing to say about this, just that I’ve had this idea in my head since I saw the assignments of the week, and I’m excited to see if anyone else is down . . . or if they want something else.
On Friday, at 12 AM, I started this! And that’s all I’ve done. On my agenda is the final Daily Create, but I can’t get to that until at least 5 AM and I will be snoozing then . . . so when I get home, hopefully, we’ll get to that! here comes a timeskip
Finally, I did my last Daily Create, in which I messed with Mutsuacen.com to make some pretty disasters! Here’s what I came up with!
It started out as some little angel wings, moving through whatever it was, but then I started trying out all of the different styles and having fun. I liked the ripple ones and played with that a little bit. There is no method to my madness, just some messes for fun!
To conclude this week, it went fine! I was stressed, but I survived and I actually feel really good and proud of myself Very excited for next week!
This week was all about audio! I learned how to use Audacity and even created my own Sound Cloud account. I really enjoyed this week and cant wait to dive into the next.
Firstly I listened to Moon Graffiti and gave a deep analysis for how sound is used and how it shows emotion, visuals, and scenery. This audio story was extremely detailed and I cant imagine how long it took to make. I had a lot of fun listening to it and sharing my thoughts on what I thought meant what and how I visualized different sounds. This can be accessed here.
Secondly I created my Radio Bumper for the Ds106 radio. This was very fun and I got to start learning how to use Audacity while also doing something fun and enjoyable. I decided to use my Jennifer Coolidge impression for this because I thought that would be fun and creative and really annoying to hear on air. My radio Bumper can be accessed here.
Next I listened in on Monday to the Ds106 radio with a group of us from class while we discussed audio techniques in the story we listened to and how we were thinking about different things happening. This was really interesting and fun to collaborate with other people in the class including our professor. we listened to the story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and my reflection on it can be accessed here.
Fourthly I was tasked with creating a story made of sound. This was really fun to accomplish and it was cool to get the hang of Audacity through this task. Unfortunately I did add a small clip of dialogue before I understood there were not supposed to be any words but I figured that out too late and wasn’t sure how to fix it without having to re-do the entire thing. I think it came out really well and I am happy with what I made. It can be accessed here.
After that I started working on my three audio assignments. I first started with the “Chrome Music Labs” assignment where I had to make a song with this technical tool. This was really fun to experiment with and I will be using it again in the future. This can be accessed here. The second one I completed was “Consult with your Doctor” where I got to ask Dr. Oblivion a question and got to record my character Dr. Ravioli asking him that question. This was really fun as I got to experiment with AI voice generators and I got to create a voice for my character. Unfortunately they did not have any Greek accents so Dr. Ravioli is British. This can be accessed here. The third and final one I completed was the “Breaking News!” assignment where I got to make an audio recording of a news broadcast. I used the AI text to speak generator and had a lot of fun with this assignment. I got to delve deeper into my character creation of Dr. Ravioli by giving him backstory and showing how important and wealthy he is in this universe. This news broadcast can be accessed here.
My three daily creates this week were super fun to participate in especially the silk threads project, this was really fun to complete as I got to be creative with a beautiful form of technology. I also submitted a photo of a hornbill in its nest that it encloses itself in to keep its eggs safe while the male goes and feeds them, I chose this photo for the secret entrance daily create. For my last daily create this week I completed the “Find the one-armed, half-brained, miniature version of what you do.” and submitted a list of things I can’t not do without feeling unaccomplished for the day. That list was.
Read a few pages of a good book
Go for a walk
crochet
Finally I started brainstorming for my Radio show with other people in the class. I know this will be super fun and I can not wait to start this project. I came up with two Ideas that I think would be super fun to do. This can be accessed here.
Thank you so much for an amazing week! Can’t wait to get started on the next!
“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.
I’d like to say that I’m an avid listener of podcasts and radio shows. My long commutes to school and work often allows me to finish a chunk of these at a time, and I really enjoy the insights I get from my favorite podcasters. I will say however, that my scope of interests is severely limited, with the majority of my listening time being taken up by Gill Gross’ Tennis podcast.
Gill does a lot of tennis post-match commentaries detailing the strategies of players, historic implications, among many other things a tennis fanatic can get behind. However, I realize that for the purpose of DS106, I probably can’t do a tennis broadcast with my course character along with my partner’s characters.
To tell a story about AI with connections to our characters within a 20-30 minute window, I think that creating a little short story with sound effects and dialogue included would be an interesting way to fulfill the requirements, similar to the radio stories we listened to during the DS106 radio broadcast this week. I haven’t really thought of the specifics yet, but I think this will become more clear after the groups have been assigned and we get to talk about everyone’s characters and their interests.
“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.
The first audio editing assignment I tried was to make a bumper for the DS106 Radio. I was very ambitious and spent almost thirty minutes on a bumper that I ultimately scrapped because it was unlistenable. So, I landed on this simple but effective bumper that features Dr. Oblivion.
Immediately starting to listen to this audio, I could tell there was something technical going on based on the beeping and sounds of muffled voices that seemed to be coming through a telephone or recording, in this case, a walkie-talkie of some sort. When the spaceship crashes on the moon, you can tell it crashed because of the sound of the impact and radios being cut. They use a lot of different sound effects to show the mood of what is being talked about. More serious music plays when they talk about more important and serious discussions. You can tell who is who with the dialogue, especially with the narrator, not only because of the voice difference but also because of how clearly the narrator is depicted with no environmental sounds, only background music. The characters are in an environment filled with sound, may it be organic or technical. The music also gives us senses of unease and intensity. There is a lot of detail in all of the background noise, such as the pictures being taken and the moon sediment they mess with. Some important aspects of the story include the dialogue, giving us context to what is happening which shapes our imagination into something more concrete and understandable.
The sound creates an atmosphere by having background sound or music indicating different emotions and scenes. You can tell when something is more serious or dangerous based on the intensity of the music. When we hear the clock we understand that their oxygen is running out and so is their time alive.
With Abumrad’s ideas with video, he talks about how we as listeners are “holding the paintbrush” by coming up with our own thoughts and interpretations of what is going on audibly with the story. He mentions Co-Author ship with figuring out together creates a sort of intimacy and empathy. We have to fill this gap of picturelessness together. Throughout this audio, I was imagining what could be happening, how they were moving, and whether they were looking at each other, the moon, or the Earth. When the main characters mention how beautiful “it” is, all I can imagine is them looking down on the earth from the moon and understanding that Earth really is beautiful, even from afar.
This was a really cool story to analyze, I really enjoyed it. The story Moon Graffiti can be listened to below, enjoy
Very excited for next week!