Final Reflections: Soundscape Narrative

[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 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, February 4th.

[emmawooten12]

This final piece shows the battle a family faces when a child finds out they have a life-threatening illness like cancer. I wanted to focus on the emotions surrounding this entire process and will attempt to really elicit that sympathetic and sad reaction from the audience. The idea came from my connection with The Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. I have been given the incredible opportunity to meet and develop very good relationships with some of the families with children that have been in this hospital since they were born. I am constantly being inspired by their resilience and care with their children and want to give a little insight into what this experience is like for families.

This piece is my tribute to them.

I originally wanted to portray the whole day of Pitt Dance Marathon last year but decided that might be too complicated. I don’t think I could do that idea justice. Instead, I wanted to build off of the cause connection for PDM. I think I hit all of the baseline criteria: the piece plays for almost 3 minutes, has more than one original and more than one sourced sound file, and has at least 3 overlapping tracks multiple times. It also changes drastically from beginning to end, is a playable .mp3 file, and I met all the deadlines and requirements for the project. As for aspirational criteria, I definitely was able to hit some of these as well: I used relative volume and other effects (including left/right pan) to indicate distance, all speech used/recorded is clear, and have a clear organizational scheme to articulate. I also can show my audience interpretation matches what I intended (see feedback notecards below), I overlapped many sounds, created a sad emotional message, and used Audacity effects that were new to me (especially the envelope tool, but then again, the whole software application is new to me).

This project layout changed, because I wanted to show that these families go through a very similar process almost daily, with doctor's appointments, trips to the hospital, surgeries, and treatments. I decided to title the piece Ringing the Bell as a foreshadowing of the very end where the patient gets to ring the cancer free bell. For example, in this screenshot, you can see a few repetitions of the everyday routine driving to and from the hospital:

I made an effort to create enough repeating sounds that the listener can picture exactly what is happening when it is happening. The cool thing about this project, however, is that it is also up for interpretation. When listeners hear a certain sound like a car starting, in their own minds, they have a different idea of what kind of car that is, and where they are when they’re entering the car. I hope for it to be that way, because that makes it somewhat more personal to the listener.

As for feedback, I have below the 3 notecards I received from peers reviewing my work: Here, you can see the emotional aspect was portrayed correctly. As for feedback I used, the first notecard suggests I use left/right pan to indicate some sort of distance. I thought this was a great idea, so shown below is where I decided to add that effect:

I chose these sounds to use right and left pan as a way to imply location. A listener can picture hearing the heartbeat through a stethoscope, and then the child coughing comes from the other side of the listener. I thought this was a good idea, so I am interested to see if others do too.

Overall, this was my first time using Audacity, so I think I did a pretty good job.

[haileytrampel]

Going in to this project, I was actually rather nervous. I had never worked with Audacity, or even audio files in general. hearing the criteria even was a bit intimidating, but once I figured out the story I wanted to create I finally became excited.

I definitely began doing the bare minimum of the baseline. I got my track to be about five minutes and then shaved it down later on, focusing on the parts I felt actually told the story. I actually planned to record a majority of my sounds and at least attempted to, but quickly realized there were better quality ones that I had access to and traded these out. In total, I had eight self-recorded sounds. I then utilized eight sounds I found, available for use under a few different CC licenses.

I actually utilized overlapping tracks a lot. I felt like it created a more realistic feel for the plot I was trying to represent: traffic as well as the song played in the background for most other sounds, like the greeting with a friend, the walk sign, and the footsteps. The most I overlapped at once was five: my self-recorded traffic (that was a better transition into the noisier out-sourced traffic track), the out-sourced traffic track, the footsteps, the song, and the buses. Oddly enough, it does not sound overly-hectic, something I actually am both surprised and proud of.

Although there are simple changes in the soundscape, such as change from one location to another, there are deeper changes. A change from objective to subjective with the phone call, a change from unknowing of location to knowing with the “Walk sign is on to cross… Bigelow Boulevard”. These may not be obvious with first listen, but a lot of thought was put into determining how to affect the listener in a deeper way. With that, I brought in the emotional intention. It is supposed to show how a simple moment, like walking to class, can be much more significant. Maybe it is your last time walking that street, maybe it is your last ‘I love you’ to your mother, last time saying hello to a friend in passing. These events become unremarkable and lose significance in our minds. Yet, one day, we might look back in yearning for the moments we did not appreciate.

