Category Archives: F18-P4 Audio

Audio P4

 

When I was heard about the Audio assignment, I thought it would be a struggle and a battle. It was a new project and I had to work with a new program I didn’t have much experience with but I was surprised! When I opened up Audacity, my gears inside my head started clicking and going. I actually enjoyed the project and once I started, I couldn’t keep my hands and eyes off the computer. It was literally like chewing gum for my eyes. I enjoyed making the project so much!

I had a little difficulty finding a story I could read and add effects to. Since I am bilingual, I was thinking of reading a story bilingually, but it didn’t go too well and it sounded too choppy. I finally decided on reading a story in one language. I also wanted to do a story that most people didn’t know. I came to the decision of reading a story about why the sea is salty. I recorded myself reading, picked my music and sound effects, then I was silent for the rest of the weekend. I had an idea in my brain that I was trying to get down into something people could listen to. I wanted a really short but good story, and sound effects that could really add a strong mental picture in the audience’s minds. I’ve listened to audio recordings that were full cast with sound effects, and I could almost feel myself in the environment, and that’s what I wanted to convey.

In the end, I think I accomplished what I had in my head, into something audible, which is pretty cool. I’ve realized it’s not about being perfect about everything, but rather be content with what you have and when you step back and look at what you’ve accomplished, it will probably look better than you imagined. There’s a quotes that goes, “The harder the workout, the greater the feeling of accomplishment”, which is exactly what I felt. I also felt a bittersweet moment when I finished the project. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and now I often wish myself back to the beginning. What an amazing journey I took!

 

 

F18 P4 Audio

 

I was trying to accomplish this story by turning a simple story into something more interesting than just a voice. I’ve heard audio books where it was just a voice reading but it was always more fun listening to an audio book that was full cast. I had a blast making this audio. The sound effects were a little hard to find, but once I found them it was a matter of placing them in the right spot. The music I chose for this soundtrack was easy to find because the website I sent to had the music categorized into themes. I found two tracks, one that had suspense and one that seemed like it would go well with rivalry. I’ve never really played with Audicity before so this was the first for me. I’ve done projects like this one before in GarageBand where I record myself reading a story and then adding music and sound effects at the end. Using Audicity wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Once I got started and learned the basics it was pretty much straightforward. The only one difficulty I had was trying to match the sound effects up with the story. Audicity wasn’t as precise with matching the effects up with the soundtrack but besides that, everything else was in time.

Aesop’s The Lion and the Mouse

With this audio project, I was trying to simply accomplish a mixing of music and background noise along with my voice narrating the track, but I ended up getting too ambitious and Audacity didn’t seem to want to cooperate. I found it to be fairly easy to just drop the different tracks into Audacity. It was a little more complicated to line everything up, but, still, it wasn’t that bad. It was when I was trying to do more with the levels of sound and amplifications of certain sounds that caused me a lot of trouble. I played with a fade in and a fade out at both the beginning and end of the story, however, the beginning was already quiet, so when the other tracks came in, things seemed to get much louder. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure of how to fix that. Another issue I ran into, and it is very noticeable in the audio, was the voice for the mouse. At first, I just had it where I changed my voice to be higher pitched. It didn’t sound like it was high enough for a mouse (although, now I realize that I should’ve just left it alone). Once I found out how to change the pitches of sounds, I tried doing that for my voice for the mouse (going for an Alvin and the Chipmunks kind of deal). That worked well for me at first until I kept messing with it and trying to get it perfect. Ultimately, in the end, it sounded much much worse and I was too far into it; there was no getting it back to where it was, so I had to leave it. I am super disappointed that it sounded the way it did, but I’m taking this in as a learning experience and as a much needed step towards understanding how Audacity works, as I move forward in this class.

⌈Kyle Letsom⌋

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