In MUL101 our assignment was to create an audio recording and add music and sound effects to it. We could either create a story of our own or use an Aesop fable. I decided to use a fable, but I chose to do the big bad wolf because I thought it would be a little more interesting and less boring to do one that everyone is familiar with. I started by checking out a snowball mic and practiced recording until I was happy with it. I ended up piecing together two different audio clips because I liked different parts of both of them. Then I cut outs my um’s and added music and sound effects and twala. I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. I used audition and had a good time adding sound effects and music and playing with the different voice effects in audition. Through this class and my time based tools class I’ve discovered audio, and video editing are my favorite parts of the multimedia program so far. Hope you enjoy it!

Krizia Walker

This was a fun project for me. I work at the Writing Center as a work-study student since the beginning of Summer Term. I wanted to make this commercial because I feel like a lot of people pass by the writing center and don’t quite understand what it is or the full extent of what is offered there. I know when I was a new student at Lane this past Spring Term, I passed through it on my way elsewhere, and was overwhelmed by how big the room was and how many people were working in there. It looked like a study hall or something. I want everyone to know they can drop in the Writing Center anytime they have any assignment at all that has to do with writing; it doesn’t have to necessarily be from a direct writing class- I know that when I was taking Visual Literacy with Jan for the Multimedia Program, there was a lot of writing and that is something that a tutor could help with. Even if you feel very confident in your writing ability, it is really valuable to have an audience for it, so I would suggest anyone at any part of their writing journey to come in. We also help with speeches, ESL pronunciation and conversation, multimodal projects, languages, and CS120 (though you may have to wait awhile for this help). The editing process of this project was fun. I found the program fairly user-friendly and intuitive for basic things; but had to supplement my process with some guides and tutorials as well. It was really fun to do this and it makes me want to make my own podcast someday!

I learned a lot on this project. I’ve never done something like this before. It was a fun project. One problem that I personally had is that I didn’t use a special microphone when I recorded. I recorded my voice with the computer microphone. The sound is not what I was going for. You can hear that the recording is not perfect, the sound is not smooth enough. Other than that I had fun making this audio. I’ve always wanted to play with sounds and be creative. I had a lot of ideas for this project. The reason why I didn’t do something more creative is because this is my first time playing with sound, making audio and using Audacity. I know it would have taken me more time. That’s why I wanted to keep it simple. But not only that, I wanted to do this audio to bring awareness to people. I got this idea from a driving class I took two years ago. Nowadays people get distracted easily with their smartphones. It is really risky to drive and use your phone. Anything can happen while you’re checking your phone. I’m sure most people have done it at least once. I want people to open their eyes and not let social media get into their head and distract them. Be safe y’all. Much love to everyone.

The Ants & The Grasshopper

I never thought of working with audio as especially fun, but just because I may not be skilled at it doesn’t mean I can’t have fun with it! I’m finding that, as my homework projects are taking me out of my comfort zone, I am actually enjoying branching out to work with different types of media!

Choosing the subject of my audio project took a lot of thought. I had several exciting ideas, but none of them seemed ‘do-able’ enough until I settled on a simple Aesop’s fable entitled “The Ants & The Grasshopper.” I had grown up listening to and reading many variations of this story, so I was excited to make my own spin on it!

I enjoyed this story for many reasons. Technically, there’s only two main characters: the group of ants, and the grasshopper! Yet, the story itself has the versatility to be adapted with different characters and settings and still convey the same ideas. In regards to the ‘moral of the story’, I enjoy how this fable emphasizes the importance of being prompt and prepared. Unfortunately, procrastination is something I struggle with!

I enjoyed writing the script and recording my voice (and my siblings’ voices) as well. My script ended up being way too long by the time I had put all the audio together in Audition, so this version is about half the size of the original! Working on this project also took me much longer than I had planned; time was short, so I hope to keep working on the audio in the future to make it better.

As I searched for a picture for my video, I realized that the one I wanted to use was most likely copyrighted. So, I just drew my own version of the picture instead!

Folks, when I saw that we were getting assigned this audio project, I completely lost my gourd. If I haven’t already said so a hundred times, I’m actually in the midst of writing my own audio drama right now, so I was super excited to jump in and write a scene for my show! I’m really happy with how it turned out, too.

