Final Soundscape Reflections

[benmiller314]

This is a space where you'll be able to post your final-for-now thoughts on your audio unit projects, your soundscape narratives. We'll talk in class about what these reflections need to include, but at a minimum I'd expect to see:

• at least 500 words describing the work you did
• at least two screenshots showing your work in progress
• at least one photograph of a notecard with feedback that you responded to in revising (and please say how)
• your own assessment of how you met the baseline criteria for the class, as well as aspirational criteria as appropriate

This will be due on Tuesday, September 24th.

[racheljfu]

Every small nuance and detail conveyed in my soundscape stems from one point—the initial confrontation with my ignorance towards the sounds of my everyday life. Personally, I find it so easy to be elsewhere. The steadiness of honking cars, running water, and barking dogs become separated from the feelings and people that compose the essence of us.

But, I thought, they don’t have to be. So it is from here that the ideas bloomed. I started to compile old videos I’d taken at my family’s house in the suburbs and recorded dozens of instances of street and dorm-room noise that previously slipped through unnoticed. Between the combination of the two, my natural instinct was to center the narrative on homesickness—which is, in a way, a state of being stuck between two places—and the solitude that tends to accompany it. Thus, the general soundscape would be less human-centric, instead forming a sense of emotion and narrative through the sounds of home and school bouncing off each other.

I did not start with any voices or phone-call-reminiscent materials (see screenshot, nothing of the sort is there) but I still had some vague idea of a conclusion and narrative movement. My narrator would start alone in her dorm. She would proceed to take a bus ride (or walk) processing all of these feelings and places in her head and around her, and by the end of it, she would have reconciled her feelings of homesickness because of how the sounds of her memories integrated with those in her present surroundings. (For example, the “lull” of the bus blending in with the glide of a skateboard on the sidewalk).

Yet the closer I approached the “journey” aspect of the project, it became more difficult to execute my ideas because of their hugely abstract nature. Without substantial dialogue or voices, there was no anchor for my narrator and her story almost invisible amidst the barely-more-than-random sequences of street noises. I wanted her to engage with multiple environments, not be disassociated from one. But that was the impression I was getting when listening to my soundscape, and something needed to change.

This is where I started to introduce telephone sounds and voicemail messages, which solved my previous issue as well as drawing on the already nostalgia of the piece and the idea that people are almost always inseparable with the concept of home, no matter how far away home may be. The baseline plot needed to shift, then. My narrator would start to place a call in her dorm, only for her to be frustrated as it goes unanswered by the time she’s leaving (see the uninterrupted beeps in the below image). “What am I waiting for?” she asks.

I still retained the “journey” concept from earlier, as well as the idea of intermingling urban and suburban sounds (see the two images below) starting with the bus / skateboard dynamic. However, in between the dog barking / dish washing / “stop requested” announcements, I wove in voicemails from my friends and family. All of these elements overlap with each other throughout the piece (I definitely had more than 3 layered at a time).

The voices turned out to be the dominant sound of the “journey” section onwards but vastly seemed to change the “homesickness” and depersonalized aspect I originally had in mind, as the non-human sounds of the suburbs felt more like background noise. Because of this change and the narrator realizing that all of these people have left her heartfelt messages, I figured that the end result would focus more on feeling a sense of belonging rather than just a vague sense of greater contentment. More specifically, I decided to convey the desired feeling through the narrator returning back home, yet instead of being alone this time she retains the memory of someone who “loves [her] very much” (see below).

In terms of the technical features of Audacity and Github, I had previously never used the software for much besides trimming audio clips and using the amplify / fade-out effects. However, I wanted the voices, and music (which I found on ccmixer) to coincide with the narrator’s memories and loneliness, and also wanted to consider the “distorted” sound of the telephone. To do this, I experimented with Audacity effects such as equalization, high and low pass filters, reverb, and the phaser. The result were these faraway, old-radio sounds, which luckily coincide with the exact brand of nostalgia I wanted to evoke—phone calls from the landline, summer days off from school, a CD player set to the tune of melancholic, airy music while friends skate around the neighborhood. Once the effects were in conversation with the rest of the soundscape and successfully uploaded online, I was ecstatic, knowing that even after seeing all my changes of plans and maneuvering, I had captured the essential feeling I set out to.

