Soundscape Narrative: Final 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. These are both a space for you to think back on what you've learned, and how, and also to help me appreciate the work you've done (whether in successful product or ambitious process).

At a minimum, this should include:

• at least 500 words describing the work you did
• at least two screenshots showing your work in progress
• at least one screenshot of 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 22nd.

[AlexaSpaventa]

Going into this project I knew I definitely wanted to make something that commented on coronavirus. I find like most people that it has impacted me in a lot of ways and I felt that using a creative form of expression such as a soundscape could be a really cool way for me to convey how life has changed for me personally. In addition to this, I wanted to make it somewhat relatable in the sense that it had some aspects that many people probably would have encountered such as the news clips I used. Starting on this project I was very nervous if I would actually be able to make something that followed the premise I wanted to. Recording audio went very poorly for me and despite recording a significant amount I only had two small clips that were useable for the soundscape. Other audio I found online mostly from old news articles and Freesound.org. Actually gathering the audio wasn’t too hard of a process since there were normally pretty good sounds for the keywords I searched. Looking for sounds also helped me come up with some new ideas for the soundscape. Since I haven’t worked with sound before I was worried about getting started in audacity. For my preview, I just focused on getting a few sounds in for the football game portion of the soundscape. 

For draft one, I pretty much tried to complete the bulk of the project. This involved adding effects such as fade-in/out, some panning, lots and lots of amplifying, and some other random effects to make certain sections sound distorted. I also added to the football game, made a news report section, college party, and memorial. At this point, the memorial was the ending which I didn’t like so for the final copy I also added a more optimistic ending.





(Final picture above) 

Most of my comments involved adding to the 3D feeling of my audio. I tried to enhance this by adding some effects to both the football portion and the college party. I also tried to make some clips feel less choppy. This involved cleaning up some of the overlaps of the news clips and the volume control in the college party. Additionally, there was a comment on the piano music during the memorial portion. I tried to mitigate this however I think the music being reference is actually in the background of the news clip I pulled from the internet so this made it hard to totally fix this issue. Despite this, I think I was able to make the transition a lot smoother. As far as a baseline criterion goes I think I covered all the criteria. My piece meets all the length and style requirements and my sources are all cited in the CREDITS.md file in my repository. As for meeting the aspirations, I tried to organize my files in a way that made sense to me (for each of the checkpoints I made folders with the needed elements), I also experimented a lot with audacity and did my best to create a story within my soundscape. For these reasons, I think I also covered all the aspiration criteria. Overall I really had fun doing this project. Audio is a form of media I didn’t really have an interest in learning but after doing this project I found it to be a unique and interesting way to convey a story/narrative.

[LDib]

Lucas's Reflection on "It Gets Easier"

It actually took me quite a bit of brainstorming (or at least more than usual) to come up with an idea for this soundscape project that I actually wanted to do and thought I could get done. I kept coming up with ideas revolving around the sound of a person walking down a busy street on an afternoon, with car sounds and breath sounds and walking sounds, because I like listening to that sort of stuff, especially in music. Tame Impala, one of my favorite bands, has several songs where voices, car noises, and sometimes ocean noises fade in and give this incredibly cool ambience to a track. However, as we discussed and read about, it's incredibly easy to make a cliche recording of cars passing that sounds like waves, or waves crashing that sounds like cars. I thought more about what sort of narrative I could create that I actually care about, and one of the things I care about most, which will get me to click on a Youtube video most often, is how to be healthier and happier. I thought it would be interesting (and possibly even helpful for me or others) to reconstruct the conversation that I have with myself when I don't want to do something that I should be doing. Running felt like an easy and obvious choice, and I could even include some of my much-beloved car sounds. I did most of my preliminary work making a script for the two voices that I would play, as well as the part my friend Colin would play. The scripts are hard to read and uninteresting, so I didn't put them in the repo. Since I didn't do a whole lot of work on actual recording at the start, I didn't get a whole lot done for my preview.

Here's a screenshot of it:

It's essentially just me putting together one cycle of the background noises that would occur in the final product behind a run. I think it was a helpful way to get started.

Then, Colin and I recorded the script on a mic I have, and I recorded everything else needed (my voice parts, heavy breathing, yawn) and collected all of the sounds I would use and credited them. That part came together in a few hours, and I had a rough draft:

Then, once I got some feedback:

I went back and made a few small edits, like shortening (or attempting to, Audacity is not an easy editor to use), changing volumes, panning, and looking at reverb settings, based on the feedback above, and then called it good:

I think that I met all of the baseline criteria (it is hardly a few seconds over 4 minutes, and the editing required to make it 4 minutes long would have added nothing to the project, and possibly caused me to mess it up). I had layers, sounds recorded by me, sounds not recorded by me and credited correctly, I had plot and a clear ending, etc. As far as aspirational criteria: my repo and tracks were very neatly labeled and organized. I experimented with echo effects in Audacity that I'd never used before. I know that I used rather cliche background noises, but things like the heavy breathing, running noises, and conversations used were specific to me and my narrative given the surrounding context. The conversations happening were unique to me, because I wrote and voiced them, and they gave the running portion context such that it could be interpreted differently than in a vacuum. My use of panning for voices and relative volume of background tracks gave a sense of a 3D space. All of my feedback demonstrated that people heard what I intended for them to hear/interpret. I think the title helps key listeners in on an important piece of dialogue that holds the key to the narrative's moral. I also had human voices interacting and I think it was reasonably well edited, if I do say so myself. I enjoyed this project, too, if that matters.

