For this remix, I wanted to tell more of my final project story, expand on what I did in set 2 video 2 | Ted Lewis and Permissions, and figure out more of what is happening. So when I saw this remix, it just fit! But instead of one extra character, I added two for the price of one, but just their voices.
To make this, I wrote out a script, recorded the lines, and spliced them all together in iMovie. It was pretty simple, which was a fantastic and much need break from the more intense mash-ups I have done this week.
“Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.”
So for this bumper I had our group project idea in mind. I thought through what circumstances a person would be able to hear this recording, maybe stored by an archival company? I’m not sure of the details, but this bumper is basically a release form for the autopsy recording. I did have a lot of fun with the random code in the beginning and hiding the DS 106 radio mention in it.
For the voice, I wanted a machine. It took some time to find a text to speech that wasn’t rotted as hell, but this one did the trick. I used US English James. (I edited out the part that said it was a demo : )
Although there is no music, I did layer a lot of different types of static/computer noises to get it to sound just right. I wanted it to sound old and very static and also have a lot of interference. ( the beeping is morse code, though I don’t know what it is saying) I love all how all the layers mix, it was definitely worth it. I got all of the sounds on free sound and they actually have a lot of really awesome statics.
I edited it on iMove, of course.
I didn’t know there were this many types of static until this very night.
“Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.”
I know creative people usually hate the question ‘where does your inspiration come from?’ and usually have a slew of witty answers to snap back. But in this case, I can kind of explain where the inspiration for this came from.
Well, first It might come as no surprise to you that I am indeed stressed. I am very busy at the moment and so are a lot of the people around me. At least four people I have talked to today mentioned stress eating, and I will admit that the amount of desserts I had tonight is not a usual number for me. I am not on my fourth cookie right now, no not at all. So a stress-eating product, from there it was just a short jump to gum and an even shorter jump to the product being very ironic and clearly an extremely bad idea.
I don’t know if you have seen unedited footage of a bear, but that is kind of the way I wanted this to go. I wanted this commercial to be not quite right. Between that and too many late nights stuck on infomercial channels, I was good to go.
I wrote the script and recorded it,
then it was time for the music.
Like the assignment description says, go 80’s. With such a specific and wonderful direction, I went for it. I looked for 80’smusic on free sound and found my clip. It was only thirteen seconds. That fact becomes important later.
I wanted the commercial to get progressively weirder and more uncomfortable as it went on, and what better way to do that than through music? (Turns out there is a better way, and I did that too, but for now, let’s talk music) Instead of looping the music cleanly, which I could have done, I made it glitchy and rough. It might not be super noticeable, but the music is definitely not quite right and that’s the feeling I wanted to convey.
Then for my favorite/least favorite part: the chewing. I was thinking about what kind of sound effect I could add in— and this was just too perfect to ignore. I started the sound off slowly and made it get louder and louder until it is impossible to ignore and quite difficult to listen to. I actually haven’t listened to the finished product more than I had to because the chewing sounds are very very gross.
Oh, and if you are new here to a bird’s string of thought, I edit audio on iMove, and it looks like the photo above.
“Within this assigment, you must find some spooky sounds and create a scary audio clip. Select more than four sounds and overlap them on a program like Audacity. You can use Freesound to select your sounds. Make them as spooky as possible. Good luck!”
It is always Halloween in my heart, it is always time to be spooky.
I did make the mistake of doing this assignment at night, so I hope I didn’t accidentally manifest any ghosts, but my dorm is already said to be haunted so I am already all ghosted up.
Speaking of, I started with something called the ‘Ghost Frequency’, a certain frequency that can’t be recognizably heard, but one that causes fear in the listeners. So I recorded a couple versions of that for a baseline. I used Audio Hijack to grab all of the sounds from youtube.
Then, I did some research. I found a couple of historical sounds that were used to create a fight or flight response. The one I chose was a sound used in a war to scare the enemy out of their hiding places. I don’t know if it worked, but I could hardly sit through it, so I added it.