Morgan, the main character in this scene, is one of a few thousand volunteers who got the opportunity to go up and live in the first human space colony on the moon. She applied a couple months ago on a whim, and while she didn’t even expect to get in, she certainly wasn’t going to turn the invitation down when it came. Apparently, however, it couldn’t have been that hard of a cut to make, if Morgan’s number one rival from school is there, too…

Of course, the whole “living on the moon- for science!” thing is… Well, let’s just say it’s a little more complicated than it seems at first, but you don’t have to worry about that. At least, not yet. :>

-Amanda

For this project I set out with a goal of sharing a short experience from memories of working as a cook. In the Southern GA heat, kitchen life was a rough way to spend the working hours. A tall glass of ice water was a blissful escape. I wanted to recreate that feeling, using audio to better convey the experience.

The music and sound clips are all CC materials. I ended up using Adobe Audition* for this project as we’re currently covering it in our Time-Based Tools class and I had another recording project. Studio time is valuable, you’ve got to have everything prepped and ready to go. Once everything is set-up and the levels are good you may as well record everything you can. No telling when another quiet moment will come along.

I had a lot of fun with this project, especially when I was listening to the various samples in order to select the right audio. I like how distinctive the sounds of glass and ice are. It was also fun watching my partner’s face grimace during the section on what it’s like going too long without water. It gave me a good sense that the clips were bringing a feeling of distress across to the listener.

Not that I’d want the listener to be distressed for long! Just helped ‘sell’ that piece of the story. I hoped to achieve a story similar to the qualities of an iced glass of water. Something to sip on for a brief moment of refreshment that you could easily forget about a moment later. 

Although, after listening you may desire…

…a crisp quart cup filled to the brim with ice and water.

Thanks for listening!
-Greyson

*I do still love audacity though, it’s an amazing piece of free open source software. And my go to tool of choice when helping others with audio related projects. The interface is clean, there are plentiful filters included, and the import/export options are phenomenal.

I choose this fable by Aesop, because it had an interesting moral. The moral is that it is easy to be brave when there is no danger. I think this fable applies to many situations. A lot of people like to act “tough”. They may say how they would handle a situation. But really, unless you have been in an identical situation, you don’t know how you will react. I think this moral also applies to passing judgement on others. It’s easy to take the moral high ground when you are completely removed from the situation. As with most situations, they are not as straightforward as you may see at first glance. There is usually a chain of events that lead to the current state. I hope you will be able to take from this story, as I have and apply it to your everyday life.

This story is fairly short and uncomplicated. It seemed a little boring after hearing it played back at first. Lucky for me we had to spice them up with sound effects, and music. After adding in the sound effects and music, the story becomes much more entertaining. I still don’t much like the sound of my voice, but I did my best with that. In the end I am pleased with the end result, and I had a lot of fun adding all the effects and music.

“Alone” is a poem written by Edgar Allen Poe and is the main subject of my audio project. I recorded my recitation of this poem and added various other sound elements in Pro Tools. I used royalty free music for the audio and royalty free image for the Soundcloud player image. I annotated those borrowed bits in the description of the audio for your reference. I bounced  Much work was put into this, so that you get to listen and have an audio experience that was well worth it.

The goal of the audio experience is to teleport the listener into that dark and gloomy world that Poe paints in “Alone”. You are to feel the mood of the piece and to not think that this is just some simple recording. Another goal that I hope this accomplishes, that it gets the listener to seek out poetry and give it a read. Poetry is beautiful and is fun to read aloud, even if it is misread. My overall goal is that skills obtained (so far) in the multimedia design program help me deliver an excellent final product to the listener.

I do not have much experience in the Multimedia Design program nor did I have much experience in the use of Pro Tools. I wanted to use this project to help me practice more with the industry standard in audio production. I have to admit, I hit a few bumps in the road in the process of working with audio at home. Snowball microphone was not recognized by Pro Tools due to a sound card issue. I found an alternate solution to the problem by downloading ASIO4all so that the mic and the audio software could communicate.

 The secondary bump in the road was finalizing my Pro Tools session into a WAV format. I have not learned how to do all that since I just started to get familiar with Pro Tools. I tried to do things just like if the program was like Adobe Audition and nothing seemed to work until I looked online. I found a guide to bouncing my session which helped me format a copy of my session into a WAV file. Finally, I was then able to upload my audio project into Soundcloud.

 The last bump in the road was reciting poetry. This bump was the biggest one on the road because I have never undertaken the art of poetry reading before and had to do way more prep work. I researched how writers intended their poetry to be read and how a professional recites poetry. I never knew you can get paid to recite poems till I did some digging around. After a drop of medicinal herb and 22 takes later, I recited the poem as I intended. Forgive me if it doesn’t meet the professional standard.