When I started with this assignment, I had no idea what I was getting into as I had never really experimented with audio editing in the past. I began by choosing fables as the assignment topic, and after looking through a few, I chose the Frog and the mouse because I could imagine sounds happening at certain points in the story. Opening Audacity, I at first was a bit overwhelmed with all of the different options and didn’t know where to start. The only way I was able to get a feel for the program was to start experimenting with it. This turned out a lot easier than I thought, with the program being actually pretty simple to navigate. From here, I started putting the elements that I imagined in the fable over the audio of me reading it. Since the story took place at a lake with a frog, I chose to put audio of frogs at a lake in the background. This is when I experimented with the fade in and fade out effect to have the lake noises fade in and out. I also chose to include the sound of the for jumping in the water and the hawk because I thought that they were important parts of the story and wanted to highlight them. In the end, I was able to get a basic understanding of how Audacity works and different effects that can completely change the effect audio can have on the listener.

By Braden Ivey

For this project I had a decently fun time having my mother record the audio and having a friend teach me the audio editing. The whole project only took me 30 minutes or less to create but was a fun learning experience since I could ask for my friend’s help on the editing of the audio file. In all honesty, this assignment wasn’t too hard to do, but it was a fun excuse to collaborate with my friend. He works in music making software, so he was able to give me some good pointers with audio editing. Also having the choice of not reading was nice since I thought having my mom read the moral story of the tortoise and the hair, it made me happy to ask her to read a story I heard a lot as a kid and was very nostalgic. I grabbed a lo-fi audio for the background music and found some random snoring audio for the rest of it but in all it came out great I thought and thanks to my friend I was able to get it done with little to no mistakes. The hardest part I’d say would have been having to find time where everything was quite so I could get the project done.

by, Quinn Hodges

by Ellie Grover (link)

I chose this story because I absolutely adore Aesop’s Fables, and I wanted to be able to have fun with this project. I wanted to be able to use an array of animal sounds and fun, tranquil background noise that would bring the fable to life by my own doing! I wanted my storytelling to be engaging and intentional by all of my choices for the audio that I was planning on making.

Starting to make the audio was the worst part. I grabbed my giant book full of Aesop’s Fables and read several dozen trying to find one that I thought would make a good audio. My indecisiveness truly got the better of me as I sat in my living room attempting to pick one. Ultimately, I had to wait until the next morning after I let Audacity download before I could make my decision on The Mastiff and the Goose.

The actual creation of the audio was a little frustrating. The software was difficult to understand and made me a little overwhelmed. I had to re-record the audio a few times (no thanks to my lovely cat who liked to make background noise), and I had to spend a couple hours adjusting the extra sound effects.

However, ultimately, I’m very happy with how the audio as a whole turned out. I hope that my storytelling accurately portrays the life lesson that the story aims to teach: Arrogance inspires contempt.

In this project, it is very difficult to choose what topic I want to do. I was very struggling to choose between telling my own story or Aesop’s fables. I realized Aesop’s fables were very interesting, and I started to find some fables that I like and that I can make different in my own style. I decided to use “The Wolf and Goat”. However, I was very insecure about my voice. I have been using my phone to record my voice to tell the story. After I practiced over and over again, I kept challenging myself about what I can do better, I started to imitate my voice while in their conversation. I found out that roleing in is the best way you can tell a good story. Also, one of my strategies is to record your story in sections, because when you have sections of your story you can very easily edit in adobe audition or other software. And the most important is if one of your sections that you don’t like then you only need to re-recording that section instead of recording the whole story again. I do enjoy this project because when I tried to adopt my voice, I was very proud and satisfied. Especially when I put the background music and some sound effects together, it turned out good. I hope that everyone will enjoy my audio.

By Bebe