This project was focused on recreating the feeling of new love. From my original poetry piece Getting Lost to the gentle sound of spring rain to the sound of a fire crackling. I wanted to recreate the breathless, gentle and sometimes overwhelmingly sweet feeling of love. This project taught me how to play with gain to bring a track up or down; but more importantly gave me the skills to learn how to record quietly. It took a few takes to get my voice this clear. I edited and played around with this track, but I ended up uploading the track I first finished. My voice sometimes is drowned out by the music, but I think that lends to the overall feeling of the poem–getting lost. Before this project, I had little experience with Audacity, mostly just changing the gain, not importing several tracks. However, I find myself enamored with audio tools and look forward to the net project that leads me to a recording studio. I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered audacity, but I came out with exactly what I went into trying to create, and that makes me happy.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Chris, this is for you.

credit to bensound for the music track find it here

img “My Love” by me

This project I not only used for my class project but I wanted to help promote the current video game that a company I am part of is developing, Sockeye Game Studios. The game is Called Odd Wyvern. It is a Third person space shooter. What I was trying to accomplish with this assignment was to make a promotional advertisement to let more people be aware of this game that is soon to be released. My overall experience making this track was so much fun. I got to gain even more experience with Audacity than I had before and I learned new sound effects as well as the ones I have used before. I had a few struggles making this track but I did my best to push through them. In my opinion my favorite part about this track is the whole thing put together, each part of it compliments the other the voice levels with the music as well as the effects and sounds I used, all of the music and sound effects are made by members of Sockeye and are part of the game. I hope you enjoy the track and have interest in our video game. please comment with any feedback or questions you may have Odd Wyvern is set for release in December of 2016.

The picture featured below shows Subject Pi, the main character of Odd Wyvern next to the logo for our game.

This is my sound project now I have done many sound based projects before but this is my first one without any video. So the basic idea is that a journalist has discovered a hidden government secret what that secret is and what his fate is will be listen and find out. The mood is supposed to  give a dark and tense environment of  this mans surroundings . I let myself become paranoid by watching freaky videos to get myself in the right state of mind which I think helped in my performance.  I am hoping while you listen you start to feel the same paranoia that the character is feeling. From watching other videos that are tension filled I knew the key aspects of a good tension filled audio project which are lack of music, describe your environment to get the listeners mind into the situation. I whispered into my microphone at 1 in the morning in a dark room to make it seem more real through the voice. I really hope that the fear and paranoia is as strong as i want it to be and while i realize it will not have the same impact on everyone I hope it will at least be entertaining.

For my Intro to Media Arts audio project, I decided on doing a fake “found recording” inspired on a game I am currently developing. In the audio, an unnamed man records what turns out to be his last words to whoever finds the discarded recording device. The recording ends with the man being attacked by something monstrous as the recording cuts out. Working on this project I gained new insight on how to record and edit sound files in the Audacity sound program I was working in. I wanted the audio for the project to have the feel of an old audio recording like a record. I accomplished this by adding an equalization effect, changing the “curve” which gave me a list of possible curves to use . For example, I applied a “Telephone Curve”  Equalization  effect to the audio I recorded which gave it the feel that I wanted it to have. Recording my audio proved to be a bit more difficult than I originally thought, I recorded all my own dialogue which I had written down beforehand and I had problems trying to project the right tone for the clip as well as pronunciate what I say correctly without garbling my words. It took a while to finally get into it, but when I did things moved more smoothly. This assignment has taught me much in terms of working with audio which I hope to apply to my work as a a film and game developer.

I found Pablo Neruda’s poem to be amusing, and wanted to convey a lighthearted feel. As a person who has known many cats, his words ring true. I can picture the poet late at night, paper and pencil scratching away, as his cat watches with a look that is 1/3 bored indifference, 1/3 condescending judgement, and 1/3 wishing Pablo would just pet him already.

The first challenge was recording. Getting consistent audio feel, pacing and volume while trying to give emphasis to the poetry reading took lots of practicing and re-recording. I still question if my voice has the right feel to it.

The next challenge was picking a background music track. I wanted to find some acoustic Spanish guitar to accompany it. However, all the tracks I tried were too distracting for the background. I finally decided to try audio of a cat purring. I feel it gives it a warm feel, like somebody is contemplating the cat’s existence while petting a cat on their lap. That’s how I will now imagine Pablo spending his quiet moments when he wasn’t writing or wooing women.