I was not enthusiastic to receive feedback on this piece, not out of particular dislike for criticism but because it already sounded precisely how I wanted it to. My one concern was that no one would understand it except myself and maybe a few others who “really listened” to it. It wasn’t a big surprise then that people said the narrative was “difficult to interpret” or couldn’t be identified but rather that the sounds were “random” and that there was no notice of “a clear change in emotion” (see below)

I argue that my soundscape is very intentional with the sounds it employs. For example, I used the steady dripping water, elevator sounds, and lone clink of silverware to signify monotony, solitude, routine, and yet a sense of movement. The background chatter (and her lack of engagement with it) to show that she's still technically alone despite the people around her. "Wait to cross" and the walk-sign ticking to signify the tiredly expectant feelings of the narrator, who keeps waiting even though her call is unanswered. I tried to make that more clear in the second stage of my revision when I have both of these sounds "echo" when she's on the bus, along with other sounds such as the dog barking are to enhance the memory of home. The onset of the voicemails and the movement of the bus also serve to break up some of the monotony and solitude that she felt in the dorm, and I would argue that this is an emotional change (even if a subtle one) (I did try to make it more obvious, though, by aligning the music with this point as well).

The lack of the traditional plot with a climactic moment was definitely something I wanted to address, not to make it more "traditional" but because I also received some feedback that the story felt circular. With the narrator coming back to the dorm at the end with the water still running, that observation made a lot of sense even though I didn't notice it before. I decided to have the narrator "call back" and say "Hello? It's me" at the end so it seems like she's more actively interacting with her surroundings (which was my original intention). The "walk sign on" at the end instead of the "wait to cross" (which I made echo more on the bus) as a means of showing that she's not going to wait around any more also makes more sense that way.

Those are essentially the main changes I made after receiving my feedback. I think that they do the work I want them to without changing too much of the "first draft" that I didn't want to change too much in the first place.

There is an MP3 file in my repository as well as an AUP file, lots of descriptive MD files, more screenshots of my progress, and a transcript (I sincerely tried my best with this, it still may be hard to read). I put a lot into this project and I learned a lot about how to listen more, how to use (and be patient with) technology, and about how to tell a story and evoke a feeling without text or pictures. I hope that anyone looks at it enjoys, and is able to notice the emotional nuances and layers that are essential to the piece.

[ajs1102]

When deciding on the location for my soundscape, I tried thinking about settings where I would have lots of different options for situations and sounds to include. I decided to choose a bus as my base setting, where I am bussing to campus for my last exam. This provided a good starting narrative, but from there I had to have some situation to react to. For this reaction I decided that an annoying passenger on the phone would be a good opportunity to show an emotional change in my voice, from focused studying to distracted annoyance. A challenge I had to deal with because of my choice of setting was getting a good sound clip for background noise. I wanted clips for both background chatter, and also the sound of the bus engine. I found a high quality clip that included both background voices and engine noises, however there was one problem: the stop announcement in the background was very clearly in another language. I made several attempts at covering up or getting rid of the announcement without cutting out the section completely, but to no avail. This meant that I had to cut out the second which included the intercom, and then smooth over the cut such that it sounded natural.

This is where I cut these announcements out, splitting the tracks and fading the cuts in and out to hide the jumps. I found that the fade in and fade out effects were incredibly effective at blending clips together when the background noises in both were different.

These notecards are the comments I received from my classmates, I found that the comments showing confusion about the setting and a lack of change as the most helpful critical feedback.

In order to address the confusion about the setting of my soundscape, I recorded the bus I take to campus so that “75 Ellsworth, Southside” could audibly be heard. My thought was that this, and adding an intro about hoping the bus got there soon would help clarify the location for the listener.

To address the comment about a lack of change, I added a second distraction in the form of a person walking on with a puppy, so that I can show a change from being distracted in frustration to being distracted by a more pleasant source.

To fulfill all of the baseline requirements, I recorded several sounds myself. All foreground voices were recorded by me, and I recorded the arrival of the 75 bus. I also used several CC 0 fair use recordings found on the internet, to fulfill the requirement of a sound not recorded myself. I have at least one section where three sounds overlap, when the annoying passenger is on the phone while I am studying. The three tracks are the phone conversation, me studying, and the background noise of the bus. I also meet the time requirement, with a play time of approximately 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Finally, I met the requirement for change by adding the distraction of the puppy, so that I can demonstrate a change of emotion through my voice.

For the aspirational requirements, I used special effects such as reverb to indicate inner thoughts, and fade in and fade out to blend tracks together. I also included a change of emotion demonstrated through my voice, changing from annoyance to distraction through adorableness. I would argue that I also include a cohesive plot, as I have a clear goal, there is tension, and linear events. The last aspirational goal I meet is using github to turn in my assignment.

