AudioAssignments70 — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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The Sound Story of One of My Favorite Summer Activities

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is sit on my porch, in a rocking chair and watch a thunderstorm. This is a pretty accurate depiction of what that sounds like:

Summer Storm on the Porch by Chanda Sorrell Cowger

Audio Assignments 70—Sound Effects Story (3 stars) presented the challenge to tell a story using only sound effects, no verbal communication. The instructions dictated that I use at least 5 sounds and be no longer than 90 seconds long.

Using Freesound.org, I located sounds I could use including a door opening and closing, windchimes, a rocking chair, thunder and rain tracks, and of course, a bottle opening! Importing them into Audicity, I layered and looped some of the track, assembling them to create an audio image of a peaceful evening spent rocking on the porch with a drink watching and listening to the thunderstorm.

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A Ride Through the City: An Audio Story

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

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/

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Here comes the bride….

Monday, June 25th, 2012

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.

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Horseback Riding in the Rain

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Making this sound effect story was a little more complicated than I initially expected, I am not at all familiar with editing audio on the computer. However, through the challenges of this task I feel as if my story turned out pretty well. Please take a listen to Horseback Riding in The Rain!

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Sound Effects Story: Fly Fishin’

Sunday, June 24th, 2012

“House fly” by YIM Hafiz, on Flickr

The ds106 Digital Storytelling course Sound Effects Story Audio Assignment 70 gave me an opportunity to devote some time developing greater familiarity with Audacity and the sound source website, FreeSound.org. While I normally would turn directly to Apple’s GarageBand for something like this, I wanted to see how layering and track editing worked in the open source sound editor.

I was pleased to be able to sort out the various tools without turning to documentation — although I didn’t sort out how to effect a pan from one channel to the other (left to right, in this instance). This will have to be a challenge for the next task. I also missed a simple way of naming the tracks to allow for their easy identification (although the waveforms do develop an identity after you’ve listened to them a few times). However, I did enjoy being able to toggle the interface for each track down to a very slim profile, as that made it easier to align two tracks that didn’t lie adjacent to one another in the stack. Cutting sections from one track was intuitive, and pasting sections into a newly created track worked just as expected.

The audio clips I used for this story are:
• Fly 1.wav
• Simulation of NASA (rocket) launch.wav
• 20061105Furnace.wav
• rocket report and scream.wav
• small_rocket_flybys_and_explosion.aif

While most were edited into the story pretty much in sequence, I did a fair amount of adjustments to the levels of each at various points using the envelope tool, and spent some time blending the Simulation of NASA (rocket) launch clip and the 20061105Furnace clip to get the rocket whine and engine launch. Each of the other three files was clipped, separated into sections, and in some instances (the fly) used multiple times to support the story.

The Andy Griffith Theme Song was sourced at: TelevisionTunes, with the intent of bracketing the story with an audio intro and outtro.

Image: House fly by YIM Hafiz on Flickr

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Fishing Trip with Sounds

Sunday, June 24th, 2012

Here is my Story with only sounds I did mine about a fishing trip I used http://www.findsounds.com/ to get the sounds and then used Audacity to put them together. This is the first time using any sort of sounds editing software and I am excited about learning more about it and figuring out more advanced ways to edit music and sounds.

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Typical High School Story

Saturday, June 23rd, 2012

“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects.”

I used sound effects from Freesound.org to make this story. In Audacity, I complied them together into a recognizable pattern that would tell a story. I trimmed up sound effects where I thought it was needed and overlapped sounds to make a more effective story.

I listened to other sound effect stories to find inspiration and found a lot of suspenseful stories. I was then reminded of what Ira Glass said about story telling, “the power of the anecdote is so great that no matter how boring the material is…there’s suspense in it.” That idea struck a chord with me, the sound effect story does not have to be blatantly suspenseful to be a successful story. Why not use boring material to create story? This question made me brainstorm of boring situations. Where is the feeling of being bored the strongest? The last minutes of a class, obviously. The sequence of actions is completely boring, a person watches a clock, feels bored, sighs, and then finally the bell rings. Simple story but there is a underlying suspense that is just a strong as running from an unknown attacker.

There is a sense of anxiousness in the story, we all now that everyone is waiting for the bell to ring. You remember the feeling of being antsy waiting for that bell. That leads us to the question, why? Why are they impatient? What is happening that they just cannot wait for? The possibilities are endless, a date, a vacation, or simply freedom from school. Where is this person headed next? I left the end of the story to you.

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Deadly Text

Saturday, June 23rd, 2012

Texting has taken over the social world. About 5 years ago mainly teens were texting, but now everyone is texting. Let’s be honest, when we are driving down the highway we see people texting and driving, some of us do it ourselves. In high school, I signed a pledge to not text and drive. More than 100 students at my school signed it and I definitely followed the pledge.

Doing this assignment was very hard at first. I didn’t know exactly where to get my sounds or how to edit it together. Finally it all came together. I went onto FindSound.com and found some sounds that dealt with closing doors, driving, receiving a text, texting back, a crash, screaming, and sirens. I opened up Windows Video Maker and edited all the sounds together and made my story.

This assignment was fun to do, but I also wanted it to be a lesson. Texting can wait when you are driving, especially because thousands of people have died because of it. Just because you think that you are a “pro” at texting, doesn’t mean this can’t happen to you. Think about it, it a text really worth losing your life.?

For more information and facts about texting and driving, click here — Texting and Driving

To sign the pledge, click here — “It Can Wait”

I hope you enjoy this story, learn the dangers, and understand TEXTING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS.

For More, Click Here. –>>[Sound Effect Stories]<<--

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DS106 Week 5 – The Sound Effect Story

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by John Carleton

In this assignment, we were supposed to tell a story using sound effects only. I decided to create a ghost story. Here it is:

I used FindSounds to look for the effects, then I pasted them together in Audacity.

I like the way this can be used in an EFL classroom. It is great for practicing past tenses, or simply as a creative writing assignment. In pairs or groups, students could first discuss what they think is happening in the story, then write their story. The accent should be not on “getting it right” (i.e. what the teacher wanted to say), but on the students’ creativity.

What do you think has happened in my story?

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