Category Archives: Week 4

Week 4 Summary

Last week, I noted that I was worried about this week’s assignments, as I haven’t had much experience with Audacity or editing audio, and it seemed like a big workload. However, I enjoyed every assignment this week and learning more about audio storytelling and how sound can affect so much of any form of media, from movies to radio stories.

Setting up Audacity and SoundCloud wasn’t a big issue. I already had Audacity installed for some other school projects and I made a new SoundCloud for DS106 purposes. The hard part was getting into a mindset of expressing myself with just audio, rather than the usual visual tools that we’re so accustomed to.

The Moon Graffiti story was the first experience I had really honing in on the auditory storytelling elements. The moon landing was a great premise, and the entire story made me feel some sort of existential dread, so I wrote about it in my reflection post.

Moon Graffiti – Eerie yet Captivating

Next I created my DS106 radio bumper. This wasn’t anything special, I made a pretty generic bumper that framed DS106 in a positive light. However, the recording process actually took multiple tries because I kept tripping over my words and not getting specific enunciation I wanted. I was satisfied with the final product, but boy was it frustrating while I was recording.

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

The DS106 live listening session was a blast. I tuned into the Wednesday broadcast after work and I didn’t expect to get so into the stories and the audio elements that enhanced my experience. Talking in the Discord chat along with Professor Bond and other classmates gave me more perspective on how sound effects and timing of music can really elevate a story.

DS106 Radio – What an Experience!

The Sound Effect Story was something I had to go back and edit. Initially I made a spooky story through my own will, but after looking at the assignment bank, I realized that the spooky story was another assignment entirely. So I used the spooky story as one of my 3 assignments for the week and created a car crash story for the specific Sound Effect Story assignment.

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

The three other audio assignments I did for the week are:

Spooky story (as I mentioned before)
Dr. Oblivion leaving a voicemail
Asking Dr. Oblivion about AI taking over jobs and recording a conversation with him

I had a hard time fitting my specific course character into my assignments, so I ended up relying on a lot of Dr. Oblivion content to get my stuff done for the week. I’m hoping to look up some tools that can be used to create a voice for my specific character soon.

Assignment Bank: Spooky Season – Entering a Spooky Castle

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

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

Next are my daily creates for this week. I added text over a plane banner, made a poem about lemons without the use of the most common words associated with lemons, and took a secret hideout out of a video game and put some meaning behind it.

Daily Create Roundup: Week 4

For my radio show ideas, I couldn’t think of anything specific since we don’t have our assigned team members yet, but I was visualizing a story that our team could make that incorporates all of the characters in one way or another, just like those in the DS106 radio broadcasts this week. I also talked about my experiences with podcasts and shows, particularly about how I’m an avid tennis podcast listener and the shift in mindset I’ll need for DS106.

Radio Show Ideas – Tennis Junkie Transitioning into Something New?

That’s all for week 4! Crazy how time is flying by, we’re 1/4th of the way through the semester. Even through my copious amounts of procrastination and laziness, I really do enjoy this class and it’s one of the highlights of my week. I’m looking forward to what this next 2 weeks will bring; looks like we’re becoming filmmakers!

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?

Radio Show Ideas – Tennis Junkie Transitioning into Something New?

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.

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.

Assignment Bank: Sound Effect Story – Entering a Spooky Castle

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.

DS106 Radio – What an Experience!

For the live DS106 radio session this week, I was working at night for all 3 of the sessions. However, I was able to check into the Wednesday night’s show and it was an absolute pleasure.

The first story called “A Logic Named Joe” was a lighthearted comedic interpretation of what the internet would look like back in the 50s. A lot of the transition effects sounded similar to a cartoon movie with its wonky antics. Some of the distance effects allowed for us to decipher the situation more clearly, and where each character was located during each part of the story. The most interesting thing I noticed was how the interpretation of an AI assistant didn’t sound very robotic at all. It sounded more like an older movie narrator with much more personality than what I imagined people in the 50s expected AI to be.

The second story was “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” and this was a big shift between the last story. A lot of the creeking of doors and chairs, footsteps, and other subtle sounds made the story eerie, with each one adding to a sense of overall urgency in the story. There was a lot more to take in with this story, and I really appreciated all of the intricate sound effects used to portray the story. Professor Bond mentioning that the bell ringing at the end of the story signaled that the location was at a service desk, and I wouldn’t have caught that without his insight.

Overall I took a lot of lessons away from this session, and I’d definitely tune in again for some more stories.

Moon Graffiti – Eerie yet Captivating

This short story was unexpectedly gripping for the entirety of the 10 minutes. The conversation between Armstrong and Aldrin signifies uncharted territory, as this was the first time man stepped foot on the moon. The entire story has an underlying mysterious backtrack, until the middle where sometimes just their voices and breathing fill the audio. Sound effects are also littered into the story, and even if these sounds aren’t accurate to what can be heard in space, it adds to the suspense and gravity of the situation.

I am personally very afraid of space, and anything of the unknown. It’s the feeling of knowing that there are things out there that are unknown to us, or potentially too advanced for the human mind to grasp. The “fear of missing out” or FOMO is also a reason why I fear the unknown, as eventually man may be able to conquer space and comprehend all of the mysteries in our galaxy, but I’ll never be around to witness this.

But the nature of the unknown and the fear that future civilizations will have to conquer gives me comfort at times. At least I won’t have to face these uncharted territories myself, all at the cost of my FOMO inside of my tombstone.

Daily Create Roundup: Week 4

Here are my daily creates for week 4!

I couldn’t think of any message for the world to put on my plane banner, so I decided to advertise the class instead.

The next create was to write a three line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, tart, juicy, peel, and sour.

Sunshine buddies on a twig
Can’t resist the urge of it
Bite in and it just might sting

Added a little rhyme to it and I was pretty proud of it!

Finally I shared a secret hideout, this one was from the SMT series games.

Looks eerie, the space saucer circular thingies resemble a space station, so I hypothesized that they’re a portal to somewhere in space.