[fatemaquaid987]

This soundscape project was my first ever experience with the recording and layering of sounds. This project has exposed me to a myriad of possibilities in terms of creating and amending sounds. In the beginning, I was a little confused about the topic of my soundscape. I was unsure about the sounds that could be recorded in the amount of time given. It was a challenge for me to decide between the two ideas I had in mind; one being a mid-ocean scape and the other one being a haunted house scape. I selected the latter because it gave me more freedom in terms of recording and manipulating sounds. The best part about this theme was that I could record all the sounds at home. Even if something would go wrong with my recorded sounds, I could go back and record it again! I was having some difficulty making the assets list in the beginning. I knew what sounds I wanted but was having a hard time referencing those sounds. I mainly used fressound.org as my internet source to get sound samples but a few sounds like the sound of starting a car or the car GPS voice were quite difficult to find. I either had to use the closest available sound online or record it myself (Thanks to @Natasha for being my GPS!). If I talk about the audacity software, I was having a great time editing sounds until I had the worst of my nightmares when audacity crashed and I lost a valuable portion of my project. I was nearly done with my project when this happened and the worst part was that the autosave feature did not work either. The only takeaway that I have from this incident is to keep saving the project every time a new change has been made. As far as the baseline criteria are concerned, I believe I have met all of them. In my project, not only have I recorded sounds myself but have used external sounds from the internet as well and have credited them appropriately. In my soundscape, there are various points where I have more than 3 layers of sound overlapping. One such example is shown below:

The total duration of my soundscape is around 4 minutes and something definitely changes from the beginning to the end of the soundscape. As per the aspirational inspirations, I have included a .mp3 version of my project in my project repository. I have also used special effects and tools in audacity which are new to me (The entire software is new to me). In the beginning, I had very little knowledge about these tools. I still need to understand and experience a lot of effects and tools but I would like to mention one tool which I found very useful: The envelope tool. I did not know how to use it so I looked up online and got to know that it is used to adjust the amplitude at different positions in the waveform. I used it for the sounds in which I wanted the intensity to vary at different points. For example, in horror-intense music as shown below:

I used the envelope tool here to increase the amplitude hence, its volume from very low to high in the middle and decreased it again at the end. Working on a transcript was a new experience as well. The example shared by the instructor was quite helpful in understanding what to include in the transcript. I did my best to create a legible transcript. I have included it with my project which can be found under ‘Transcript.txt’ in my repository. The story of my soundscape is based on a character and has a plot where a girl faces an unexpected halt in the middle of her road trip and ends up in a haunted house where she goes through a series of terrifying experiences. The background music, sudden sound effects, and the dialogue convey a change of emotion at various points in the plot. As can be noticed, the tone of the girl’s voice changes from calm to frustrated to terrified throughout. The background music plays an important part in conveying the overall emotion of the soundscape. As per the aspiration criteria, I have also included the mystery sound in my project and have pushed consequent versions of my project on GitHub. I had never forked a repository before on GitHub, so this is something I did for this project. In one of the feedback I got for my soundscape, Corey mentioned that it is hard to tell what is happening in the beginning. He suggested me to add the sound of trying to start the car but failing at it.

I had initially put the sound of turning car keys to give an impression of starting the car but I guess it did not work well:

Therefore, I replaced that with the sound of a failed attempt at starting the car as shown in the image below:

I don’t know how successful I am in giving that impression again because as mentioned in the beginning, the sound I found online did not appeal to me much. Overall, I believe I have satisfied all the baseline criteria and most if not all of the aspirational inspirations and I am very happy with the work I have done.

[emmaknaub]

For my project, I decided to follow the thoughts and actions of a bored student in class. I originally wanted to have it highlight the weird/random thoughts that pop into a student’s head while they’re not paying attention to lecture, and I did that to an extent, but I decided to give it a little bit more of a plot. The student in my soundscape makes some decisions that are detrimental to her learning, and it ends up that her choices have consequences. I enjoyed this project to some extent. I liked that I was able to be creative and I enjoyed using a new software to edit sound (because I’ve always wanted to know how to do that). I found, though, that it was hard for me to sit down and work on it, I think because I was uncomfortable with recording my own voice (that was on me, though-- I didn’t have to create a story of almost all talking). Still, it took me much longer than it should have to finish the project, and I know that, even though I think my project is good, it could be better.

I think I met the soundscape baseline requirements very well. Most of my sounds were original, including both the voices of the student and professor, the writing/clicking sounds of the pen, and the zipping and unzipping of backpacks. The other sounds were borrowed from freesound.org, and I cited them in the way that Creative Commons said was preferred. I also think I layered the sounds well, and I met the time requirement. I think I met the goals for the unit well, too. I was able to record and edit sounds using digital tools to make a cohesive audio piece. With my soundscape, I was able to use sound to create a sense of place and movement. I believe that the scene I created was easily recognizable to the listener partly because it is relatable to most students, and partly because the sounds do a good job of indicating what is taking place. The listener, I think, would easily be able to place themselves in the class and inside the head of the student. As for aspirational criteria, I think I’ve met a good amount of those as well. I included an mp3 file of my soundscape, used special effects in Audacity (reverb, amplify, fade in/out, low-pass filter), gave my soundscape a plot, included a shift in emotion (at the very end), used GitHub to publish my project, and used careful alignment (with the daydreaming of the outdoors).

