I have never done any kind of audio work before. Audacity was a completely new thing for me. I started with recording my voice. Well, that was weird. Hearing your voice and nothing but your voice (and externally for that matter) isn’t something that happens all the time. Then I went to freesound.org and started gathering some sound effects that felt right for the story that I was telling. With some googling and watching YouTube videos I was able to work my way through Audacity and finish the project.

I knew right away that I wanted to do my project using a fable. I am a person who loves stories. Stories with a meaning to them are just a plus. I read tons of the Aesops Fables. I went through so many before I decided on one. The fable simply titled “Androcles Fable” just spoke out to me. I really enjoyed it. So, it was then decided that I would use that for my project. While this story s short there are still sad moments, happy moments, and exciting moments. I wanted to try and accomplish to capture all of these moments using sound. I used sounds that followed the lion (a character in the story) and his experience with Androcles (another character). I also chose a music track that (found on the same website as all of the sound effects) sounded like it followed the changing moods of the story.

Overall I think my audio project turned out good. Working with audio was a fun experience and I am excited to delve further into the world of audio.

By: Tevin Goddard

So, I am entirely new to creating sound projects with tools like Audacity, so to others with a lot of experience and a learned ear it will probably not sound very good.

I usually have an easy time with creative projects but, I am sure some of you can relate, I found audacity to be a pain to work with compared to other audio programs that I have been recently introduced to. I struggled for a bit to line up tracks and sequencing. I am sure with practice and time I could turn this project into a quality portfolio piece.

But, whatever, it was fun. I thought I would do something goofy with odd sound effects, cartoon noises, and explosions and crashes. The theme that I chose to use was the reality of a possible mega-quake than could hit the Northwestern United States on any given day. Enjoy.

For me, this assignment consisted mostly of writing a script, recording the audio at home, then layering it over some copyright free music to make it sound like a real ad. The idea was a fake advertisement for Hydro-Bro-Done, the medication that makes you bro again. I really wanted to make it similar to the cheesy ads you hear on late night TV, such as chantix. It was fun coming up with ridiculous side effects and uses for the medication, along with trying to find music that you would expect to hear in a commercial such as this.

The biggest challenge for me was coming up with a script that was appropriate for school, along with getting a good quality recording after being sick. Unfortunately, equipment checkout also gave me the wrong cables for the condenser mic, so I was forced to use my phone as my recording device last minute, which really didn’t give me the audio quality I was hoping for. Getting another person to do the side effects recording was also challenging because it was hard for us not to laugh and mess up the recording, but we ended up getting some good takes.

All in all, I’m happy with the final product and think some people will enjoy the humor in it.

Basically my idea was to make a funny, parody, promotional type song. I think the lyrics are funny and creative, but my rapping and singing skills are not up to professional standards. The process was easy, I found a free music instrumental on the internet then I wrote the lyrics. Audacity is very easy to use. It is more simple then a program like pro-tools for sure. I recorded the song in segments simply because I couldn’t keep a straight face while rapping. Once I got all the parts recorded I synced them together making it complete. Once I was done I felt like it needed some thing else to it. I did some research about autotune and how it works within audacity. I edited my voice and it was hilarious. The production part was easy now the hard part is going to hear it in front of the class. It is so cringe worthy it hurts my soul to listen to. Class presentation is gonna be hard to sit through the embarrassment will be off the charts. I just hope everyone finds it hilarious and gets a good laugh out of it. The process with this project was really fun I hope everyone will enjoy.

I found this assignment very fun and interesting. My goal was to try and make it seem as if a radio host was announcing a ticket giveaway during a show. Since Halloween is coming up it only seemed perfect for this to be some kind of Halloween concert. For those of you wondering, there is actually no concert and no free tickets. I used a program called Logic Pro which is super similar to Garage Band but it is made for the more professional end of producing music and recording. I also used a program like Adobe Illustrator called GravitDesigner to design the artwork for the sound file on Soundcloud. Sadly, I didn’t use a mic but instead just the standard mic inside my MacBook Pro. So when I tried to record this I had to setup some blankets around me and just hoped no background noise would be recorded. After doing this assignment it really makes me want to record some kind of music video. Anyways I hope you enjoy my little being a radio host for fifteen seconds.

This is the fourth project for the Intro to Media Arts class at Lane Community College. Here I took an excerpt from Mr. Poe’s, The Masque of the Red Death. I chose this poem because I like how simply Edgar Allan is able to convey his fantasy story and still give us enough detail to feel a bit horrified.

This was my first time putting my voice online for others to listen to, and the first time in a long time that I’ve used audio editing software. This project taught me that a huge volume of work goes into the recording and mixing of the sound, voice, music and special effects that we hear almost every single day. It also taught me how important it is to make high quality sound if you want people to listen to what you make.

