P4 Audio – The Kid and the Wolf

For my 4^th project, the class graduated to an audio project, that involved work with audio in general, as well as the platform called Audacity that enables people to work with their recording and edit audio.

We had several options to choose from when deciding what exact audio format we would be using, such as creating a digital story, using a fable and incorporating sound effects, or even creating a Radio advertisement.

I decided to go for the fable option. I picked a fable that I enjoyed from Aesop’s Fables, named ‘The Kid and the Wolf’, and read it myself while recording. At first, I had recorded with the built in microphone of my computer but quickly realized the amount of other unwanted sounds that could be heard in the background. Luckily, I was able to borrow a Snowball Microphone from the Media Arts Lab and recorded using that.

At first I found it very difficult to listen to my own voice, it just sounded weird. However, I did get adjusted relatively quickly as I started playing around with different effects available for use on Audacity. I found it very amusing to mess around with the pitch of my voice and therefore I did incorporate those effects in various parts of the recording.

Using freesound.org, I signed up for an account and was able to use various different sound effects that would compliment my story and gives a stronger effect to the story. I played around for hours and hours trying out all sorts of effects that could go in different places.

I enjoyed learning to use the application Audacity, It is a great program, but I felt that despite having spent hours trying out all the effects, I still feel very incompetent using it. I feel like it would take hundreds of hours even thousands in order to fully understand the full functionality of the program.

Nonetheless, a great experience!