In my earliest screenshot, I had just imported a bunch of random sound clips and arranged them in a way that sounded okay. I didn't really have much direction for my project, and it looked (and sounded) like a mess.

By my second progress screenshot, I realized that my original approach was not a good one. I decided it would be easier to just start over and add the sound clips I needed as I went along, so I made a new Audacity file. This method was much easier to work with, so I was able to be more productive in the second soundscape file.

Two of the notecards that were written for me had suggestions to name my tracks to make it easier for myself. Before I read these suggestions, I honestly didn’t know that it was possible to name the tracks, so when I did that (shown in the screenshot below) everything became a lot easier. Since I had the tracks named, I was able to locate a track easily to adjust it, and it made it easier to find specific places to play the project from when I had to listen to a certain part.

Another one of the suggestions was to add a change in emotion to reach the aspirational level, so I added the bit at the end where the teacher addresses the student’s behaviors to go from a feeling of monotony to a feeling of shock/surprise.

Overall, I'm happy with my final product and the progress I made throughout.

[cjc162]

For my soundscape, I decided that I wanted it to take place or have something to do with a prison. I took inspiration from the show "Prison Break", as that it is one of my favorite TV shows. Naturally, I wanted to have an inmate escaping from prison. I also thought this would be easy to convey with audio utilizing various alarms and sirens. However, after working on the preview of my soundscape I decided to add a narration that a prisoner was escaping. I also think that the narrator may have added some excitement to the piece. After settling on the setting for my piece, I started work on my ~1 minute preview and came up with the following: The preview I came up with achieved the prison escape theme I was looking for, but it didn't have much depth to it. It just kind of started with a prisoner escaping. To remedy this, I added in audio taking place in the prison before the escape: This gave more of narrative to the piece as it illustrated a guard doing the final checks in a prison for the night. Now I had two different segments in my soundscape and had to blend them together in a way that made sense. After messing with different audio levels and when different pieces should be played, I came up with the following transition: Finally for my rough draft, I had to give the clip an ending. I decided to have the escaped prisoner be caught, as I thought that'd be the easiest so I added in a handcuffing noise followed by Miranda Rights being read: This is the feedback I received from my peers: After reading over the feedback, I agreed that the chase itself seemed a bit long, so I shortened it by about ~10 seconds. I also took Kevin's advice and decided to have the prisoner escape instead of being caught. I did this by having him speed off in a car followed by him saying they lost them (the cops): Based off the feedback from Ben, I also used the clip fix and envelope tool to fix some bits of audio that were too loud: After incorporating changes from feedback, I arrived at my final product. I believe my final product meets the baseline criteria as I have multiple sounds recorded by me (footsteps, prison guard, panting, more footsteps, escape prisoner). I also have numerous sounds not originally recorded by me (prison chatter, background music, prison alarms, police sirens, etc.) I have a couple different places where 3+ layers of track overlap and the length is just under 3 minutes. Finally, I believe the change from a normal prison night to a police chase would categorize as a "change."

I also believe I met some of the aspirations. I used new effects to me (never used audacity so they were all new) in audacity such as fade in and out, amplify, and clip fix. I think that the change from inside prison to the chase/escape could have a change in emotion as inside the prison was more calm and the escape/chase was more tense/actiony. The soundscape had somewhat of a plot. It had characters (prison guard, police, escaped prisoner), rising action (inside the prison), climax (the escape) and falling action (chase/arrest). Finally, I used Git and made multiple pushes throughout my project. However, I am pretty experience with Git and did not really try new features so that part might not count.

Generally, I enjoyed the process and was satisfied with my final product.