[Maials268]

Work-in-Progress Screenshots:

I felt that the process of working on this project was really interesting because it gave me the opportunity to explore tools that I have little to no experience with. I was initially pretty nervous because I’ve only used Audacity for a couple of projects in the past and even then I only utilized a few functions on the application. And in terms of Github and Atom, I had never even heard of those tools before. However, the confusion I exhibited pertaining to Atom and Github slowly faded as we were given the chance to work with and ask questions about these resources. Moreover, I felt that for me personally working with Audacity was a mixture between trial and error and simply doing research to figure out what tools would give me the effects I desired. I spent a large amount of time gathering assets from the website Freesounds in order to make sure I got material that would fit within the concept of my soundscape. Following the acquisition of these assets, I would usually utilize the effects: Loudness Normalization and Noise Reduction. I found that both of these effects were incredibly helpful for when I wanted to get rid of white noise (usually from my own personal recordings) or I wanted to make sure sounds were on par with each other and the natural loudness of one sound didn’t make the asset seem out of place within the project. I additionally found that using fade-outs were very helpful in terms of transitioning from one sound to another. I also utilize fade-ins which I think were useful for making sure a sound doesn’t feel like it suddenly appeared but rather it was slowly entering into the soundscape. Furthermore, I used panning for several different effects I was trying to create to enhance my audience’s experience. One of those effects included attempting to induce the feeling of one or more people walking. Another way I used panning was to create space positionality. An example of this in my projects was when I was trying to present the audio of someone walking upstairs, reaching the top floor, and then having someone follow, doing the same action. Moreover, I used panning simply for the sake of having someone hear one thing in their right ear and having something different happening in their left; that form of usage wasn’t exactly for positionality but it does result in the effect of knowing one thing is happening on your right side and the other is happening on your left. A large amount of the revisions I made after presenting my first draft to my peers pertained to length and dialogue. I already knew that my soundscape was long and there were moments where certain sounds dragged on for a lengthy amount of time so some of the feedback just reinforced that sentiment. I edited out a large amount of time that I felt was just dead space where sounds that only needed to be a couple of seconds were taking up too much.

Based on this specific comment I additionally added in dialogue in order to make the narrative more comprehensible. I wanted the audience to be able to truly grasp the story and in order for that to happen I knew I needed to add in some soundbites that would give the story a stronger framework instead of the feeling of “things just happening”. I had one of my characters speak to other characters throughout the narrative so the listener wasn’t left completely unaware of what was occurring. Overall, I think I hit all of the baseline criteria in terms of keeping with the time limit, using multiple sounds that were created by me as well as not, layering them, having an element of change from beginning to end, and so on. In terms of aspiration, I did try to play around with volume, panning, and different effects in order to enhance my narrative. I did attempt other aspirational criteria but whether I was able to convey my intention to the audience is of course subjective to those listening.

[hjo6]

For my project, I decided to create a soundscape of my apartment through the ears of my cat, Figaro. Deciding on a topic was difficult for me to do because my original plan was to build some sort of horror, sci-fi soundscape using mundane sounds manipulated with a number of effects to create new, foreign, futuristic sounds. However, I couldn’t get a plot figured out and I was struggling to create an asset list, so I decided to lessen the scope of my project to be something more familiar to me. Before arriving to my final idea, another idea I had was a soundscape going through a theme park (Disney’s Magic Kingdom, since I used to work there and am familiar with all of the sounds) before realizing that I wouldn’t be satisfied with something that didn’t sound completely accurate. Finally, I decided to have my soundscape set somewhere completely familiar to me, where I could record all of the sounds myself: my apartment!

Let me just say, I thought that I was lessening the scope of my project by choosing something so mundane, but the more work I put into the project, the more work needed to go into the project. I am a perfectionist when it comes to recording anything because I write and record my own music, so anytime I would add a layer to my soundscape, I would want to add something else that would make the soundscape more lifelike, more accurate to what I was actually hearing. Another struggle I had was I couldn’t think of a way to make my soundscape less mundane. I had the first half of my soundscape basically complete before I realized that, while it sounded good, it wasn’t interesting. There was no real plot, no element to draw the listener in and make them want to stay. I settled on having a voice inside of my cat’s head, providing (not-so) humorous commentary to the soundscape and adding some music to the background so that there was more to listen to than the white noise of the fan. After the addition of the first line or two of Fig’s inner monologue, I was finally content with the trajectory of my project. The image below is of my project as it was during our feedback session, before adding Fig's monologue:

When the first draft was due, I was still not sure how to progress my soundscape to make it more interesting. Luckily, the feedback I received got the ball rerolling again. Pictured below is the feedback I received:

From this feedback, I took the idea to add music and followed through, adding some music to the background of both scenes in my room. The idea to fade out on Fig’s snoring/purring started getting my ideas rolling again, and I decided that I wanted to end with going to bed, with Fig’s purring and the fan’s white noise fading out. With these two pieces together, I started brainstorming on how I could “connect” these two threads. I decided that the “background” plot would follow me doing homework, going upstairs to make myself dinner, then finishing up homework and going to bed. This feedback alone really helped me to figure out what I wanted to do for the second half of my soundscape!

As for the baseline criteria, I believe I have met all of the requirements. I have multiple sounds that I found online and recorded on my own, all of which are credited in my CREDITS.md file in my project repository. My soundscape is just under 4 minutes, has more than 3 layers of sounds overlapping at a single time, and fades out as an ending (intentionally). Pictured below is my final project progress image, where you can clearly see all of the overlapping tracks:

The only baseline requirement I was worried about was having something change from the beginning to the end of the piece, however I change scenes from my bedroom downstairs to the kitchen and living room upstairs. The sounds of my bedroom slowly fadeout as I enter the upstairs, where the sounds fade in. Later it transitions back into my room, so the “plot” moves upstairs and changes scenes.

For the aspirational requirements, I’ve met quite a few of them. My project repository is organized into an assets folder containing all of the sounds I collected from the internet, a project progress folder containing 5 images of my project throughout its creation, a soundscape folder containing an .MP3 file of the soundscape, the audacity project for the soundscape, and the _data folder containing all of the clips in the soundscape, and on the root directory I have these 3 folders and the CREDITS.md and a readme.md. All of the tracks in my Audacity project are clearly labeled and are arranged in order of when the sound first comes in. I also experimented with a lot of features in Audacity that I’ve never used before. Something I used a lot to make it sound like something was coming from another room was the Low Pass Filter. I used this to make my voice sound muffled while I was talking to my roommate upstairs and my cat was located downstairs, directly under where I would be talking but separated by the ceiling. I also used this later when Fig uses the litter box, but it’s a much less noticeable effect there. I also used the Bass and Treble effect to adjust which frequencies should be highlighted and the Change Pitch effect for Fig and Zack’s voices.

