Tag Archives: Sp20-P3 Roadtrip Nation

P4: Pretend Podcast

Name: Pretend Podcast by Lady Diaz
About: You are listening to the last minute of a random mystery episode from a pretend podcast.
Production progress:
1. Come up with story ideas.
2. Search for audios that match what I had in mind.
3. Record my voice, multiple takes.
4. Edit the audio to match in loudness, get rid of noise, crop unwanted areas.
5. Rearrange and adjust so that the story is clear.

Struggles: I lost some voice files and had to retake everything halfway through.

What I learned: This is the first time I have created a story through sound. For any obstacles encountered such as altering voice, removing unwanted noise, I used youtube tutorials to help me and learned new editing techniques.


Sources:
Non Dialogue audio- https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=guitar
Music by The Pop Winds- https://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Pop_Winds/
Dialogue: Lady Diaz

Images: Lady Diaz

the mother and the wolf- Jade

It took me a couple hours to make. i added a voice changer to the mom. They didn’t have any free whistle sound effect and i can’t whistle. So i made my mom do the whistle for the audio. I record all of it on my phone so that’s why the audio is not the best.

by: Jade Wilkerson

P3 RTN

By: Fedya Lockwood

Benjamin Zander: Conductor for the Boston Philharmonic

In this essay, I will explore Benjamin Zander’s career and compare it to my career path. Benjamin Zander has a strenuous early path, but it later pays off, becoming one of the most renowned conductors and composers in recent history. I will  then compare his career to what I have planned for myself, and the changes I will make to push myself towards success. 

Benjamin Zander, born March 9th 1939, began composing at a very young age. He began writing his first compositions at nine years old. Those compositions were entered by his mother into the local annual art festival, where his compositions were talked down upon by one of the judges. When speaking of this instance, Benjamin says “it’s important to know what you’re after,” which really got to me because he then ended up becoming a famous composer and conductor, and founded the Boston Philharmonic. 

In spite of his beginning works, Zander  became an outstanding composer. And his early life reflects that, because he grew up playing the cello and practiced his skill to become part of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He was the youngest player at the time, joining at 12 years old. He studied under Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. He was a music scholar at only 13 years old. Benjamin moved from country to country to improve his craft at a young age. He studied in Florence and Siena in Italy, where he became a student of Gaspar Cassado, who was a famous Spanish cellist and composer. He also practiced in Germany where he was an assistant to the same teacher. 

The Philharmonic conductor moved to the United States to work for Brandeis and Harvard Universities. Benjamin Zander founded the philharmonic in 1978, and was a conductor for many other ensembles around the world. He also founded the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in 2012, for other musicians who grew up similarly to him. Where they were classically trained musicians from a young age. He was nominated for a grammy for best orchestral performance in 2010 as well. 

I chose this particular story because the two main things I want to do in my career is to become an animator and composer, and I am hoping to use these skills to become a director for animated features. I relate to him in the sense that I am a classically trained violinist, and even though I have not been practicing as much as I used to, I am still hoping to become a composer someday. My plan is to graduate from this program and then get another degree in composition. 

To be honest, I do not relate to most of the people I researched, there are not many people that have multiple things that grab their focus. But it’s been like that for me my whole life, where I  wanted to do everything, and I was skilled enough to become anything I wanted. Now that I am an adult, I am really trying to narrow it down. Now I’ve narrowed it down to two things which are art and music. But together, it’s going to be a lot of work. There was not much about his daily life and what he did to achieve his goals, but coming from being a violinist I have a good guess that it was just a lot of practicing and having knowledgeable teachers who support you through your journey. 

Through looking on RoadTripNation website, I did not see many people talk about mental health or disability, which has been one of the greatest barriers for me in my career. I will not make any changes to what I am doing with my career so far because I am just starting, and I don’t think a lot of the information can apply to me because of my barriers. 

In conclusion, Benjamin Zander is an incredible musician, and reading his profile, he has inspired me. I don’t want to follow in his exact footsteps, but it was good to see the possibilities of what I could do with my life, wanting to become a composer. 

Roadtrip Nation. “Ben Zander”. Roadtrip Nation. Copyright 2023. 10 October 2023. 

https://roadtripnation.com/leader/ben-zander

“Benjamin Zander”. Wikipedia, last modified 5 October 2023. 10 October 2023. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Zander

“About Benjamin Zander”. Boston Philharmonic. Copyright 2023. Mass Cultural Council. 10 

October 2023. https://www.bostonphil.org/about/benjamin-zander/bio

P4 Audio

Count Dooku the Oscar Winner

I knew from the beginning I wanted an audio project related to Star Wars. Some of my ideas were Alan Rickman acting as a Star Wars character and a trio of heroes trekking across a desert. But given my love for movies, and Star Wars is more than movies to me, I wanted to make an audio project that had the two coexisting. The most common high point for movies is the Oscars, and what if a Star Wars character was a Best Actor Oscar winner? Someone particular came into my head: he’s a bad guy who only appeared in the prequel movies, but the actor had a fantastic acting style, so I thought the character would be a good fit.

I knew I could finish this with good writing and my voice impression. Crafting the perfect lines that would resonate with fans of both Star Wars and the Oscars was a challenging but rewarding experience. The writing needed to balance between Dooku’s fictional persona and the real-world nature of the Oscars. Recording the speech was a thrilling experience. I worked meticulously on my voice modulation to emulate Dooku’s distinctive, refined tone, ensuring it sounded authentic and immersive. The recording process was a mix of retakes and adjustments until I achieved the desired result. This phase allowed me to hone my voice-acting skills and familiarize myself with audio editing software.