[kevinikea]

Overall, this project was really fun to make, and it might be the most fun I’ve had doing an audio assignment in a class (I took intro to radio production last semester). At first, I had a general idea of what I wanted to do with this project as I love sports. Sports basically control my life (I have officer positions in two sports-related clubs here at Pitt) and I wanted to do something I would enjoy working through. Having the idea of “crucial moments” in sports has been really influential over the course of my life (i.e. Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer beater in the playoffs, Auburn Football’s kick six, Lebron’s block in the 2016 NBA Finals, etc.) and using those plays as a concept was what I wanted to do. I had to find specific moments in sporting history that had loud crowd “pops” and were significant in the scheme of the game itself. I chose Kawhi Leonard’s game 7 buzzer beater in the 2nd round of the playoffs versus the Philadelphia 76ers, David Freese’s walk off home run in game 6 of the World Series versus the Texas Rangers, and the Jose Bautista 3 run home run versus the Texas Rangers in game 5 of the ALDS in the 2015 (loudest crowd “pop” I’ve ever heard). These three play calls are iconic and are always shown in “greatest sports moments” videos on YouTube, which is where I drew inspiration from.
Going to the actual creation of the audio, I knew I would have to have a script that would fit a theme, which I decided would be “tension and release”. I self-recorded the script and I really enjoyed this (even though I HATE listening back to my voice) as it seemed to make a sense of place in my opinion. As we can see in the picture below, I had Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes.
I took out the Queen bit as it was chunky and didn’t fit with the “Seven Nation Army” bit. Eventually, I had to take out the “Seven Nation Army” bit completely as it not in the fair use category. I had to get creative with it and switched to videos of crowds doing the “Seven Nation Army” chant. These videos fall under the fair use category and are really useful. You can see this in the picture below as the final audio product has multiple versions of the “Seven Nation Army” chant (see along bottom three lines) (Oakland Zoo, Baltimore Orioles fans, Michigan Football fans). For the advice on the note cards, I really took home that the audio felt chunky with the repetition of the not fair use “Seven Nation Army” music. The hardest part of this project for me was pushing to github. Using the command line is tricky and pulling and pushing is semi-confusing to me still but I really don’t know how to upload properly all the data and correct .aup file which is not good. I feel like this is an easily fixable problem, but I just need to get more practice with the command line. Hopefully I can get better and more comfortable with command line and github desktop for future projects. Overall, I loved this project and how intricate it was, yet still seeming to be fun.

[epesetsky]

Going into this project, I had recorded sounds before but never like this. As someone who enjoys creating design and layout, this course appealed to me for the sake of creating visual digital media, or so I thought. When Ben introduced us to this unit on sound and soundscapes I will admit I was quite nervous to begin. After hearing examples of past students in this course, I was unsure I could create such a plot and storyline through solely sound and noise.

On the day we began brainstorming ideas for the assets within our soundscape, my idea of telling a technology-obsessed student just came to me. Maybe it is because it is such a large part of almost all of our lives, or because we see so many of these things happen each day (like someone bumping into another person on the street because their eyes are glued to the phone, which I have in my soundscape).

My story begins with the sound of a laptop turning on, followed by the typing of keys. Rather than creating long sounds pieced together, my sounds (like a footstep walking across Forbes Ave and a text notification) are for the most part short, which I found to be more difficult as the project went on. These quick and repetitive sounds made piecing everything together a hassle for the sake of order.

One large obstacle I faced in this project was moving my sounds around in the Audacity application. Unsure if this was a glitch on my app or recurring for everyone else as well, but more often than not, when I would click the Time Shift Tool on the top bar to move a sound, I would see a white circle with a line going through it.

This posed as a problem for the majority of my project, making me quite frustrated when I was unable to move a sound to continue progressing forward with my soundscape. As a major part of creating my project, this was time-consuming and all around just annoying to deal with. As bad as this might sound, to get around this, I would click other gadgets and play with them until my Time Shift Tool cooperated. I might have enjoyed using Audacity more if this weren’t the case.

After work shopping with my classmate’s soundscapes, I saw others who had moved the single track sounds up and down onto only a couple tracks, which I think made it easier to contain these on the screen. My sounds were all on separate tracks, making it hard to find each one because there were so many. If I were to go back in time, I would have done this from the beginning like some of my peers.

In this second photo I have a larger recording, making the movement a great deal easier to work with than above.

In addition to learning to use Audacity (and Git!), I had to find a way to convert my sound files I recorded on my phone to one that can be used in Audacity. For this, I went through about four different sound file converters until I found one that I could use to convert my files from .m4a too .WAV. I used MediaHuman Audio Converter, which I was able to download onto my computer and use quite easily for my sound clips.

With these notes from my peer (and some comments from Ben) I decided to add close some gaps of static sound or just empty space, and add more notification sounds in addition to the constant texting noise. This hopefully tells my story a bit more clearly, and adds to the concept that I am trying to get across to the listener.