I used relative volume of clips for both logical reasons (like lowering the sounds of Voodoo so it does not drown out other sounds, or decreasing the sound of the ambulance to reduce shock factor), but also for creative reasons: using the effect adjustable fade, more specifically logarithmic fade, to produce the concept of the ambulance moving closer and then moving further away. I actually attempted to fade it using the envelope tool, but after playing around with different effects found that the logarithmic fade worked perfectly and I decided to also use it for the Walk Sign sound to signal moving towards and then away from it. I also used tools such as Click Removal and Noise Reduction to clarify sounds and remove excess noise, such as in the footsteps audio.

I used a combination of cuts and seamless transitions for different purposes. Most transitions were seamless as they were meant to be a continuous event, but for the phone call I used cuts to make it more realistic—when you get a phone call, the music stops, not fades.

From the peer review seen above, I actually took almost every recommendation. I did not take the one to change the elevator clip, as I felt it was very clear what was happening and out of every elevator sound I tested (including a self-recorded attempt!) I felt that clip captured it perfectly. I did cut the excess sounds that I accidentally left towards the end of the clip in case I needed them (which produced the 30 second silence and the too-long project). I also did click removal and noise reduction before increasing the volume of the footsteps to make them more apparent throughout the project! Finally, I smoothed out transitions after adding my final clips (walk sign and ambulance sirens) and played with effects for both of those.

I was really excited to hear that the peer-editors interpreted the soundscape as I intended and liked my use of clear dialogue and relative volume. Overall, while I still do not find myself fully comfortable with using Audacity, I really surprised myself with what I accomplished. I went outside my comfort zone and spent a lot of time (much of which was trial and error) try to achieve what I intended in my mind. I am really proud of how my project turned out.

[Tomasco16]

I am very proud of the work I was able to do with this project in Audacity. I have never had experience in any program like this and admittedly am not even very good with computers. Before even finding out what the baseline or aspirational criteria were I set out to tell a story. I have been getting back into my favorite video game recently, Skyrim, and it is a very common occurrence that when exploring a cave you run into a bear. I decided to give a more real life feel to the interaction by ending the scene in a car but that is where my inspiration stemmed from. The journey I took was an interesting one. I first decided that working from the end to the beginning was the easiest to do because of how I was able to sequence the sound. I quickly realized this made no sense because every time I added a new sound I had to individually shift all of my sounds back. SO I moved everything I had completed the 4 minute mark and started again from the beginning. I then worked my way through the clip and met somewhere in the middle with my rough draft. From there I took to working on the fades. I realized this was much easier than I made it to be when I was able to find the fade in and fade out options under the effects tab. I previously had been using the envelope tool to manually fade in and out all of the sounds I used. I was able to use the effects option to make everything more smooth and natural that it would have been if I continued to use the envelope tool. The most difficult part of this project was attempting to make the sounds of action sound lifelike. The jump, for example, in real life it is not just the action of a jump. There is the running start needed before, the sharp breath as your body prepares for exertion, and the loud impact needed to complete the landing. I needed all of this to flow together and sound lifelike so that my audience knew exactly what was going on. My favorite part of this project, and how I believe I exceeded the baseline requirements and did well on the aspirational as well, was the finished product. I was able to tell a story with more than three sounds overlaying, high quality and clarity, and really have something to show for it after the project. I now have the skill to work with audio files, have learned about licensing and can do extended media work in a marketing role if needed. What I took from my note cards was that I needed a more concise title. At the time I had different titles that did not match up and although it made sense to me because I made them when we were doing the notecards other people were not so sure. So once I changed that and game files corresponding names it was easier to see.

[Dilan1020]

I had a very broad idea of what my final project would look like going into this project. My idea was broadly, ‘the implications of cell phones and social media on human interaction’. I wanted to incorporate the audible effects of how people tend to talk to each other today.

In conclusion, I believe that I accomplished my task in a general sense. I think that with more familiarity with Audacity I would be able to better capture the feel I was going for, although I can say that I definitely accomplished my goal.