Furthermore, I used panning and relative volume (and Low Pass Filter!) to create a sense of 3D environment. I tried my best to keep the sound consistent to how my cat would hear it (my favorite sound is probably my footsteps when I walk into the kitchen, I really feel like that is how my cat would hear my steps—a deep, booming sound that slowly fades as it gets further away), although it is difficult to have everything be placed accurately while having only a few weeks to work. I also used music to convey a consistent narrative/emotional tone: I used relaxing music in my room while I’m doing homework to make the room stand out and to portray that I was trying to focus on homework. I also have an interaction between two characters (dialogue between Hunter and Zack) and sounds that respond to/interact with one another (pouring Fig’s food into his bowl; you can hear the rustle of the bag and then the food pouring into the bowl). Finally, while the feedback above was before my soundscape was complete, I added in meows to make it clear that the listener was following a cat, and added inner monologue to Fig (the main character) that describes in part the scenes unfolding in the apartment. If anything, I’ve made it more clear within the soundscape itself as to what is going on, so I believe I also fulfill the “demonstrate that listeners can describe the soundscape narrative as intended” requirement has also been fulfilled, although I would say that is completely dependent on the listener, rather than the creator!

[KyleMaxwell1224]

When I was seeking inspiration for this project, I thought about the sounds we hear in everyday life that we don't pay much mind to. However, I found myself somewhat bored when I thought of a typical story. Since this project only uses audio, it affords the opportunity to tell a story without the burden of creating the visual to match. Because of this, I wanted to create a story that would be visually difficult to create (in a realistic way). Sharks are my favorite animal, so I knew I wanted my story to focus around them, but the pawn shop inspiration came from my desire to anthropomorphize an inanimate object. The process of finding audio wasn't too difficult. Nearly all of my audio came from Freesound.org because they have a mass collection of audio that all fit what I was looking for. The most difficult audio to find was the background music. I wanted the music to be foreign, classical music since it shows the shopkeeper's (and by extension, the pawn shop as a whole) age. However, it wasn't easy to find the perfect audio track to use for the background music. Then, I remembered the song "Lord Knows" by the rapper Meek Mill sampled some really nice classical music. After most of my pieces were laid out, I put the background music in, and it really fit the vibe I was looking for.

The first steps for me was recording all of my dialogue. It helped me see my story from start to finish. After the majority of the dialogue was recorded, I started to place more sound effects into the story. One reoccurring sound that I planned on from the beginning was the consistent fire alarm beeping. I'm currently in an online class where the professor teaches from his living room and has a fire alarm beeping, but he doesn't seem to ever hear it. Because of my experience with that, I added it into the story, and it adds personality to the store.

One piece of advice that really helped me was from Jagr. When I first started this project, I got a little worried that my project idea was something that sounded cool in my head but wouldn't actually entertain anyone. I was really glad to see positive feedback about my story, and because of the positive response, I tried to modify my approach to the story a bit differently. I went more in on the absurdity of the content. Since this is my first time creating a digital story, I wasn't fully sure if my project had too much spacing between events. It was good to be able to get confirmations from my colleagues about my suspicions.

Another piece of advice that really helped me was Kevin mentioning that the audio needs to be more cohesive. After listening to my project a few times after with that advice in mind, it made me realize that I did have some parts of my audio that weren't entirely cohesive.

I think that I kept the baseline criteria while creating my project. There's a lot of dialogue that I recorded, but I found a lot of use in using other sounds that were fair use. Throughout the story, I overlap several tracks. Usually it's dialogue to drive the story while using sounds to enhance it and paint a picture of the settings. The length is within 2-4 minutes and all sources are listed. I think the plot has a clear beginning and end, in which the ending seems like a natural ending. Additionally, I think I hit several of the aspirational criteria. The files felt well labelled and easy to navigate for my project, and I think my soundtrack serves a clear role as a way of conveying the mood. Based on earlier criticism I received, I feel that my project is straight-forward and easy to understand.

[peekssezin]

Reflection on Experimentation

Nick Pekor

Within the first couple of days considering a theme for my soundscape, I found myself stuck. I didn't really find myself with a lot of motivation for the project. I felt like the environment I was around just didn't suit any kind of story I would want to pursue. The environment I found myself in left me with very little inspiration for the soundscape. I decided that I needed to rethink my approach to the soundscape project. Instead of putting myself into an environment, I created my own environment from scratch. I assumed that a majority of other's would tend to create stories in the realm of "normality", or to say that their stories would have a similar setting. With this thought, I decided that I wanted to pursue an ideas that would most likely not be done.

The soundscape project I created details a story about a scientist going into a lab, running tests on a test subject, and having a test fail, ultimately resulting in the test subject being freed from its containment. I fully decided on this idea because of previous experiences dealing with audio production and synthesis, and I felt that taking advantage of this previous experience could result in a unique soundscape.

I utilized two different audio interfaces to create the sounds I wanted to use. These were Famitracker, a program used to create music using 8-bit soundfonts, and MAX/MSP a music programming interface. I created the sounds made through famitracker from scratch, and I used a project I had created in a previous class to synthesize the glitching sound in MAX/MSP.

When it came to feedback, I honestly didn't know where to go next. Most of the feedback said my project was good, but none really critiqued my work and told me what to do better. Of course, I did do my best to proofread my project. I made different sounds fade into each other better, and I even added a title to the soundscape! (Making a title completely slipped my mind when doing this.)

I also left myself until the final draft to create my citations for the samples used throughout the soundscape. I did this mainly because I felt it would be better to focus on fully fleshing out the soundscape and making it sound good before taking care of anything else.

