https://soundcloud.com/adam-poole-21/ima-sp15-pooleadam-p4-audio

For assignment P4, I decided to create a radio advertisement selling/hyping a video game, specifically Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. Elements of the file came together fairly quickly; I had a base idea/general direction, and as I explored free music/sfx sites the details filled in. I saved whatever I came across that could work, ensuring I’d have a decent pool to work with. I recorded my VO, tweaking the pitch/tone/bass and experimenting with lots of stuff (most of which I undid immediately). I had a simple marching track, evil laugh, two different game-y bloop-y sounds, a whip and a great BGM track- the music is the only thing I didn’t mess with.  I also recorded a few different *ting* and *punch*-y sounds (made with my mouth) to tweak, and ended up with an interesting sound after “Super CV 4″ is spoken. Protip: If you can figure out the wah-wah feature, you can do some cool stuff; I stumbled into some really unique sounds.

I decided with the audio project I would do a retelling of the urban legend “Human’s can lick, too” with some eerie music and some sounds to go along with the story.

In the project I used a dog shaking it’s head, a psychotic laugh, a door and window locking, a dripping sound, and a female screaming as the sounds. I used a music track called ambient darkness as the background music.

It took me about 16 or more tries to get the talking part of the audio down, so that there wasn’t any mistakes, I do hope there wasn’t any.

Personally I didn’t like doing this project because I’m not good with making a great audio track and keeping all the sounds in sync with the audio.

Over the years of listening to the radio and artist mixtapes, the DJ’s and their sound FX have gotten crazier and crazier. I remember it being something relative to the station or what the subject of the conversation is and now, if your on the right channel listening to the right DJ you’ll hear crazy alien noises and what not. Mixtapes? thats even worse than the radio! not only are the artists getting worse (yes I’m very guilty of still listening to them) but the DJ or producer who mixed the album wont even let them talk! For example, you’ll be listening to a a new low key trap mixtape, you finally find a song thats tolerable then all the sudden a DJ comes in and says “YO! THIS SHITS HOT!” or ” DAMN SON, WHERE’D YOU FIND THIS?”, like he didn’t already know. This is my version of an annoying DJ.

For the first couple of days I could not think of a single thing I’d want to blabber on about in order to even start the project to begin with, but I was lucky I talk to my brother often, especially when we go to school together. In a random comment nyan cat spurred into thought and my brain purred with the idea and concept of a parody commercial involving this almighty meme of 2011. With the brainstorming over I could finally get back on track on my goal of accomplishing the assignment. To be honest I might as well have felt like I was goofing off while drafting up the script, I might have been, but the major work was planned to be done in the midst of the night at home. When no one could scurry or hassle or babble in the background. Which failed after my brother stayed up way to late and I ended up falling asleep on the couch where I was going over the script.

To counteract such discouraging results I woke up early and got right to work, easily finishing with enough time to eat ‘breakfast’ and head to school once again with my brother. All an all not a bad time, it was rather quite enjoyable once I was playing with all the audio in Audacity.

By: Olivia VanGorden

Scources:

http://www.freesound.org/people/rivernile7/sounds/240548/ – Toaster sound

https://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/98874/ – dissapointment sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4 – Nyan Cat music

You can read along with the story in the description of the track in Soundcloud!!

For this project I did a narration of a story called The Church by Alvin Schwartz. The story comes from a book which is the 2nd of a 3 part series called More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I remember when I was in elementary school and going to the library to check these books out and trip out on the illustrations which are really odd and creepy. I was trying to go for the creepy aspect while narrating but it turned out kind of cheesy haha. I really liked working with audacity because it was similar to a recording program I used before called Sony Acid Pro. Another reason why I like working with audacity is because it’s one of the main reasons I’m going to Lane to become and Audio Engineer. This project was super awesome and I can’t wait to mess around with more audacity!!!

When I was in high school I came up with the idea of a detective who solves murders that were caused by myths. I kept this idea but it never got out, until now. I was my audio was a like a part 1 or something like that. I didn’t intent on making an audio of this just cause I don’t like my own voice. My original idea was to make it into a comic/ graphic novel. The first crime I wanted to give Grimm was about a vampire however the vampire was good instead of evil. I never really had time to develop the crimes that much just Grimm himself, mostly what he looked like. But I thought why not use him for this project, that’s my only reason.

At first my reaction was to avoid this assignment and focus on other work.  In the past, anytime I was faced with learning a new software program I would always give up at the first sign of difficulty or confusion.  I’m not going to succeed in this line of work with that kind of attitude, so I stepped it up and enmeshed myself in the assignment.  It turns out that not only is Audacity an awesome program, its confusing interface and multitude of options is covered thoroughly in a way I could understand in the online manual.  The first hour of work was full of speed bumps as I developed a concept I liked and tried to get organized.  Once I finally had a solid idea and laid some foundation tracks (music, narration, etc.) I was off and running.  It was almost like being possessed.  I had such a fun time creating this project that I plan on spending more time familiarizing myself with Audacity and all of its functions.  I decided to go the “funny” direction as I often do.  I spent some time tossing around ideas and the word “Zombie” kept popping in there.

ZOMBIES! – Radio Advertisement:  

I almost went soft and did a fable but I couldn’t stand the thought of producing a half measure when I could really have some fun with it.  I decided to do a radio advertisement for a new Zombie movie being released on Halloween.  Radio ads tend to be very short so I decided to break advertising tradition and stretch it out to roughly 1 ½ minutes.  There was a multitude of zombie groans, growls, and shuffles on freesound.org at my disposal so I spent some time sampling and comparing.  I didn’t plan out the entire project before I began.  Instead I simply developed a beginning idea, then came up with more sections as I went.  I’m sure in a larger project it would be beneficial to plan all of it ahead of time, but I found shooting from the hip was stimulating to the creative process.  All in all, I downloaded 25 sound files (implementing them all), and inserted 8 tracks that I personally recorded, cutting and rearranging them into 2 different tracks.  I used several of Audacity’s effects, such as:  amplify, auto-duck, bass and treble, pitch, echo, fade out, reverb, and vocoder.  This is just a smidgeon of the effects available so I still have some exploring to do.  Though I do love the gratification from someone else enjoying my work, I can honestly say that I am very proud of myself for having done such a good job, especially for my first time working with audio.  I am very excited for what comes next.

https://soundcloud.com/shayne-sadler/audacity-bounce

Audacity break-down

My goal for the audacity project was to create something fun, with a solid audio piece. Being a student of radio early on I thought it would be fun to do my own voice, alongside a well-known broadcaster.

I went with an NBA game setting where Cleveland takes on the Houston Rockets. Dick Vitale, a well known NCAA announcer will be my “partner” in crime. Although he is well know outside of the NBA, I thought it would be fun to pretend like I was a casual announcer inviting a friend. So that’s exactly what we did, spoke back and forth with live and fun energy.

I have to say, sometimes audio can feel so real and I had a very fun time emulating someone else’s voice. A unique one such as Mr. Vitale really made for a challenging recording as well. Capturing the hoarseness of his voice was tough without distorting completely.

Mixing with pro tools I feel I made a strong clean piece. Some Phhss, and Hsss could have been cleaned up but I did what I could in the time given.

Uploading to sound cloud was a breeze, as well as the blog. Hopefully it will present well in class and everyone will get a laugh or two.