I started with some background noise and music. These three tracks were to act as the canvas in which the conversation would be had. The music is quite relaxed. This was purposeful because I did not want the music to be distracting and taking away from the conversation. Other than that, I added a track that features footsteps, background chatter, and other sounds that would be heard in a public place such as a restaurant or coffee shop.

I did not have much past this for our first peer review session because I had not yet recorded the actual conversation. So, there was plenty of constructive feedback that I was able to gather since I did not have much content at this point. Much of the feedback that I got involved giving this project some sort of foreground. In a way, it was beneficial that I received ideas from my peers before implementing the conversation. One idea that I received was to do more Left/Right switching with the cell phone sound effects. I really liked this idea and in my final project some of the rings and beeps use this effect. This effect makes the project more ‘layered’, such that the effects have their own space in the audio. The stack can be seen as background (music, noise), followed by cell phone effects, followed by what would be implemented as the conversation.

At this point, it was time to implement the conversational aspect of the soundscape. I recorded a short conversation with a friend, along with a couple of one-liners that I could cut in. In Audacity, most of my time was spent timing the cuts correctly. My process was to add an alert sound to the conversation, followed by one of those one-liners, and finally a response from myself. After this was complete, I would cut the raw conversation around this new audio and align the timing in such a way that it seemed as natural as possible. I repeated this process 3-4 times.

In conclusion, I satisfied the criteria when it came to the time requirement and the assets requirements. I found that my final product accomplished my specific goals that I set out for generally. I feel with some more experience with the software I could have really taken this to the next level, but I certainly learned a lot about audio collection and manipulation throughout this project. Also, I took away a lot more knowledge about licensing, Creative Commons, and attribution.

[angelinepeng]

To be very honest, I was really nervous going into this project. I wasn't sure how I would be able to edit and create my entire narrative in just one week. However, I am happy with my final product.

For my project, I wanted to tell the story of life -- how life acts in an interesting way, seemingly in circles. Although I know that the narrative I created doesn't necessarily reflect everyone's life or experiences, I think that the general concept of the circle can still be applied and interpreted by listeners to fit their own experiences.

Originally, I had wanted my narrative to highlight what I believed to be a full and complete life, from young to old. My idea was that it would begin with the hospital sounds and that the protagonist would go through childhood and adulthood, spanning up until having grandchildren and being retired, ultimately ending with the hospital sound effects again. However, I wasn't completely sold on this thought. I soon realized that we experience way too many things in life for me to be able to condense it into something less than four minutes. My purpose was to celebrate life, but this version did not accentuate the celebration of life as much as I wanted it to.

I then opted for the circle to end with the woman giving birth to new life instead. With the addition of the baby cry again at the very end, I think that it emphasized the point of Circles much more.

Still this was difficult, as I wasn't sure what clips to include. I tried to incorporate as many childhood highlights that I could remember from my own life. The sound of the bus, playing field games such as soccer, the alarm clock, a mother's cooking. I was going to do a fade-out effect on each of these clips, but I think the quick, abrupt cut makes the listener realize that the scene has changed and time has passed and fast-forwarded. Instead of using the fade-out/in effects, I worked with noise reduction, amplifier, and pitch change. I also tried to space out gaps to match how much forward the protagonist moved in time. The closer together the following clips were, the smaller the gap in time.

I think what really ties the piece together is the background piano instrumental that I was able to find off of Soundcloud. It is a light melody that still has some changes in tones that helped me tell the story. I especially liked the way that it worked out whenever the protagonist of my narrative is getting proposed to, the instrumental is at a softer point, and we, as listeners, can tell that something is about to change. I also thought that the instrumental, although soft, is an inspiring piece, that celebrates life without any words.

Much of my progress actually came from my peers. The draft that my peers listened to was so incomplete and very rough. They helped foster the growth and completion of my ideas.

Before:

Middle Progress

After: I had so many audio layers that my laptop was getting so slow! I rendered the existing track into an mp3 file and then added a voiceover in the beginning.