I do feel as if I had made a soundscape that met the baseline criteria, if not even more than that. I met all the minimum requirements, such as getting samples from various sources and citing correctly. I personally feel that the story also concludes in a good way. I also feel that I hit a lot of aspiration goals. I spent a lot of time in Audacity messing around with panning and volume shifting to get the sounds that would fit best in the setting I made, and I also experimented a lot with the sources of sound I recorded, such as making sounds artifically through audio interfaces and using amplifier feedback.

Overall, I had a great time working on this project. Personally, I've been listening to a lot of music that incorporates the use of field recordings and sampling similar to what was done in the project. That kind of helped to jumpstart my work on the assignment.

[bschatz17]

When trying to decide the foundation and meaning of my soundscape, I turned to unique activities I enjoy myself. I found the Day In; Day out example about going to work and the car crash as a very interesting piece. I liked the fact that there was very minimal talking from the author towards the plot. The entire story is orchestrated through sounds without words. I wanted to combine these two ideas, and I landed on a skiing soundscape. I chose this because skiing is something I love to do, and I wanted to incorporate the sounds of nature and the outdoors.

The initial sounds were from skiing videos I found on Youtube. Since just the skiing sounds alone did not work to satisfy the project, I needed some other elements to add to the plot. I found it very difficult to make an entire soundscape with just sounds at a ski mountain. I needed to add other elements and expand the timeline of the day. At this point, I decided to make a similar project to the Day in; Day out, but with a focus on skiing. Including more sounds from other aspects of a skier's life was the new goal. I added sounds of waking up, eating breakfast, making coffee, etc. The story continues towards getting in the car and driving to the mountain, where the skiing sounds can sound better in place.

My rough draft was very rough to say the least. It lacked a concrete ending and contained portions of no sound. The comments I received were still very helpful, however, as it helped me learn how it sounded to an unbiased listener without knowledge of the plot. Also, my .aup file was not working properly so they had to listen to the mp3 file, making it even more difficult to see the individual sound clips.

I learned that in reality, skiing does not have a very distinct sound especially to those who have never gone before. Alexa thought it was about a snowstorm due to the weather reports regarding snow at the very beginning. This told me that it was crucial to add more sounds specific to skiing, and do a better job alluding to the fact that the snow report is for the mountain, not just a big snowstorm.

The other feedback was helpful and told me that I was still on the right track. While trying to fix my aup file, I was moving folders and files around on my computer and accidentally separated my aup file with the data folder. I thought I lost my soundscape and was going to have to start over, until I had a zoom chat with the professor and he helped me locate my files and put them in the right spot. However, some of my sounds were lost and I could not get them back. Luckily I had my rough draft .mp3 file, so I was able to use that entire file as one sound in audacity to keep the certain tracks I lost. This was not a huge nuisance and was a good lesson about using github and github desktop. It could've been a whole lot worse.

The final product looks a bit wonky due to the long .mp3 file of the rough draft but it is not a big problem. I used my own sounds in combination with sounds I found on the internet, and I edited all of the above with the envelope tool and or more effects under the effects tab. For example, I made one audio sound like it was on the radio by adjusting the EQ and High-Pass filter. I am very excited to share my soundscape!

[trinitymccool]

Going into this project, I knew that I wanted to tell a story using only sounds, rather than just creating a conceptual piece, I just didn't know what story I wanted to tell. It took me a couple of days to think about the premise of my story, but when I did figure it out, it came to me in an odd way. I was sitting on my couch watching random YouTube videos, and before one of the videos started, an ad for Domino's played. That got me thinking that one time someone told me that a pizza delivery driver is one of the world's most dangerous jobs. I don't necessarily know if that is completely factual or not, but it got me inspired. After listening to the soundscape examples, particularly the horror-centric one about someones car breaking down (I cannot recall the title, I apologize), I knew I wanted my soundscape to be at least a little bit suspenseful and/or scary. Thus, my story was formed-- a young pizza delivery driver would have something bad happen to her during her last delivery of the night.

For the preview, pictured here:

I had only the first scene completed, it timed out at around a minute and fifteen seconds long. It only gives basic exposition; the ambience of the pizza shop, how the protagonist just wants to be finished with her shift but she has one more delivery to make, etc. Nothing scary or suspenseful happening yet, the story is lighthearted for the most part.

The next segment of my soundscape, pictured here:

This segment is when the plot starts to kick in, and tension (hopefully) begins to rise, due to the soundbite on the radio when she is searching for something to listen to. I wanted to make this a case of dramatic irony, where the audience knows what is coming, but the protagonist is unaware; this kind of dramatic irony raises tension more than other situations do in storytelling (at least, coming from a filmmaking perspective). One thing I was unsure about was how to end the soundscape. I think my ending gets the job done when considering the story I wanted to tell, but it is a little abrupt in my opinion. I was quickly approaching the 4 minute limit, so I tried to make it as effective, yet also as short as possible. This ties in with some of the advice I got during workshops:

I didn't exactly completely finish the soundscape by the time workshops happened, simply because I did not know how to end it, which is why people thought it ended abruptly. I fixed the ending, though, and now I think it isn't as abrupt, but it jars the listener in the right way (hopefully). People also suggested that I add in other voices other than just morphing my own voice, but especially during COVID times, it was impossible to find anyone to record with me, as I only live with one other roommate (who voices the cashier at the beginning).

I meet all baseline criteria in this soundscape; the voices in this were recorded by me and my roommate, and all other noises came from freesound.com, which I am able to legally use. My soundscape also runs for 4 minutes. Many sounds in my soundscape overlap, but 3 already overlap within the first few seconds (the music, ambient chatter, my roommates voice). All other baseline requirements have been met as well. As for aspirational inspirations, I played around with panning the sound, having certain sounds present only on the left or right side of the listener's headphones, and the speech is relatively clear. I love the art of storytelling, and how we can convey a feeling or a story just through sound. I enjoyed this project very much and I had a lot of fun, I can't wait for the next one!

