The audio assignments for ds106 have intimidated me a bit more than the design or visual assignments. As a result, I started with Poetry Reading because it didn’t scare me as much as others. This poem, The Country, by Billy Collins is one of my all time favorites.
If you enjoy the poem, you can also hear Billy Collins read it.
I was really excited about doing this assignment, one can never go wrong chipmunking a song. I wanted to do something different though, not the typical rock or rap song. I’ve been decided to try something more soulful. I chose a song by the up and coming artist Frank Ocean. This song “Thinking about you” has been one of my favorites for months now, just doesn’t want to get old in my head. The chipmunks just got some soul! I used audacity to edit the song, I played around with speed and pitch. Took the pitch higher, and shortened the song from 3 min 12 sec to 2 min 45 sec… not a huge difference, but enough that it sounded right. It was really tough getting it to sound good to me, because in the original song Mr. Ocean hits some pretty high notes as is… but after about 30 minutes playing with it I got it!
Check it out:
Why did I choose such a serious track? Well initially I thought I would take the song and add some humor to it, or at least lighten it up in my eyes. I did the opposite though, listening to the finished product over and over… it still comes off the same. The emotion of the song has rubbed off on the chipmunk(s), rather than the chipmunk(s) rubbing off on the song. I guess the emotion behind it was too strong a presence to be overshadowed by the chipmunks’ high-pitched cuteness. Or maybe it’s just me?
Kid these days…
They can text rings around us adults, figure out the most complex of technical devices, and multitask so fast that keyboards are in danger of spontaneous combustion from all the furious clicking of keys, right?
Wrong! I have yet to see any students exhibit on a mass scale the skills and innate abilities that those labeled “digital natives” are supposed to have (note, I never used the term digital native, I thought it was bogus from the start). The truth of the matter is, some students are more apt to be able to figure out complicated software, dart in and out of multiple windows, but no more so than the number of students who excel at football, complex differentials, or playing the guitar. I’m not saying that students can’t adapt, but rather the myths of multi-tasking (aka acquired inattention) need to be laid to rest, and replaced with actual shortcomings of attempting to multi-task.
Which leads me to the following audio snippet I captured earlier this evening at my piano (warning, I’m not that great at piano). To me, the ability to multi-task doesn’t impress unless someone is attempting to accomplish two rather difficult cognitive tasks (completely dependent on the individual’s talents that is). For example, I have a terribly difficult time trying to play the piano and talk at the same time. Thus, I present to you, my attempt to “Multitask This!”
Imagine how much fun it would be to showcase your shortcomings the first day of school by sharing a small piece of audio like this? Let your students know up front that there are some things even teachers have a hard time accomplishing (and maybe get a few laughs out of it). A bit more seriously though, the idea of multi-tasking is that it’s either HARD to accomplish a few tasks well, or it’s EASY to do a pretty crappy job at a lot of tasks. Would you rather have your students struggling to accomplish something monumental, like creating effective and moving persuasive video essays of their written work? Or would you rather keep them busy with an endless litany of mindless “edu-games” that mostly just serve as distractions?
If you’re interested in creating your own “Multitask This!” audio snippet, I’d love to hear the results. Just capture some audio (unedited of course) of you trying to accomplish two tasks that seem rather basic, perhaps even elementary when completed in isolation, yet present quite a challenge for you when combined.
As a required audio assignment for DS106 (AKA: Camp Magic Macguffin) I had to create a story under 90 seconds that contained no verbal communication – just sounds. I started by looking up audio clips and just trying to brainstorm what I wanted to do. If there is one thing I love and can’t wait to do (hopefully soon!) is ride a motorcycle. So I decided to create a little story of someone (idealistically ME) zipping up there leather jacket, walking outside, starting their (MY) bike and going on a ride. As the ride continues city backgrounds are brought into the picture… horns, sirens, a helicopter above, people. I got my sounds from freesound.com an awesome website with a plethora of sounds and edited it all using Audacity. The software was easy to download, and a few questions submitted to Professor Google made using it very easy. I combined different sounds, faded them in and out as I please and finally got a 53 second story. I think for my first try my sounds transitioned and overlapped fairly smoothly (please give me feedback if you listen to it!).
The story fades out… the ride will continue on as the listener chooses. After finishing it, I closed my eyes and heard it. I realized then how personal it was to me. It is a reflection of something I hope to one day do, and my choice of city sounds (as oppose to say a countryside) also is a reflection of me. I was born and raised in the city ( the greatest one in the world by the way: New York), and this story just shows how much comfort and auditorial pleasure I get from the hustle and bustle of city sounds.
Take a listen and join me on my ride…
The following are links to the soundclips I used…
http://www.freesound.org/people/bdhammer/sounds/23083/
http://www.freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/30789/
http://www.freesound.org/people/sagetyrtle/sounds/36734/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Jewels/sounds/39848/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Zoom%20H4/sounds/97167/
http://www.freesound.org/people/jberkuta14/sounds/134900/
Dear Chanda,
I totally ripped you off by co-opting a short clip from a well-known movie and turning it into my DS106 Radio bumper. I’m sorry. I was desperate. Attempts at other audio assignments failed. Miserably.