Then I thought about jumpscares. Pretty easy to do with sound. I put static under the whole thing and made it really loud at the beginning and end. Just to spice things up, I also added some sirens. I know for me personally, hearing any sort of siren wailing causes my heart rate to increase, and I think the feeling is pretty standard for humans. And probably other animals too. I don’t think many dogs like the sound of tornado sirens. As a final touch, I put in some sounds of a ghost man crying.
As we all know, the first virtue of our patron saint is that “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” In this case, that is more than applicable. Any ‘mistake’, any part of the audio that is disjointed or uncomfortably edited is all the more perfect for this prompt. You are supposed to be unnerved. If that is by my poor editing skills, so be it.
“Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.”
This assinment grew around the fact that I don’t really like to hear my voice in recordings at the moment. So I recruited Google translate to do the speaking for me.
I found a cool song on Freesound that I think matched the vibe of the computer generated voice as best as a song cloud, then played around in iMove to get it how I wanted it to be. Basically I just added a few fades and called it a day.
I did try to add another beat and also a buzzing noise to the clip for extra dimension, but both of those experiments turned out ear-bleedingly badly so I kept it simple.
Bob Ross has his paints to create forest landscape, I tried sound.
“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. Another example (by a UMW student): http://ds106.us/wp-content/audio/audio_story.mp3“
Well, it took me a second to think of a good story idea. Without dialogue or narration, the sounds would have to tell the story all by themselves. I thought about what sounds I wanted to play around with and settled on the woods. I have made soundscapes for woods before for other projects, and I really enjoyed it.
So we had the setting: The Woodlands
Then I thought about what could happen in the woods. I mean, there is only one viable option. I chose monsters. Then I could also play around with monster sounds, which is a glorious rabbit hole of sound to fall into.
Oft when I myself travel in the woods, there is always a moment when the surrounding wildlife recognize my presence and shut up. Only after a long stillness do they start up again. I wanted to try to build a very diverse sound world and then make it all get quiet as the monster approached, then loud again after the monster left.
I used Freesound to get all of the sounds. I tried to use audacity to edit it, I really did, but when I tried to play the sounds to listen and edit them, it wouldn’t let me. It flashed all sorts of errors and systematic problems that I do not have the ability to fix. Once again, I find a way to dig under the wall of obstacles. Call me the King of the Shovels. So I fell back on what I know. There is actually a lot you can do with iMovie sound. Yes, it can be annoying, but its simplicity makes it very easy to use.
I didn’t even think to add a human character until the end.
Looking back, I probably should have chosen an easier story, but I had fun making it, even it is is only understandable after the explanation.
Just for fun, this is what it looked like when I finished.
Using the crome music labs at https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/ , Specifically the Song Maker application make a song that’s at least 20 measures long. Then share your Piece on your blog or tweet it and explain your artistic process.
My artistic process was beautifully childish. I opened the link to the Song Maker and started clicking on boxes. They changed color. When I played them, they made sounds. It was lovely.
The first segment I experimented into being looked like this.
Then I liked the sound, so I repeated it.
Then I got curious about what the blue dots at the bottom did, and they turned into shapes when I pressed them. And I got percussion. I went with a simple alternating beat, nothing too complicated.
Then I wondered what the boxes below the light blue line did. So I pressed those. When I liked the initial pattern of sounds, I repeated it.
I really just got lucky that everything sounded halfway decent together.
I then played around with the different settings on the bottom bar, where it says Marimba. They had several other types of instruments that these notes could be played as, but they didn’t sound as good. I think this is because I made the ‘music’ as it was set to Marimba so I s based my choices on that. Trying to make it woodwind just didn’t quite work.
All in all, I would definitely recommend playing around with this, it is very easy and simplistic. The opposite of overwhelming music software, and more like a fun video game.