[leiawerner]

I came up with the idea for my soundscape a lot easier than I originally anticipated. The assignment sounded a bit daunting at first, but once I came up with my idea, I knew it would be an enjoyable and creative process. During quarantine, I spent a lot of time outside or just in my house sitting. During that time, I began to notice a lot of things I think I normally wouldn’t have thought about. Every small sound became important. I wanted to mix this idea in with my passion for criminal justice reform. That is how I got my idea. My intention was for the main character’s story to be the main focus. I wanted the main idea to be centered on the character in prison/vs out. The beginning of ambient noises/sirens was just included to set up the plot and wasn’t intended to be a main focus. I thought I executed this well with using just enough sounds to get the point across. I came up with the idea for the character to read letters so I could establish a time frame. I was struggling with ideas on how to do this at first and the sense of time was very important to the story. Another big characteristic of my soundscape was the use of mood music. I think music really has the ability to tie together emotions and sounds. I wanted the mood to drastically change from the beginning to end. I started out with some moody melancholy music and ended with an uplifting tune. I also created this change of mood by including very dull sounds and a monotone voice for my character at the beginning. By the end, I wanted to choose soothing sounds (like the ocean) that I normally associate with bringing people a feeling of peace. That was my goal for the journey of the character. He starts off in a very dark place and when its finally time for his release, he realizes the world is not how he left it. However, he finds a feeling of peace at the end. The story ended up being not as detailed as I was originally intending. Once I started working, I realized how difficult it could be to make a soundscape include all the small details in a story. I did end up resorting to dialogue to portray most of the details. I don’t think this was a weakness however, as I think I used other sounds to elevate the dialogue. I used most of my sounds to bring notice to background noises that we often overlook. It might not have had all the traditional details we think of when it comes to a story, but it captured the small details of sound we over-look. I guess in the end, that was the main goal.

This is what I had submitted for my preview.

These two images include the final product.

Jagr's critique really helped me improve on some things. He mentioned how the character's voice didn't really match the mood at the end, so I re-recorded that. I also changed the voices of "sorry we're closed" to have different voices for that more realistic feeling. I thought all of the points made were good changes that benefited my project.

I met the baseline criteria by making my soundscape a little over 2 minutes. It just hit the length requirement, and I personally thing it is the perfect length for my story. I could have made it longer, but I am happy with the length. I also overlapped sounds a ton. I think overlapping and mixing sounds is very satisfying. It really creates an entire scene. Mixing the sounds with music was very fun and helped capture the mood. I recorded about 5 of my own sounds, including all the voices. The music and other sound effects I found online which was a fun process. I liked listening to different music and seeing which piece I thought would work best. Though my soundscape doesn't have a concrete ending, I do think the ending is clear. I really didn't want there to be an abrupt ending, as the character's journey was pretty complex, and I think there should be the idea that our stories continue. Overall, I had a really fun time making this soundscape!

[carlystanford]

When initially thinking of ideas for my soundscape narrative, I was immediately drawn to the setting of a kitchen. One of my favorite parts of cooking or baking is the sounds that are generated in the process, and I Felt there was a lot that could be done with them. As a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, I've always admired the way the show displays cultures around the world through the lens of food while still touching on important topics of that culture. This is where the first idea for my soundscape came from- I wanted to create something similar, explore culture through food and cooking.

While in the process of creating a soundscape based on this idea, I ran into some issues. I found that it was going to be difficult to portray other cultures without really knowing what sounds are generated in these places, and without easy access to other languages. I scrapped that idea and instead decided to tell the story of a person who is a less-than-stellar cook, but is eager to learn. After a phone conversation with a friend, she decides to pursue a new recipe, and spends all day cooking it. When her friends come over later in the day to try it, she is not impressed.

As far as the baseline criteria go, my soundscape meets the length requirement at 2 minutes and 26 seconds. It includes sounds recorded by me as well as not, with all of the dialog recorded by me, and most of the background type noises not. I heavily utilized Freesound for this project, taking a lot of the background sounds and cooking sounds from the users on the site. I cited them in my assets.md by listing the work and crediting the creator. The nature of my soundscape narrative has it so that a lot of the sounds are back-to-back rather than overlapping, but I do have three layers of sound overlapping where I have my background noise track, the birds chirping track, and then some more prominent sounds like typing or dishes clanging over top.

From beginning to end, the activites and tasks of the main character of the narrative change, and the conversations between her and her friend from beginning to end are rather different. For the aspirational criteria, I played around with a few different effects in Audacity that I was not previously familiar with. To make the friend's voice on the phone sound phone-like I adjusted the equalizer using the graphic EQ effect. I used the fade in and out effects on sounds like the birds chirping to avoid abrupt starts and end to the sound. I also used the amplify effect to lower or raise the relative volume of a particular track. I think audience interpretation matched my intention fairly well, as my peers who reviewed the piece seemed to pick up on the storyline pretty well.

I also incorporated feedback from my peers. As Brian mentioned, at one point in the piece the friend's voice was lowered and it sounded a bit funky. I lowered the pitch on all of the clips of dialog from the friend character to make them sound more distinct from the main character, and it did end up sounding weird in this one particular spot, so I adjusted it to sound more natural. As Lucas mentioned, in some spots the noise levels were off, and some tracks were way louder than other. I fixed this by using the amplify effect to lower the volume of a lot of the tracks that had loud spikes in volume. He also mentioned the disorganization of the repository, which was due to the fact that I was saving every version of my draft as a separate file and saving it in the repository, so it was a bit cluttered. I moved all the older versions to the trash and kept the final draft.

[heh44]

The soundscape narrative project took me by surprise. As a senior, it was very refreshing to be assigned a project which would take creativity and imagination to complete. I felt that this was my first creative project since high school. I really appreciated this and was looking forward to experimenting with the program. I have explored audacity in the past, but I was never formally taught anything about the program. During studio time, I felt that ideas flowed naturally. I had no trouble editing and fleshing out an audio clip during the introductory lecture for audacity. I enjoyed remixing and tweaking the provided clips. Moving from the demo pieces to our own work was no problem either. After reading the articles about sound and sound collecting techniques, I felt like I had a basic understanding of the program.