Learning to use Audacity was pretty intuitive. It seems like a really effective program for a variety of audio needs, and I’ll be using it for future projects.

Better focus

Because meditation is a practice in focusing our attention and being aware of when it drifts, this actually improves our focus when we’re not meditating, as well. It’s a lasting effect that comes from regular meditation practice.

Less anxiety

The more we meditate, the less anxiety we have, this happens because we’re actually loosening the connections of particular neural pathways in Me Center (medial prefrontal cortex). This is the part of the brain that processes information relating to ourselves and our experiences. Normally the neural pathways from the bodily sensation and fear centers of the brain to the Me Center are really strong. When we experience a scary or upsetting sensation, it triggers a strong reaction in our Me Center, making us feel scared and under attack.

When we meditate, we weaken the neural connections. This means that we don’t react as strongly to sensations that might have once. As we weaken this connection, we strengthen the connection between what’s known as our Assessment Center (the part of our brains known for reasoning) and our bodily sensation and fear centers. So when we experience scary or upsetting sensations, we can more easily look at them rationally.

Better memory

One of the things meditation has been linked to, is improving rapid memory recall. Researchers found that people who practiced mindful meditation were able to adjust the brain waves that screens out distractions and increase their productivity more quickly that those that did not meditate.

Less stress

Mindful meditation has been shown to help people perform under more pressure while feeling less stressed. At 2012 scientists split a group of HR managers into three sub-groups, which one third participated in mindful meditation training, another third took body relaxation training and the last third were given no training at all. A stressful multitasking test was given to all the managers before and after the eight-week training. In the final test, the group that had participated in the mindful meditation training reported less stress during the test than both of the other groups.

More gray matter formation

Meditation has been linked to larger amounts of gray matter formation in the hippocampus and frontal areas of the brain. What does it mean: more gray matter can lead to more positive emotions, longer-lasting emotional stability and heightened focus during daily life.

Meditation has also been shown to diminish age-related effects on gray matter and reduce the decline of our cognitive functioning.

Well, as nervous as I was about this I am really happy with the final product. For the first time using audacity I think I did pretty well and had a blast doing it. I wanted to show an average day in the lab at Aperture science and what these poor poor turrets have to go though. So I made my audio clip to raise awareness so that someday the turrets will be free like you and me. I had so much fun doing different voices and messing with the pitch and bass. I even got to create a slight echo that helped me get the voice I wanted. It took around 8 hours and many re-recordings to get the final product. Getting each voice recording to sound the same was the most difficult for me. If I were to do this again I would do all my lines for a certain character first then the second character and so on. But it was a good learning experience struggling through so all’s well that ends well. My other problem I discovered is if you don’t know the game you wont understand some of the humor. The overall point of saving the turrets was made but the humor I attempted to incorporate may be lost to some viewers. But regardless I genuinely hope you enjoy the short clip and remember, save the turrets, stop the abuse.

–George Bleekman

My goal with this assignment was to gain some familiarity with Audacity. Up to this point, any work I’ve done with audio has been done inside of Adobe Premiere Pro. While I think I still prefer Premiere for my purposes, if I were to have a project where I needed a large number of layers going at the same time, Audacity would be a good option. It’s also important to note that Audacity is free whereas Premiere is not.

I’ve also done no work in the past with adding in sound effects to my work so this was a good opportunity to play with timing and levels of those sounds to make sure that they fit in well with the main audio and didn’t overpower it. The only “sound effect” I’ve used has been “bleeps” over the occasional swear word.

Most of the work I have done up to this point has been simply syncing multiple audio tracks to the same video and finding which has the best sound at different points to be sure that the viewer has the best opportunity to hear the specific things that I want them to.

My biggest regret with this project was that I was unable to find an appropriate place to insert a Wilhelm Scream. The Wilhelm Scream seems to be a staple for any audio engineer or Foley artist. It is estimated to appear in at least 225 movies and tv shows.

I don’t necessarily plan on being in a situation where I have to use Audacity again in the future however should I find myself in that scenario, I will feel much better prepared for it.

by: Ryan Miller