So I had to watch a video from “This American Life” which is an internet podcast station. During the hour-long video I was a little bored, I know one if not both of my camp counselors would be upset to hear this. I thought that the story could have made its point in a lot shorter amount of time then it did. The parts that were most bothersome to me were probably the voices of Starlee Kine and Sarah Vowell, Sarah more-so then Starlee. I thought they were in-animated, and I feel like if I can’t get the visuals then I should be able to hear some excitement in the voices instead of monotone. I will say that I did chuckle at some of Sarah’s dry-humored remarks about people comparing themselves to Rosa Parks. Especially the part about Ted Nugent “…he refers to himself as a Rosa Parks with a loud guitar which is so inaccurate, everyone knows he is a Mary Magdalene with a fancy deer rifle.”
In regards to Ira Glass and his “basics of storytelling,” I felt that this podcast was missing bait. I did not really feel myself finding questions that needed to be answered by the story. Though this story did avoid what he called one of the “pitfalls for beginners” which was that the narrators of the story did not talk about themselves too much. They focused more so on the story they were trying to tell, but they were still present with their input and in Sarah’s case her witty remarks.
When the story was all said and done I did find myself relating to it. I do indeed prefer re-runs over new shows because they remind me of childhood (can I say 90s nick at night?). I know that their are stories that I share with guests that my family or other friends roll their eyes at because they have heard it a thousand times. For example, I was telling some people that I used to work with about the story behind my new car and it was the third time that day that my boyfriend had heard it and he just sighed and suffered through it again. What I found most entertaining was people relating themselves to Rosa Parks. It got me thinking about many of the different nonsense metaphors that people use to try and make a point. Ahh well, what can you do?
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.
The Sound Effect Story was a lot of fun and great way for fellow bloggers of Camp Magic MacGruffin to show of their creative side. I did the sounds of a thunderstorm in a tropical jungle. I adore the outdoors and always prefer to be outside rather then in. With summer time being dead in the middle, only means summer rain and heat. I love thunderstorms and being outside in the midst of a rain storm, there is probably nothing more refreshing. I have never been in any type of Jungle, especially during a Thunder Storm. I could just assume this is what it would sound like though.
I started off with birds chirping and a light rain to slowly build the mood. I slowly built up to a heavier rain with some distant lightening in the back. The howling monkeys and birds flying away signify that something heavy is about to come. All of sudden the mood gets more intense with the crackling of lightening. The mood becomes lighter after this as the rain lightens up into a soft pitter patter.
I found all of the sounds on www.freesounds.org I used a program called Final Cut Pro to put all the sounds together to make a story of what a tropical storm would sound like. I incorporated monkeys howling after every lightening strike to give it a more authentic feeling of actually being there. After uploading all the sounds into Final Cut Pro, I used a method called “Rubber Banding” where you can transition each noise smoothly by lowering the noise at a gentle slope.
I originally saved this file as a AIFF then converted to MP4 so it would be smaller to download and more durable on Sound Cloud.
Doing an audio weekly letter is a bit different. Hearing myself talk is super different, I had no idea that, that is how I sound… because that is definitely not how it sounds in my head! Oh well here is goes…….Week #5 Letter Home
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.
This is the first blog post I have done for Audio week, let me just say this was a challenge in itself. Thats what school is all about though! Trial and Error.
The goal is to describe your life in two minutes or any kind of stubborn, obstacles, challenges you have overcome in your life that defines who you are as a person now.
I never viewed myself as the athletic type in any context. Especially being on a team that involves everyones input or else the whole team fails together. I decided for some reason that I felt in my gut to join the Crew Team at Mary Washington. It was one of the most life changing experiences I have had and will probably ever have at College.
Rowing is physically and mentally demanding. It is extremely time consuming and your life starts to revolve around the sport. I learned that I can work with a team but it takes patience and drive. By the end of the semester after losing every single Regatta (basically a rowing competition) we made it to finals and made it in third place at our last one. This was the most rewarding feeling to know that a whole semester of blood, sweat, and tears (literally all three) paid off. I never felt so accomplished in my life or happier to be apart of a team, knowing that I contributed to the success.
I recorded myself via Sound Cloud. I clicked the “share” button above the recorded audio. I was then given a code and pasted it directly into the “HTML” box on my word press post!
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)
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.....
