I had a lot of fun making my radio bumper. I wanted a sound that was scratchy. Like the transmission was not coming in clear. I wanted it to reflect the independence of the station itself. I loved that I could play around with the order of my phrases. I ended up putting them in a different order then I reordered them. I didn’t anticipate how much I was going to love playing with sound. I can see why people become sound engineers now.
It needed a picture, and my little evil brick is readily available and a good size.
I used sounds from freesound.org to go with my audio recording of my voice.
One of the assignments for this week was to create a daily bumper. First, I had no idea what a daily bumper was, sit was fun learning about what it was and trying to draft up a script for what mine would be. Audacity is a fairly simple platform to use and being to able pick from freesounds.org was also easy as well. For all of the assignments to include this one I used freesounds.org. I wanted something upbeat and fun but with a chill vibe which is why in my audio there’s some fading in and out with the music. I chose my verbiage carefully because I wanted to make sure I highlighted the creativity of DS106 and closed it off with “leaving feeling good” because that is my way of connecting with the listeners. No matter what time or point you are tuning in you should always leave feeling good.
For the last visual assignment, I decided to go with the prompt to create a place just by using sound. Can you guess what place I chose? Let me know in your comments!
If you haven’t been able to tell already, I have enjoyed using Audacity and mashing the tracks up as well as trying out the different effects that are available. For this assignment it was to choose three commonly used sounds that you hear everyday weather that’s at school, work, commuting whatever your day typically consist of and to mash it together add effects to it and essentially make a track that doesn’t like the original. Three things that I typically hear on an everyday basis is coffee being made, rolling desk chairs, and printing. I chose those three sounds mashed them together in Audacity and added a few effects to the track. Let me know if you can recognize any three sounds!
We were assigned to pick three visual assignments one of them I decided to do was create a mashup of relaxing sounds. I chose sounds for freesound.org and I had a lot of fun with this assignment. I would like to highlight that not all of the sounds have the same vibe each sound I went with had different tones, beats, and instrumentals it was really cool putting it all together.
For todays daily creatives activity is where we have to weave silk drawing and I used an application called weavesilk. It was pretty simple I had to drag my mouse around and I love how the results came out.
We were assigned to create a story with no sound. I think it’s kind of funny when you think about. I chose my sounds from freesound.org and my inspiration was that exciting feeling you get when it’s a Friday and your about to leave for the day from work. The story starts out with exciting typing finishing off a task for the week and closes with the upbeat music because in this story it’s time to start the weekend! I hope you all enjoy.
I decided to go back and give you a summary of week one.
We got snow week one. 1st day of classes was canceled. My kids had snow days! yay so fun. I had just moved back home after not being able to live in my house for over 6 months due to a water leak. I got food poisoning on Wednesday (I think it has been a bit). I found videos on how to use WordPress and got my blog up. With the kids not having school, moving back home, and me being unwell was a perfect storm for my husband to have extra problems associated with his PTSD. It was a rough way to start classes. I knew me starting school would be difficult for him to handle. While he tries to be supportive, he needs help daily. I now take care of him. We are working with the VA on stuff.
At first, I wanted to keep all this on the downlow. Because I do not want anyone to feel sorry for me. I have a lot going on. But as we enter week 4, I realize how much this is going to come up in my work as an artist. My story doesn’t need to be a sad one. My story is what I make it not what people assign it to be. Yes, Week one was a shit show, but I managed to get my blog up with colors and organize it. This is my origin story not my story of defeat. Things are just beginning in a new way.
My assignment to watch a movie was fun. Since I have children, I was like I am going to watch a grown-up movie. I had attempted to watch Blade Runner several times in my life. This was my chance It is required for school. Here is my review.
When talking about the importance of sound I can’t help but think about sound stages where they produce the sound effects for movies. The sound of bones breaking is celery. The sound of head wounds? Cabbage stands in for the head. Their goal isn’t about making a realistic sound but in giving you the sensation that the sound creates for you. They give you what you think it should sound like not what it actually does sound like.
Moon Graffiti by The Truth Podcast tells an interesting story about what if the moon landing ended in failure. It relies heavily on what you think something should sound like during the moon scenes. I really like how they did the sound of the footprints on the moon. I heard the sound and instantly thought of the ripples in the sand at 6:15.
The way they did the audio of the astronauts speaking to each other tells you where they are without having to outright tell you. You can hear the scratchiness of the radio used for them to communicate. I love the camera sound effect at 6:41. You can hear the sound of the bulb charging. They drag the high pitch sound of the flash bulb charging to add to the suspense and eeriness of it all. You hear it again at 7:05 which bookends the picture sequence. You can just feel the dread in the air. They wonderfully stick to using tones and minimal music to create that sense of stillness and dread. At 8:11 you hear their footsteps and know they are walking. They set up the footstep sound at 6:15 so you will know what steps sound like on the moon. It moves the story along with having to have the characters announce everything they are doing. 11:56 appears to be when they start the time jump. They fade out the audio and make the music louder. At 12:05 you hear gasping, and you realize we are near the end of the astronauts’ oxygen. The program does a good job of letting you know that 2 hours have almost past in the story. You feel the moon rather than see the moon. Having to imagine it all puts you there more. It gives you more empathy to the characters.
Here Jad Abumrad explains his love of radio. More than that he talks about how radio connects you as the host to your audience. In some ways a radio show is like reading a book. The book has words describing sounds and you imagine them. With a good radio show they use the sound to paint the picture of what you should be seeing. like the footsteps on the moon. It is more than just a book on tape. A book on tape is still using words to describe sounds radio is more.
I couldn’t find the words to make a good segway into the next video. I love stories. They are magical, healing, teaching, warnings, sometimes living and breathing their own life. I love finding people that feel the same way. Stories are not a waste of time. There is a right place and right times for certain stories. I try to remember, when doing my projects for DS106, to ask myself “what is the story I want told here?”. Enjoy this last video clip.
ok so first bear me through out these ideas folks!
I think it would be cool if we did some sort of radio segment groups that include all of our course characters. Let me further expand on this. Small groups of three to four course characters would be assigned to a specific segment to talk about, Movies and TV, pop culture, things happening around campus, student life etc… We could use AI to generate their image and audio for there voice’s and during the segment the characters would all banter with one another and discuss the segment topic. To make it even more interactive students in class can submit questions for the characters to ask one another and they could give their opinions for their perspective.
Another thought is something along the lines of a talk show segment. A course character would be invited to another course characters radio show, and they could be interviewed about their life, likes, dislikes, and current happenings. Since everyone has a course character that’s so vastly different, I think it would be cool to see what everyone comes with!