During Quarantine, I binge watched several movies and knew that I wanted to include a solid attempt at attention to detail into my soundscape. As work on the soundscape preview progressed, I noticed that many basic ideas could easily be expanded upon to create a clip of substance. Even after handing in a 30 second clip which only included a few assets, I knew that my project could go in so many directions. With the help of the websites which host creative commons licensed assets, I felt like even the most obscure and niche assets could be included in the soundscape. Freesound.com made this project far easier than I anticipated. I was able to find ambient sounds that made me feel confident in my narrative’s ability to depict a place and time. Bridging the gap between my preview and my draft was simple because of this.

I had no trouble meeting the baseline criteria for this draft. I found the requirements to be simple. I still felt that they required a basic understanding of audacity and the audio/asset collection process. Because of this, I believe that the baseline criteria was a fair assessment for the project. The basic plot of my draft followed a main character running from law enforcement and eventually falling into a frozen lake. It was meant to be thrilling and I noticed that my first rendition of the draft met all baseline criteria. I filled in areas that I felt needed transitional pieces to make it clear to the listener what was happening. Searching for assets using the aggregating websites felt simple and to the point. I easily found assets that contained sounds of trees falling, ice cracking, people falling in ice, and recording equipment being submerged. Locating assets went smoother than I expected. Recording my own audio was somewhat difficult at first. I tried to record an asset outside, but it was still too late in the summer to stand outside and expect silence. Cicadas and crickets proved to be way too loud for me to produce decent recording. I wanted to record the sound of sticks or wood breaking and was forced to bring this inside of my house. The process of pushing files to github felt clear and simple though. I had no significant issues navigating and using github to submit my final soundscape.

The giving and receiving feedback activity felt valuable and helped me see new ways to mix and fade my assets. One piece of feedback suggested that I pay more attention to the details associated with a person falling into a frozen lake. It was suggested that I add assets to compliment my already existing sounds (which detailed the changing environment). I should add assets that more clearly sound like a person is struggling. Things like a drowning sound effect or a flailing and thrashing sound effect could go a long way. I used this advice and added a drowning sound effect as well as some dramatic music from YouTube’s audio library.

I felt that my soundscape accomplished what I wanted it to do. I wanted to depict a thrilling experience with an attention to detail.

[shreyababu]

Soundscape Reflection: “Year After Year”

For my soundscape narrative, I depicted the transition from a happy 2019 into 2020, and the chaos that ensued once 2020 arrived. The concluding message from the narrative is meant to be that the “new life” that we’ve been experiencing this year will be a never-ending, permanent cycle... year after year.

I think I met the baseline criteria fully. My narrative falls between 2-4 minutes at 3:43, and contains sounds both originally recorded by me (some voiceovers and a sighing sound), and not recorded by me but with proper licensing (all other sounds). There were certainly many instances of triple audio overlap; for example, there is a section after all the news clips end where there is a loud cacophony of multiple voices talking at the same time. Also, most, if not all, of the dinner party scene in the beginning had multiple tracks playing (voices, dishes clinking, laughing, etc.) as well as in the scenes with rain, thunder, sniffling, etc. The entire plot of my piece is about change (from a joyful New Year’s party to the dreary and scary 2020 and onwards), so it also meets that criteria. And to end, all sources have been credited with their appropriate license/ fair use quality. Furthermore, I think the ending of mine was very clear as it ended with a distorted static sound and gives the viewer some indication of the endless cycle I was attempting to depict (hopefully).

As for the aspirational, a few of the things I tried to do was file organization, using music to convey a narrative tone, experimenting with panning, and experimenting with new audacity effects. For file organization, my method was to put the sounds in files based on their scenes (2020 news, 2021, new year’s 2020 party, etc). This is less for the audience of my piece but was helpful for me as the creator when importing my sounds and changing sounds out. For the music, the majority of my piece had a very dismal and sad tone, and I used tense music to convey these feelings during the news scenes, and sad orchestra music during the 2021 cycle and onwards. I experimented with panning briefly during the end when the ambulance siren is heard (it pans from left to right). And as for the audacity effects, I played around with the pitch effect to disguise my voice in the flight announcement segment (tried to make myself sound like a man).

A piece of feedback I used was to make my news clips chronological, because having them all kind of random throws of the flow of the piece a little bit. I also really appreciated the enthusiasm towards my project because I was doubting it a little when I finished my first rough final draft! I went back and created a timeline of the events in my notes, then re-sorted the news clips accordingly. I agree that this bettered the flow and direction of my narrative. (PICTURED BELOW)

The screenshots included reflect the changed order of my news pieces. In the first one, the clips are not chronological and in the second they are in order. (PICTURED BELOW)

Also, I just thought I'd add in this screenshot of the end of my opening scene when I first was creating it. I had a lot of fun putting together this part because I feel like it seems like it could all be coming from one source, like one recording of a real dinner party or NYE celebration. But it was cool to me to put together so many little elements (such as the sound of a dish clinking or the combination of fireworks and people clapping) that seems insignificant on its own but is so noticeable to the creator. (PICTURED BELOW)

Overall, I really enjoyed making this project!

