For our audio project I wanted to narrate a small piece of one of my stories.  I wanted to use something familiar as I was getting used to using Audacity for recording and editing.

It took me some trial and error to find just the right piece for this project.  I had three or four ideas in mind, but settled on my original idea of a piece from my story, Returning Home.  I chose this piece because the scene is heavily influenced by the deep, resonant sound of a bell ringing through a city on a busy market-day.  I wanted to find and edit a bell that would sound just as I envisioned it when I wrote the piece.

I had a blast [imagine an exciting explosion sound effect here] with this project!  Once I got used to some of the nuances of Audacity, it was really easy to navigate and get my tracks edited.

I chose to use freesound.org as my sound library for this project.  While it took some time to find just the right clips for some sounds, I was able to edit them with Audacity to make them as close to what I wanted as possible.  The following clips (noted in order of appearance) were used (all under an Attribution License except as noted):

FootstepsGravel.wav by mikaelfernstrom | viking musicians.wav by Kyster | clock-tower.wav by xserra | Sneeze by Dshogan (License:  Attribution, Noncommercial)

The sound of the coins is my own that I recorded while working on the project.

One of the more difficult aspects of this project was getting the sounds right.  I really like the village ambience sound I’ve used because I like the chatter and the musicians in the background.  I’m also happy with the footsteps on gravel.  I had to play around with the speed on that but am happy with how it turned out.  And I love the little girl’s sneeze.  I took a recording of a man’s sneeze, changed the pitch, and Viola!

Overall, this was a really informative and exciting project for me.  I’m looking forward to working more with audio production in the coming months.