After the lines I wanted to be recorded by myself and a colleague, post-production was another crucial phase. I integrated the ambient sounds of an Oscars ceremony to create a believable atmosphere. Properly mixing and editing the audio was essential to ensure a seamless, professional-quality final product. This stage introduced me to the technical aspects of audio production, including sound editing and effects, which I found incredible.

Overall, my audio project, featuring Count Dooku’s Oscars acceptance speech, was a creative journey that allowed me to explore the fusion of fictional and real-world elements. It was a project that tested my scripting, voice acting, and audio editing skills, and the result was a captivating and unique piece of audio that I’m proud to have gotten done.

The link embedded here will disclose that I don’t own anything copyrighted.

by: Simon Edwards

P4 Audio

By: Fedya Lockwood

I was trying to make a creepy song that reminds me of sirens. I named the song “the wail of sirens” because of this. I struggled recording the instruments correctly, though, so the audio isn’t so good. I also added wave sounds to match the theme. Since we had to do some storytelling, I added the song name, something about sirens, and something about myself and how I feel about the ocean. 

I’ve always liked the ocean, and living near it. I’ve always felt a deep connection to water, and it reflects through sports I played growing up. I did water polo, competitive swimming, and boat rowing. But the ocean has always resonated with me, especially when I was living in Humboldt. It was one of the reasons I stayed there so long, but life brought me to the city. One of my favorite beaches is also Cape Kiwanda, which is on the northern coast of Oregon. I used to go there with my family a lot, but now I just go by myself. 

It’s been a while since I swam consistently, and I miss it a lot. I hope when I’m older I can live somewhere cold, near a big body of water. That’s the dream.

The Owl and the Grasshopper

In this assignment, my goal is to set up an environment that lets the listener fully immerse themselves in a story. Using special effects such as owl noises, ambient sounds, and dreamy, fairy-tale-like music, I wanted to craft a narrative that sounded like a lullaby. The creative use of a free soundtrack and enchanting special effects transport our audience to a place where the story is happening: a forest. By changing the tone of voice I try to impersonate the characters. This audio offers the comfort of a bedtime story. It’s like an escape, a way to the most peaceful of dreams. The Audio tells at the same time a story and teaches us a great life lesson. It shows how flattery can sometimes be used against us.

By Lisa

About me

Hello, my name is Fedya. I use he/him pronouns. My favorite color is green, my favorite food is tom kha, and my favorite movie is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 

I have been drawing my whole life, but I only took it seriously recently.  Recently as in the last 3 years. I want to become an animator for TV shows and movies. My overall goal is to be a director, so I can have a say in the music as well. 

I have also been playing the violin my whole life so it’s been instrumental to me. My mom made me start playing when I was three. I like writing music, I am just bad at finishing them because I need more musical knowledge away from violin. I am planning on being self taught or going to study composition after this. 

My other hobbies include backpacking, writing, reading and running (even though I’m not so good at it.

I also work in nursing, and I started just out of highschool. It’s taught me a lot about the world and about myself. Nursing means a lot to me because I was struggling with my mental health when I applied. It taught me how to be empathetic and show how to care for others through my actions. Which is something I’ve always struggled with because of my mental health issues. 

I am a dreamer. I like to grow. I am a firm believer that if you are given the chance to learn and improve, you should take it. When I see other people who have an incredible skill, I simultaneously congratulate them in my head and then push myself to be better. Such as drawing, or music, or knowledge about things I don’t know about. The skills that I focus on the most in my own life are specifically animation and music, because if I let myself do more than a few things I would become overwhelmed by the amount of things I set myself to accomplish.

By: Fedya Lockwood

The North Wind & the Sun

By: Jeremy M. Roman

My intention with reading this Aesop’s fable was to create a recording of the story that my children, or other children in my life, would enjoy listening to. I enjoyed recording The North Wind & the Sun, as well as providing the sound effects of the North Wind blowing. That was achieved by recording myself making the noise of wind blowing and replacing the parts where I had to take a breath with the last few seconds of audio, but in reverse. The music I used for the recording was “Magic” by drób, which I found on freemusicarchive.org. I had originally recorded an alternate story, but the one I initially recorded I ended up finding difficult to record or think of sound effects for, so I chose one that I felt would work better for this project. I enjoyed working on this project, in part, because it lines up well with what I would love to do once I get my degree, which is to be able to do voice acting. I also enjoyed the process of editing the audio itself, and would love to learn more about how to be an audio engineer.

The Ass And His Driver

For my audio assignment, I chose to read an Aesop fable. I decided to read The Ass And His Driver. It is a short story about a stubborn donkey who doesn’t listen to reason and has to suffer the consequences in the end. I wanted to tell the story with lots of sound effects to go along with the account to make you feel like you are there in person. I also tried to make it more dramatic with the sound effects and Music. This project was really fun to do I got to learn a lot about how this audition program works and all the things it can do. I also learned how I can download sounds from sound archives online, that’s where I found the donkey noises and the rocks falling off the cliff sounds. I really enjoyed learning how to manipulate audio to make it sound good. My friend Casey played the music on his guitar to go along with my story which added a really good dimension to it. I really like the moral of The Ass and His Driver, it is something I need to practice in my own life. I often make decisions against the advice of others and later have to realize they were right all along and that I was wrong. It is not easy to admit when I have been wrong.  Overall I really enjoyed this assignment it helped me learn a lot about using audition and learn new skills to edit sound.

By, Danielle Hilliard