Sincerely,
Me
You can listen to my bumper here:
You can find Chanda’s bumper here.
I’ve listened to DS106 Radio a few times, and I’m enamored with the set up and what I’ve been hearing. When DS106 Radio was first mentioned, I thought about that 1990 Christian Slater classic, Pump Up the Volume. God I loved that movie.
Over the weekend, I watched Awesome: I Fucking Shot That, a Beastie Boys concert film shot by 50 members of the audience. After this viewing, I got it in my mind to do the “Forced Collabo” audio assignment. Who wouldn’t really? Skip to about 3:30 in this video and tell me that Mixmaster Mike’s job doesn’t look totally easy. Right? Right?
Yeah. Not so much. After many attempts to find the perfect songs to mash-up, I gave up with the realization that (1) I have a crappy music collection and (2) I have been blindly consuming music rather than listening. Sad.
Here’s another clip from Awesome just for fun. It’s “Intergalactic.” Look how happy everyone in the crowd looks.
In this Audio Assignment I had to create a story using only sounds. My first thought was a “do not drink and drive” type story. But I figured this was too cliche. I browsed through Free Sound and some of the first sounds to pop up were beach sounds. Ding Ding Ding, hello beach wedding! So I decided on a beach wedding as my story. My story would open up with the sounds of the ocean so that listeners would know that we were at the beach. Then you would hear footsteps, this is suppose to represent the bride walking towards the beginning of the isle. Chatter is heard which represents the guests of the wedding talking as they wait for the ceremony to start. Footsteps are heard again and then then bridal walk song breaks out.
I used 4 different sounds, 3 of which were found on Free Sound. This was the hardest of all my assignments. I had to upload all three of my sounds onto Audacity. Then I had to try and figure out how to cut certain segments of each soundbite out and paste it into a new sound stream. It took me awhile to get the cutting a pasting down. I was able to cut and paste all three of the sounds that I found on Free Sound into one sound stream. For the last sound, which was the bridal walk song, I just recorded that in from Youtube. I saved my new file and was finished.
For this Audio Assignment I had to make a radio bumper for the DS106 radio station. To be honest I had no idea what a radio bumper was before this assignment, so that in itself was a learning experience! For inspiration I once again used my ipod. I figured it is a bumper for a radio station so it needs to have MUSIC in it. I came upon one of my new favorite songs “Glad You Came”, by The Wanted. When I saw the title I was like “viola!” I could use a slogan like “Glad you came to the Ds106 radio station!”…I hope everyone can sense my excitement.
This took me some time to figure out how to do. What I ended up doing was downloading the song onto Myxer and cropping the segment out that I wanted to use for my bumper. I had to do this because I could not directly import songs from Itunes into Audacity. I imported the cropped version of the song from Myxer into Audacity. I played the song on Audacity and as soon as it ended I recorded in my voice. I saved the file and I was done!
For this Audio Assignment I had to choose a song that triggers a memory for me and describe what the memory is. It took me awhile to figure out which song I wanted to use. So many of my memories are associated with either songs or smells. I went through my ipod playlist and happened upon the song “Drops of Jupiter” by Train. I listened to the song and just let my mind wonder. I ended up visualizing myself back on a military base swimming pool in California, reminiscing about my summer youth.
I chose to do my introduction by playing part of the song, pausing to describe my memory, and then resuming part of the song. I used Audacity and Youtube for this assignment. I had Audacity opened in one window and Youtube in another. I started playing the song on Youtube while recording in Audacity, then I paused the Youtube song to talk about my memory, and then continued playing the Youtube song.
One of the Audio Assignments I found this week was to record myself being a picky person with an accent ordering from Mcdonalds. The best accent that I can do is probably an Asian lady. This is because I am around my boyfriend’s family a lot and they are Korean, so I have grown used to the accent. I pre-wrote what I was planning on ordering from Mcdonalds and made sure to add in some “authentic comments,” such as wanting a tofu burger.
This was an easy assignment to do. All I had to do was record my accented voice (which I did do on soundcloud) ordering my yummy tofu Big Mac, drink, and 2 shakes. It was fun talking in that accent.
For this audio assignment we had to choose a book from our childhood and read it. So I decided to read, in my opinion one of the best books aside from Green Eggs and Ham, in all of history. I chose to read Dr. Seuss because out of all the books I could have possibly read, this book takes me on a journey. While reading Dr. Seuss I am truly able to escape the realities of the world and feel like a little kid again, and that is a wonderful thing. Another reason is that my Grandfather use to read this book to me all the time when I was younger, and now he reads it to my daughter…. So now I will read them to you 
Part one (story time) Part 2 (Story time)
Sorry, but camp is over! Head over to ds106
The Campfires have all been put out.
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