[LLP37]

I wrote my Final Reflection in a Word Doc, which I am just going to attach here so that the screenshot's don't get messed up or anything. SoundScape Overview.docx

[kevdliedel]

I enjoyed making my soundscape narrative, Running Through Oakland. It was, as described in the title, a dialogue-less soundscape taking one on run around Oakland and the Pitt campus area. I tried to make it clear where the listener was by using sounds native to the area, like construction on 5th Ave and the sound of the crosswalks there. I used bird sounds to signify shenley park, but that was more difficult than I anticipated as there aren't any really distinct sounds there. It began with a very loose concept and really just a lot of sounds I put in Audacity that I thought would work to tell my story, as shown below:

My first draft was pretty rough, with really just most of the sounds I wanted, not all placed in the correct spot or at the right volume with any effects. Unsurprisingly, most of the feedback was in regard to this and it helped me get a more concrete idea for how I should put the soundscape together. I also knew I had to get more sounds specific to the area since I hadn't yet had a chance to record them:

With this in mind, I began to work on editing the sounds, layering them, and adding in new sounds. As I continued to work, I made sure to name the sounds and place them in the order that they started so that it was easier to work on. I think this helped a lot and gave the audacity file a clean and cohesive look. As I was finishing, I was really unhappy with the original running sound that I had, so I recorded a new one and put it in. This is a look at my final draft:

I believe that I met all of the baseline criteria. I had multiple sounds that I recorded myself and credited and multiple that I found online and credited correctly. There were multiple points in which 3 layers of sound played at once. It played for 2-4 minutes, and I think that the idea of traveling through different areas gives a sense of something changing during the piece. I thought the shower fade out signaled an intentional ending. I think that I also completed several aspirational tasks. My files were organized to the best of my ability. I used a lot of fade-ins and fade-outs to make it feel like you were running past something. I used music throughout the run to create a consistent narrative, and my title gives one good insight into what they're about to listen to (I think).

All in all, I really enjoyed working on this project, and I hope you enjoyed listening to it!

[raisedDeadWizard]

"The Cycle" is the name of my soundscape project. I started by brainstorming what ideas I wanted to do, and settled on trying to capture the endless repetition and downward spiral that is life in quarantine. The end product ended up utilizing common sounds I found in my daily routine like a shower, keyboard and mouse clacking away and a zoom join meeting sound. This gave the illusion of a day progressing. Then after some work sounds, I would sprinkle in news reports about covid-19, politicians talking about the virus, or news casters making reports. At the "end" of the day, a rewind sound plays alluding to the endless repetition I mentioned before. The day also has background music "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" to give a very Fallout/Dystopian vibe. As the day ends, it then repeats with the background music changing tempo, to distort and show a change. At this point the protagonist of the sound scape can be heard coughing, while more severe news articles begin to be reported. This alludes to the increasing severity of the corona virus, and adds a little distorian to the repetition. The news tracks also start to overlap and play in either one ear or another to give the listener the sense that they are surrounded or trapped by the news reports and or politicians. The last day follows suit being even more intense with more coughing and more nes reports overlapping. One of the things that changes only at the end of the piece, is you can hear an ekg monitor beep occasionally throughout the whole piece. This can be easily missed, but gradually gets more frequent ats the piece goes on eventually flatlining at the very end. Overall I think the piece conveys the end-of-world mindless repetition that I wanted to convey in the beginning, and I feel like listening to the soundscape while closing your eyes transports you to this hell that we endure daily.

Here is my image progression: Preview:

Draft:

Final:

Comments used to revise:

I revised using this by adding more news clips to the end of my piece making the logical increase in severity more obvious and prevent blank space.

Criteria Evaluation: Contain at least one sound originally recorded by you; duration is flexible, depending on your soundscape and narrative.

• Recorded, Keyboard as well as Laptop closing Contain at least one sound NOT originally recorded by you, but fair game for you to use (e.g. Fair Use or open licensed)
• All other sounds were sourced online Have three layers (tracks) of sound overlapping at least once in the file, e.g. ambient sound + music + action
• Yes Play for 2-4 minutes
• Playtime is ~3 minutes Correctly credit your sources, either in the piece (usually at the end) or in a clearly labeled file in the repo
• Sources are credited in assets.md Have something change from the beginning to the end of the piece (think: plot)
• The protagonist gets more and more sick, as well as the tone and music shift Clearly signal an intentional ending
• Flatline indicates an intentional ending

Aspirational Inspirations Organize your files through track labeling, file structure, etc

• Labelled tracks and color coded them based on what they were (speaking, background music, sound effects etc.) Experiment with Audacity features/effects you haven’t used before
• Used the distortion feature on music, change tempo feature on music, the right-left sound channeling, and the volume control effect Locate the narrative with sounds specific to a place and/or time
• Covid news sources place the listener in 2020 Create a sense of 3D environment using panning and relative volume
• News clips revolve using left-right channeling Use soundtrack (music) to convey a consistent narrative/emotional tone
• Background music to give fallout/dystopian vibe Use soundtrack (music) to convey a climax or shift in narrative/emotional tone
• Music speeds up and slows down, becoming more/less distorted over time Demonstrate that listeners can describe the soundscape narrative as intended
• Had three volunteers listen to the soundscape and responded saying they felt sad/uncomfortable and that it reminded them of being in their dorms during quarantine: the intended response Use the title to help listeners understand the soundscape narrative as intended
• The Cycle, gleans insight into my intended view on the quarantine as a repetitive hell If not using human voices, have one sound respond to / interact with another (e.g. pouring sound + spoon stirring sound = coffee; pouring sound + crunching sound = cereal)
• Alarm clock gets responded to by a smack, mouse clicks get responded to by playing news clips Practice careful editing through well-aligned transitions and loops, cuts at zero crossings, etc

[jkomalley]