I believe I met all of the baseline criteria for this project. I recorded more than a minute of original recordings myself, meeting the first two criteria. In addition, I had at least three recordings overlapping at more than one point in the soundscape. One example of this is the sound of an iPhone typing, footsteps, and someone shouting “Hey watch where you’re going!”, as the character is walking, texting, and running into someone on the street because they are glued to their phone. In total, my track plays for 3 minutes, 15 seconds. And finally, the change the listener hears from start to finish is a drastic movement from constant typing and technology to sleep, to rejuvenate for another day filled with technology. I also uploaded the MP3 version of my soundscape. This project taught me a lot about creating sounds and I think I have learned a great amount using Audacity over the last few weeks.

[serkeight]

here is a link to my reflection on my repo.

[emaur]

In high school I was heavily involved in video production and editing, but I never paid this much attention to sound and the ability to convey a story through it. From my experience, there was always a heavy emphasis on visuals and using sounds to accompany or support those visuals. Therefore working on this soundscape narrative project was familiar yet completely brand new for me. My project also went through a bit of a journey — as I slightly deviated away from my original narrative plan. I was initially going to create this repetition of my character getting home, falling asleep, and dreaming up until the climax of the story, when they awake from their nightmare. However while editing I realized that the repetition wasn’t necessary to the story after all, and rather, I should place more emphasis on the dream scenes. I was surprised how quickly time passes just with a few sound clips, and I completely misjudged this aspect. Spending more time focusing on this magical aspect of the dream state and then building the suspense and tension during the nightmare, I felt, would give it more substance.

Before coming to our in-class workshop, I knew something was missing in my project, but I was stuck. My ending felt way too abrupt and there was barely any focus on when my character is dreaming, which is what I wanted the main focus of the narrative to revolve around.

After reading my classmates feedback, everyone came to the consensus that the ending needed to be clearer, and the dream and nightmare scenes needed to have more substance. Ben also noted that my only 3-layered clip was very short, sparking some ideas in my head on how I can be more creative with the dream and nightmare scenes by layering more clips and creating more of a spooky feeling within my piece during that time.

I believe I met all the baseline criteria for this project. I layered three clips a few times, have nearly a minute of sounds recorded by myself, have multiple sounds not recorded by me, it plays for four minutes, and there is a major change from the beginning to end. I also did my best to meet as many aspirational criteria as possible. Although Github frustrated me quite a lot throughout this project, it definitely allowed me to learn more about how to use it, which helped me feel more comfortable navigating the platform. I initially didn’t think my project would need many effects because the sounds I didn’t record myself were mostly instrumental songs. However while I was adding to the project and trying to convey an eerie feel, I felt that some of the noises needed to be more distorted, or have an echo, or have a pitch change, which allowed me to experiment with some of Audacity’s effects. Especially at the end of my piece when my character hears the ghost in their room — the original sounds of the ghostly laugh and scream weren't distorted enough, so I decided to add the effects to get the desired feeling.

I also uploaded a .mp3 file to Github, had a strong change of emotion from lighthearted and magical to eerie and spooky, and I believe that there is a clear plot within my piece — following my character through their nightly routine, and then into the weirdness of their dream, spookiness of their nightmare, and then ultimately experiencing an interaction with a ghost in the darkness of their room. I lastly practiced careful alignment, as my sounds and music changes with the plot. When my character begins to dream, there are enchanting sounds to accompany that. When they fall into the nightmare, there is a clear transition into eerier sounds, and finally my character waking up is accompanied by a sharp gasp and the bed sheets rustling.

[fathimashabnam]

For this soundscape project, I knew from the get-go that I wanted to challenge myself. The flexibility (and clear expectations) of this project excited me and after listening to past projects, I wanted to stretch my abilities with this soundscape narrative. At first, I wanted my project to glimpse at different cultures and countries. I planned out an entire dramatic tragedy where a mother abandons her child to travel the world... Then, upon further deliberation, I decided it would be unrealistic to convey that kind of story well in a 2-4 minute soundclip. However, since I still wanted a story of some sort (and preferably, happier than my previous plan), I chose a girl experiencing Disneyland Paris. However, to add a twist, I decided the listener will get the story from the doll’s point of view and that the doll will be lost at the end (to add a little emotion).

While I was content with the storyline, it did scare me a little. I had never used Audacity (or Github) before and I was worried that if I did not do this well, the listener would be confused when doll is in the handbag and the sound cuts. I was warned in the beginning that this may be a difficult story to convey in a short soundclip, but I wanted to give it a fair try. I listened to various clips and paid a lot of attention to the layering of sound in music and videos I watched. Another aspect of my idea that concerned me was recording dialogue. I wanted to challenge myself to record myself as different characters. I have always been fascinated by animated movies’ voice actors and found this a great opportunity to try it. To do this, I watched studio recording sessions and read articles on how to voice a young character and a Disney princess, since those two were my main character dialogues.