To record this project I used my phone’s voice recording software, and did many takes, to get some emotionality into the voice. I used Audacity to mix the audio but didn’t check before I did my voice recording if it would accept the audio format from the files I made on my phone; well it doesn’t! So, I played the audio from my phone into the computer’s microphone to get the audio onto a track in Audacity.

Mixing the background sound and music was also a challenging surprise. Fortunately, our teacher, Teresa, gave us access to royalty free music and ambient sounds to use for the project. I sliced up pieces of music to match the story, and used the deep drum and thump-like beats from a couple of songs to recreate the dreadfully musical tick-tock described by Poe in his poem.

To close, I think I successfully experimented with sound, but didn’t succeed in making anything very pleasing to the ear. I have a much bigger appreciation of sound designers now than before I started this project (which was obviously 0%…). There is so much to learn and so many variables that I’m looking forward to exploring during and after my time at Lane. Next time, I will give myself more time to find a good microphone, do more research to find other great sounds, and especially choose music around the same time I am recording my voice so that the sounds play off of each other better.

Thanks for reading.

-Daniel Martinez

I love audio production, this was a very fun assignment. I do complex vocal tracks mixing music and vocals all the time. Every project I work on becomes multiple tracks with layers of effects and overlaid sounds. I never do simple clean voice only projects where clean simple sound is the end product. With large complex projects you can alter and change small imperfections and hide them. This was more challenging in a way because with neat clean recording every aspect had to work together very organically to make the mix be clean and not confusing. It was hard for me to not add lots of sound effects and layers. I wanted to do something musical but that’s what I always do. Then I wanted to do a fable reading but that seemed to straight forward so then it hit me to do a funny storytelling read. My idea was to try to read it in the voice of an audio book without much hint that its meant to be a funny story. I was going for a dry read with a funny punchy ending that you didn’t see coming. I laid down 8 tracks of me reading the story in small pieces so I could focus on clean readings without worrying about errors. Next I found some nice audio and put a simple effect on it and adjusted the volume. Finally I hit play and laid down a single background and silly sound effects track. This was a fun and interesting project and I liked the simple voice reading. I hope you enjoy it and get a nice laugh. Have a great day!

I found this audio file in my inbox the other day and from what it sounds like, it’s an advert for a haunted house. I don’t know what The House Of The Black Mirror is, and don’t bother looking online, I couldn’t find anything substantial. The guy in the clip talks about going where the road meets the water, so I thought maybe it’d be somewhere along the Willamette. It’s all so weird. I forgot to mention that the email I found this in didn’t have a sender listed, so I’m thinking maybe I got hacked or maybe this is all just a big prank, anyways… I was listening to the audio and noticed something in the background that was kind of unsettling (besides the fact the whole thing is kind of unsettling), there were voices under the main vocal track. I can’t quite understand what they’re saying though. It’s not like any language I’ve ever heard before, but it’s familiar somehow. The whole deal is kind of creeping me out, so I decided to share it with you and get your thoughts on it. Any ideas on what it means by “where the road meets the water.”? Or what the voices in the background are saying? Has anyone ever heard of The House Of The Black Mirror? And does anyone know why I can still hear that weird ambient whistling from the advertisement even though I closed the Media player an hour or two ago?

The goal of this post was to get everyone involved in what’s called an Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. An ARG is an online storytelling method that is affected by input from the viewers. Popular ARG’s in the past include; Marble Hornets, a found-footage style horror, and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modernized adaption of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice a la vlog.

For this assignment I am trying to raise awareness to the cold and flu season that is about to hit. In the message I offer simple steps on how to not spread the flu to everyone regardless of where you are at. I believe safety measures should be taken so we don’t end up missing work or class due to a simple bug. I had some fun tinkering with new software as I like to learn different software to add to my bag of tricks I have acquired over the years. The most difficult part of the assignment was getting peace and quiet from roommates and neighbors. What a spendy day. It cost me 2 trips to Papas Pizza and a beer to attain the quietness I needed to complete this project. The fun part was arranging the audio and sound effects……. Hopefully I didn’t overdo it like I tend to do on fun projects. I hope the message I have tried to convey in this project has been useful. i have been hospitalized due to the flu and I don’t want to see anyone end up there when it can be prevented by simple means. Thankyou all hope you have a good weekend.

What do the numbers 1, 2, 7, and 14 have in common. According to Scott Myers, author of Go Into The Story, a blog on screenwriting, they are the key to expanding your understanding of the screenwriting craft. In one of his blog posts he say you should do the following; Read one screenplay per week, watch two movies perweek, write seven pages per week, and work fourteen hours per week prepping your story.

Known for his work on K-9 (Starring Jim Belushi and Jenifer Love Hewitt), Scot Myers has been screenwriting since 1987 and since then has produced over thirty projects in Hollywood. He is an award winning writer and co-founder of the Screenwriting Masterclass, and he has hosted the blog, Go Into the Story since 2008. His blog offers help and advice to aspiring writers and storytellers.