I believe that I have met all the baseline criteria. I also tried to reach all of the aspirational criteria by playing around with effects, sound distance, left/right pan during the soccer scene and mother laughing. Although my clips cut abruptly, this is purposely so that the listener can tell that time has passed.

[lumiio]

I think my soundscape definitely ended up a lot different from what I had originally planned, even though the basic idea was pretty much the same the whole time. I was able to record most of my sounds since they were mostly sounds you'd potentially hear while cooking or making food. I only ended up sourcing two sounds - the phone ringing and the doorbell - from online.

From the start, I knew I wanted to do a basic rhythmic "song"-like soundscape, but the specifics were very vague. Originally, the call from the boyfriend was a call to the boyfriend to get his Netflix password, but I had a hard time trying to figure out the best way to incorporate a show playing in the background and not have it fight with the rhythm of the rest of the piece. In this first screenshot, I didn't even have my base beat sound recorded yet and had to source a temporary sound online. I ended up later deciding to change the call to be from the boyfriend, saying that he'd be a little bit early, which helped figuring out what to do with the second half of the soundscape after the interaction.

With the nature of my soundscape, I ended up layering quite a lot of sounds. At the peak of the layering, I have nine sounds playing at once. The difficult part was getting the sounds to play in rhythm and then copying and pasting that to form something that was three minutes long. I think some of the earlier sounds do get a little bit lost with the introduction of the later sounds, but that sort of layering works in my favor as it brings out the progress of time with the cooking.

One of the most challenging parts of the soundscape was the sped up tempo during the second half. I wanted to do a gradual speed up, but I wasn't sure how to really do that so I split the second part into three different sections with distinct speeds. I sped up these sections individually with the tempo special effect on Audacity. Then, playing with stereo sounds, I overlapped the sounds of glass ringing and plates shifting to create a more frantic and hectic feel. This was mostly to further emphasize the panic. Also to add more variability, I shifted the pitch of every other two measure a step up (I believe it was E to F). I felt like the addition of the extra sound and the pitch shift was enough to make the second half different enough from the first part that it wouldn't get stale listening to the same thing for another minute.

I received a lot of positive feedback about my soundscape, which I was very happy about since I felt like my soundscape was pretty much finished. I did make a couple small tweaks and ended up messing with effects a little bit more as suggested to put a little more emphasis on the ending. I also re-adjusted the last knife chop to feel a little less abrupt. Overall I think I met all of the baseline criteria and also used at least one audacity effect, as well as attempted to layer many sounds without losing focus on the piece.

[JakeBaumbaugh]

As seems to be the general consensus, when we were first assigned this project, I was a little bit... terrified. Image editing and HTML sounded doable and even fun, but audio worried me. I'd never really done much with audio track mixing and all that, but as I worked on the project, I ended up having a lot of fun learning how to use Audacity to create my narrative and tell the story I wanted to tell.

Procrastination played a big part in my work on this project, but coming back to Audacity not for a school project, I think I could have a lot of fun with it. As I began to search for sound effects and background music and put together enough of something as a first draft for Jan. 23, I was spending a lot of time trying to find the right assets. I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted the narrative to play out by this point, but I knew the setting and the general story. Finding Creative Commons background music that didn't just sound electric was difficult, as a lot of it was within that style. I'm really satisfied with the "funky" music I settled on, and I feel it does a great job at making the listener feel at ease and connect with the main character as an astronaut. In fear of making a pun, astronauts can sometimes be seen as above the rest of society (not the best wording to get the point across, but I couldn't resist the joke) and the relatable music helps to bridge that gap.

So, with just the background music and a small few sound effects, I found my project looking something like this: No where near a final product. Not even a minute (ignoring the extra audio shifted over from the end), with no story and nothing happening. Groovy music is great, but can't carry a project quite that far.

Come Sunday and Monday night before the final draft was due, I really put the work in to have a semi-finished product. Found more sound effects, had my friends record some voice lines, put it all together, and it starts to look a lot better: By this point, I was much more comfortable with using Audacity, and I was pretty dang happy with my result. I surpassed the 2:00 mark, had a few self-recorded sound mixed in with the out-sourced effects and music, and plenty of overlapping tracks, all held together by a cohesive storyline. I then decided to go ahead and take my 5 hours of sleep and be prepared for class the next day.