Some challenges arose when finding clips online. One example was I could not find Disney music that was not copyrighted. After a lot of online browsing, I realized that an instrumental version would suffice since I needed it for store music. When I found an original piano rendition with reuse license, I was quite simply overjoyed. Another trouble I ran into was finding appropriate background chatter for Disneyland. Online clips mostly revolved around store chatter, and it did not place the listener in the right scene. I tried different vlogs, but most YouTube vloggers use music in the middle of their clips, and when I remove that part, the sound ends up sounding very choppy. After some browsing, I finally found a video of Fantasyland Walkthrough Tour and used this with some editing.

I believe I have met all the baseline and aspirational criteria. I recorded a lot of sound in the Hillman library soundproof isolated room, and stored them in a different file (Figure 1). From here, I chose which version and parts I liked for the layered project. For the project, there are a lot of areas where there is overlap (Figure 2) since the sounds had to be timed well with the dialogue. I had some fun when recording voices, and chose to record some background dialogue and layer it (with a reduced gain) so that it is audible only if attention is given to it. I used various new special effects and since this was my first time using Audacity, everything was new to me. I used pitch changes (for the store employee, Ariel, and the kid at the end) to differentiate characters, gain changes to change the entire track volume (Figure 3), the envelope tool to change volume in parts of the track (Figure 3), and the shifting tool with split to edit the tracks.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

I had completely forgot about the mystery sound until one of my peers asked about it in the review sessions (Figure 4). I incorporated it from the peer feedback and completed that aspirational goal. I was worried that listeners may be lost, but based on the positive peer feedback I received, I am satisfied that my clip is coherent. Dr. Miller suggested leaving the background sound continue for a few seconds before ending the clip (as it previously had an abrupt stop), and adding a fade out effect to the store music as Dania and her mother left. I incorporated both these changes to the final project (Figure 5)

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

[jadenash21]

When I first enrolled in Composing Digital Media, I was unaware of what types of projects we would be tasked to do. I was recommended to take this course from a friend who is also following the Digital Media Track under the Media and Professional Communications major from the College of General Studies. I was thankful for this class because we could prepare a portfolio that we could submit to employers in the media industry. Hopefully, by the end of the semester, I can track my progress not only in skill, but in creativity. With this goal in mind, I was excited to be assigned our first project: a soundscape narrative.

For my soundscape narrative, I decided to depict an experience in a hospital. When thinking about my experience in Pittsburgh and what resources I could easily access, featuring a hospital was the first idea that popped into my head. Fortunately, I have always been in good health, but before moving to Pittsburgh for college, I had never been surrounded so heavily by the healthcare industry.

To meet baseline for this project, I first included several original recordings into the narrative. I recorded the spoken dialogue from my sisters for the narration. I included about 2 minutes worth of original recordings that were spread throughout the narrative. Next, I included various pre-recorded clips from the fair use, free sound site called Zapslat. To create a proper hospital background, I used clips of talking, walking, heart monitors, a baby crying, and a recording of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. To continue meeting the baseline expectations, I had four sounds layered at once at the beginning of the track. To be specific, I had the background chatter playing, while the sneezing, coughing, and heart monitor clips were also running. Next, my soundscape had sounds running for 2-4 minutes. Finally, I met the last baseline expectation by having the emotion of the narrative change by the end of the plot. At the beginning of the clip, emotions are tense and anxious because the mother is going into emergency labor in a crowded hospital. At the end, when “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” is playing the mood is very calm, relaxed, and joyful because the baby has been born safe and is happily at peace with its mother.

In comparison to the first full draft that I submitted for the class workshop, my final version was extremely different. After letting people listen to my soundscape and receiving their feedback, I understood that I had to improve my submission. Overall, there was a consistent theme in my feedback that listeners could not place where my narrative was set. Some people thought I was recreating a train station. Taking this feedback into mind, I decided to make my location more distinguishable by adding a storyline and plot with narration. I solidified my story line by thinking deeper about what subtle sounds a person would hear in a hospital background. I asked myself how would I describe a hospital and the first characteristic that came to mind was that a hospital is a place to treat sick people. Thinking about how I could communicate sickness solely through sound, I added clips of coughing and sneezing. I added these sounds at the beginning of my narrative to give listeners a foundation for the rest of the narrative. In regards to the narration that I added, I incorporated clips where the narrator specifically stated that we were at a hospital. I am thankful that we had the opportunity to have a class workshop because I would not have been aware that others could not place themselves within my soundscape.