When starting this project, I was a complete beginner when it came to editing audio and using Audacity. So, as a way to make this project a little bit more accessible to me I decided to combine something that was unfamiliar to me with something I know all too well, a trip to target. After a little brainstorming I came up with a short story about the internal struggle I (and many people) face whenever they go to target. While brainstorming I also had the idea to include an angel and a demon on opposite shoulders of the listener as a narrative tool as well as a way to satisfy the requirements for this project. I was able to pan the sound to the left for the demon and to the right for the angle to make it feel as if they were really standing on the listeners shoulders. A big challenge for recording this project for me was having only myself to record all the dialogue needed, especially since I am terrible at making different voices (and I am just generally not a fan of how my voice sounds when it is recorded). To overcome this, I decided to just record my voice normally for all three characters in the story, then I used effects in audacity to change the pitch of my voice. I also made good use of the reverb effect in audacity to make all the voices appear like they were thoughts in my head. This was something I knew I really wanted to do, but I had no clue what to do when I initially opened the reverb effect and was met with all sorts of settings, I had no clue what to do with. After some research on google and using some of the factory reverb presets built into audacity, I was able to tweak the settings enough for me to be happy with the effect I was getting. Overall, I am very pleased with my work for this project, especially given I knew absolutely nothing about what I did prior to this. I believe I satisfied all of the baseline requirements based on my summary. I now have a baseline understanding of audacity and the tools built into it for sound editing, and I produced my first audio narrative. For the aspirational requirements for this project I believe I have an emotional intention that I can articulate. The emotional intention is the mental tug of war we all have when we go shopping and want to buy something that isn’t on our list. I was also able to use left/right panning to create a sense of location for the angel and the demon. The feedback I got was mostly positive from my classmates, and their only critique about there being a gap in the middle was because I hadn’t yet had a chance to finish cutting together all my dialogue clips. After working off my rough draft I was able to cut it all together and complete my soundscape narrative.

-Feedback from classmate

-Work In Progress

-Final cut

[csk32]

It was pretty easy for me to brainstorm what I wanted to do and once I was set on making my story happen in an airport, everything else quickly fell into place. Usually people spend hours in an airport, so I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make the scene happen within 4 minutes, but I did. The airport is a place that I usually go to at least once a year, but with coronavirus, I haven’t had this opportunity. While making this soundscape, it made me miss traveling quite a bit. The scene focuses on a girl traveling alone to Miami as she gets out of the cab, checks in and gets her ticket, goes through security, uses the bathroom, and then takes off. The only interaction she has with another person is while going through security, so I recruited my roommate to talk back and forth with me for this part. Other than that, you can hear her conscience talking all throughout the project.

Overall, I enjoyed doing this assignment and all of the creativity that came along with it. I have experience using iMovie and GarageBand for as long as I can remember, so it was fun to play around with Audacity for the first time. Majority of the sounds I used came from Freesound.com because they had such an immense selection for all the sounds I was looking for. However, I found myself having a hard time to pick between sounds because there were so many options. All the other sounds that weren’t found on Freesound were recorded with my iPhone and converted into .wav files on my laptop.

For my preview, I just added a few uploaded sounds to set the scene of the airport as well as the introduction of her arrival.

Then, I added my own recordings as well as a lot more sounds from Freesound and it all came together very well. Here are two screenshots of the final product:

When it came to getting feedback, all of it was really helpful and honestly made me look at my project from a whole different perspective. My soundscape at the time of the feedback wasn’t completely done, but I felt like it was pretty much there. However, after reading what my peers suggested, I ended up changing a lot more and adding different things that I wouldn’t have otherwise done.

As you can see, he recommended that I add a “thought bubble” VoiceOver to my project, and this really helped my project come all together. I talked as if it was my conscience speaking and added an echo effect, as well as split up the recording. This really helped as well for the listener to be narrated through what was happening in a different form. A common problem that everyone had when they gave feedback was that they couldn’t tell what was happening, so this definitely cleared that issue up. Additionally, I took the recommendation of adding someone saying that the flight was ready to board and the pilot saying that they were taking off. I actually recorded this with my own voice, but changed the pitch in the effects to make it sound like a man was talking for these parts. Beyond the advice given, I also played around with the audio by making some sounds louder or softer than others and having some play to the right and others to the left. I feel as though I have met all of the baseline criteria for this project. My soundscape ends right at 4 minutes (including a permission recording from my friend). It contains several sounds recorded by me, as well as many sounds from the internet as well; all of them are also properly cited in the CREDITS.md file. I additionally have three layers of sound overlapping multiple times in the file and a lot changes from the beginning to end, which I previously mentioned. Lastly, all of the deadlines and requirements were met within the last few weeks. As far as aspirational inspirations, I also met every single one of those, although they were not required.

[briansostek]

prose reflection.docx

[JTH74]

During this project, I found creating the idea for my war scene very easy but difficult to fill space. I found the most difficult thing was using all the time given since I felt like the sounds of a battlefield were more that of a cluster of sounds. There were many points where I took all of these sounds and dialogue pieces and layered them on top of each other as seen below. Another problem I ran into was that with GitHub. I had quite a lot of trouble with putting my files in my repository. I did end up figuring out the problems but since I figured out quite late I do not have any comments on my soundscape. The reason I chose a war scene as my soundscape was because my mother and grandfather both are war veterans. My grandfather in particular served years in the Vietnam war so this was mainly to commemorate him. It was extremely interesting to be able to listen to what my grandfather explained as the sounds of a battlefield. I tried my best to capture his detailed descriptions in my project. The main thing I wanted to capture was the constant gunfire and explosions. The next was how loud a helicopter or large bomb drop was compared to the rest of the battlefield. I had a great time learning about my family's experiences and this project really taught me a lot about sound editing. Below is my first screenshot after my draft where I finished my project's background noise including gunfire, grass, and any other noise. This next is when I finished placing where my dialogue would lie relative to the whole project. The final is when I finished placing everything and just need a few minor edits here and there.

As for feedback, as I mentioned I never got any but I had many people near me check my work and the main feedback I had was dead space which was very easy to fill with the background noise of gunfire and explosions. I also went back through my dialogue pieces and edited as much sound out of the background of them as possible given the constraints of where I recorded. For the baseline criteria for this project, I feel as though I have met adequately met them all. My soundscape is about 2 minutes and 15 seconds long which includes my trigger warning. There are multiple self-recorded lines and many sounds from the internet as well as the proper crediting in assets.md. As well as the aforementioned, I have many sound layers where I use the right and left sound configurations as well as for organizational reasons. Finally, I met all the due dates and completed the extra requirements that were set as optional.