Two of my notecards from the peer review process said this: Despite my headphones acting up now and again, the general consensus was that the dialogue was hard to hear. The music throughout the whole process was sort of overbearing, so this was no surprise. Turned up the gain specifically on the diagnostics dialogue, and turned it down further on the music. As a result, the dialogue was much more clear and easy to understand. The second note card (from Olivia) was not a fan of the dramatic ending music, while Angeline enjoyed it, so I ultimately made the decision to leave it as is, as I felt that it went well with the story.

In the end, I think my soundscape meets and potentially exceeds most of the aspirational criteria. I used relative volume and left/right panning when cutting between scenes, which created a sense of moving around the space station. It is absolutely best used at the end when the spacewalk begins, as you hear the music fade to signal getting farther away, but also panning towards the left ear to suggest being farther in one specific direction. This was also used in scene changes, which was improved in the revision process with a slight audio skip to signal a time difference as well as location. The dialogue is now clearly able to be heard, which was definitely lacking in some situations before changes were made from the final draft. The notecards from peer reviews all got the idea that the plot was an astronaut going about his day before performing a spacewalk, showing that the story is communicated at least decently well. The emotional intention of the piece is clear, as the regular daily tasks of the astronaut are completed casually before the nervousness revealed as the spacewalk begins. You feel his nervousness, and then awe as the dramatic music fades in slowly to give a sense of just how grandiose open space can be.

Ultimately, I enjoyed making my soundscape and telling my story, which I honestly didn't expect. I went into this assignment expecting to dislike it but was certainly proven wrong. Still looking forward to the HTML page the most though.

[kss73]

This soundscape project was exciting and challenging for me as I have never done anything like this or used audacity before. I decided to pick this story line for my project because my roommates and I had just recently hosted a house party and I wanted to represent how the whole day went from morning to night. The first half of my soundscape is of me cleaning as I added sounds of vacuuming, sweeping, laundry and more. Then, the second part is of people entering as the party begins and slowly the background music and conversations get louder and louder as the night progresses. Eventually everyone leaves and I take the trash out and head to bed. This soundscape summarizes a whole day going into hosting a party.

When I first started this project, I started off with sounds of the shower and making tea and basically how my day typically would start.

I noticed these sounds weren’t relevant to my storyline and I restarted the project with the first sound clip saying “Alexa play cleaning music” which set sort of explains what I am doing for the first half which is cleaning.

In my soundscape 80% of the sounds are recorded by me with 4 clips outsourced from Freesound which are the sweeping sounds, vacuum sound and the two songs that I used throughout the project. I feel that I have definitely met the baseline criteria as I have more than one sound originally recorded by me and more than one sound outsourced by Fair Use. I also have 3-4 layered tracks at multiple parts of my project. Mostly during the second half during the party scene I have the song track, background people talking track, drinks pouring track, beer pong balls bouncing track and on and off focused conversations track. The total length of the project is 3.55 minutes and I have a lot changing from the beginning to the end as there is a dramatic shift to the day. All of these meet the baseline criteria required for a grade of B. Below is the feedback I received to help me reach to the aspirational target.

From the Peer review everyone seemed to understand and were able to follow the story line from the start to end which I felt was a good start. The main feedback I received is that the transitions could be a little smoother so I made a few changes and used some different types of audacity effects and added some fades. One of the recommendations I received is that the background music while I am cleaning gets a little quite as the other sounds get louder and to even those sounds. However, I decided to keep that part the same because my goal was to make the cleaning sounds louder than the background sound. A lot of the times when we are vacuuming it’s hard to listen to the TV or background noise so that was what I was aiming to do to create that setting.

These are a few screenshots of my final project layout and there are a few audacity fades that are viewable however I decided to not make the effects too dramatic. I believe all the sounds that are overlapping make sense and don’t cause confusion. Towards the end of the party a lot of sounds are overlapping and it gets a lot louder and blurrier but that was my goal as parties tend to get really blurry and chaotic towards the end. Once the background conversations end and the door shuts I faded out the party music to make it quieter as I take the trash out. I have dialogue of myself speaking to Alexa, a few party conversations, and some people knocking and entering. I made the conversation at the end louder and more confusing as it wasn’t scripted and felt like a real conversation at a party would be this random. I feel that I have met majority of the aspirational targets and overall feel good about my soundscape.