[jlatiniii]

For my soundscape project, I chose to convey a coma patient and their thoughts while physically unresponsive but able to hear muffled parts of their surroundings. When I first started I only had two hospital sounds overlapping (seen below), but it really came together once I added the introduction of the car starting, driving, and then the accident as well as the dialogue (seen below). I knew I wanted to add a clip of a song to the piece since it's commonly heard that coma patients are able to hear music while unconscious. This gave me the idea to have two different clips of the same song playing in the beginning before the accident, and then bringing it back while the individual is in the coma. I took advice from the responses I received from my classmates to add more emotion, so I rerecorded the mom's voice to sound more concerned and scared when her son is flatlining. I wanted to add more medical sounds such as dialogue between doctors and nurses, but it was hard to find sounds that had what I wanted. However, I did add someone saying "clear" to emphasize the use of the defibrillator which I think made the ending that much better.

I believe I have met all the baseline criteria. There needed to be at least one sound originally recorded by myself, which I can identify as the dialogue of the son and mother. All the rest of the sounds incorporated into my project were from the internet, which meets the other baseline goal. My entire project was a little over 3 minutes long, meeting the time requirement, and had some sort of change throughout the piece. I tried my best to reach at least a few, if not all, aspirational goals. After many struggles, I finally understand how to use Github and uploaded my project there. I developed a plot in which there was more than just a general change throughout the project. Instead, there were characters and a climactic event which then came to a resolution. I attempted to include some sounds that triggered emotions during certain moments such as the Frank Ocean song being introduced in the beginning and revisited towards the end. I used multiple effects such as echo, fading in and out, and high pass filter. I converted my piece into an mp3 as well. Overall, I went from not having any knowledge on how to use Audacity or any kind of sound editing tools to building this narrative that tells a clear story in a creative way. In the beginning I was really nervous because I don't see myself as a creative person or someone who is necessarily good with technology, so I'm really proud of myself and this piece!

[brittanybenson8]

For my soundscape narrative, I wanted to tell the story of someone being late to work. I wanted it to be simple but extremely relatable. I began the story with the sounds of someone waking up and getting ready. Then, I added their recognition of them being late and sounds of rushing through their commute to work. I started by simply recording my alarm clock. I then added a second sound of me smacking it off. The screenshot below shows these first two sounds.

I began playing around with audacity to add more and more layers of sound. I began adding sounds of footsteps, keys, heavy breathing, traffic, and car noises. This screenshot shows when I was about halfway done with my soundscape. I had four layers of sound and it ran for about a minute and a half.

I kept working towards adding more layers of sound to make the story more realistic. I began to use the sounds of people talking as background noise. I recorded sounds of elevators opening and found elevator music to play. I also found sounds of general greetings to add some more characters. Between these new sounds and keeping the sounds of footsteps and heavy breathing, I finished my soundscape with five layers of sound with a maximum of four being used at the same time. The screenshot below shows the audacity file I brought in to have my soundscape workshopped.

Some of the feedback I received stated that my soundscape sounds were easy to identify, but they did not really tell a story. Other students stated that there was no change or clear plot. One thing I was missing was dialogue from my main character. This feedback made me reconsider my characters. From the beginning, I intended to use my voice to convey the character's thoughts, but hearing my voice on tape was not a pleasant experience. Therefore, I tried to get by without using my voice, but I ultimately decided it was a crucial element in telling the story.

The screenshot below is my final (for now) draft of my soundscape. I know have six layers of sound and added my voice as narrations. I also went back and tried to edit the volume levels. I had multiple times where a sound I recorded reached red on the volume bar, so I went through and fixed ones that seemed very aggressive.

I feel I have met the baseline criteria for multiple reasons. About half of the sounds I used were originally recorded. I initially recorded all of my sounds but some of them did not turn out distinct enough. I got rid of those sounds and replaced them with ones that were not originally recorded by me. I found all of these sounds on freesound.org and only used ones that I was legally allowed to. Furthermore, my soundscape is around three minutes and fifteen seconds long. Over this duration, there is a change in the piece. It starts silent with sounds of waking up and getting ready. These sounds are presented calmly. The soundscape gets more intense when the main character realizes that she is running late. From that point on, the sounds increase until the end when the conflict is resolved.

When it comes to aspirational inspirations, I added some into my project. I included an accessible transcript in my repository. I used a few special effects in Audacity to adjust volume levels. Furthermore, I included a clear plot. There is an established main character, and we can follow her through this. There are constant changes in scenery to accurately represent the commute. Also, it is clear to understand what is happening and what the character is struggling with. There is a clear turning point when the character first realizes she is going to be late. The commute to work is the rising action with the climax being her entering work. The resolution is when she is greeted at work and sighs in her chair. This indicates she did make it on time and everything has been solved.

This project is unlike anything I have ever done before. Although I found parts of it challenging, I enjoyed learning how to work Audacity and how to create a soundscape narrative.