[hannahlangmead]

I was very nervous to start this project because of my lack of computer skills. I didn’t want to pick an idea that was too challenging because I’m a perfectionist and I knew I wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t execute my idea how I wanted. Looking back, I wish I challenged myself a little bit more because I realized that Audacity is not as hard as I imagined. I decided on doing an audio vlog of my trip to New York with my family. This was fun because I got to record a lot of the sounds myself. However, it was hard to remember to record things when I was busy in the city with my family. Even so, I managed to reach all the baseline criteria. My narrative started with me in Pittsburgh on the phone with my parents, then moves to my hometown, to NY, and finally to a Broadway theater; this is how I showed change from the beginning to the end.

When I first started using the software, I was cutting my sound and rearranging it, but it sounded choppy. Here’s an example from my first draft:

As you can see, I didn’t link the audios back together. I soon figured that part out, which made my audio so much smoother. I was a little worried in the beginning about finding a place to use three sounds overlapping. I realized that it wasn’t too hard once I started to refine my project. Here you can see how I overlapped three sounds in three different places because of my music in the background:

My project meets the baseline criteria of being between 2-4 minutes, it comes in at around 2:30. As I said, I recorded most of the sounds myself, but I also included a few sounds from the internet. Freesounds.org was really helpful in finding realistic sounds like the bus engine and the car door opening and closing. I mostly needed the online sounds for small things that I forgot to record but add some more detail. After I got my notecards back, I could only add a few more things. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any more recordings of my family talking to add in like they suggested. I did get to tweak some things to fit their suggestions though.

I amped up the volume of the city to make it more obvious using the amplify tool (which I found really helpful). I also added some extra honks to make it sound busier like New York. I tried to add some white noise under my clips to make it sound more cohesive as well. Hailey suggested to add more effects so I used the noise reduction effect to make the voices of the workers at the theater stand out and I added some fades to the music and the applause.

I think I also met some of the aspiration criteria as well. I did my best with the basic idea that I used for my project, because I still wanted to keep it realistic. I used differing volume in certain parts to signal distance like my milkshake being really loud vs. the hum of the bus engine being quiet because I was standing outside of it. I had clear dialogue with my family and the theater workers, but I also had muffled voices in the theater and the street as well. I think my sound flows really well and all of the audio cuts were purposeful. I used a few Audacity tools that I was uncomfortable with and I tried to use the keyboard shortcuts to familiarize myself with those as well. I believe my narrative translates and my intentions are clear. Overall, I am happy with the way it turned out! I’m excited to challenge myself more next time now that I am comfortable with the software.

[MDLudwig]

Going into this project, I quickly knew that I wanted to make something that could be rooted in reality. I wanted to make something that would feel real. Soon after that, I came up with the idea to make my soundscape about people reacting to an emergency alert from the TV. What I wanted to accomplish most with this project is make the setting of my narrative as real sounding as possible. When mapping out in my head where I wanted sounds to be coming from, I based it roughly on my house that I live in now. I thought about all of the things that I hear from my living room, these include cars, the sound of the TV in front of me, and people talking/cooking in the kitchen to the right. One of the first sounds that I looked for was an ambient room noise that I could use. Although it is quite subtle, it makes a big difference when compared to how noticeable the silence is without it. The next clip that I found was the cars passing by. The original sound clip had all of the cars in quick succession, so I had to cut them up and make sure that the cuts were not noticeable. To make it seem more real, I balanced the sound of the cars to the left and quieted them down to make them sound like they were on the street outside to the left. I also found a clip that contained various kitchen sounds (pots, cabinets, etc). I quieted these down slightly and balanced them to the right to further create the sense of environment that I wanted. For the sounds of the TV, I found a clip of Avatar on YouTube that has a creative commons license. For my emergency alert, I got mock headers from the FEMA website and had those interrupt the TV. For everything on the TV, I applied a slight reverb effect on it to make it sound like it was in front of the listener. In order to make the narrative more convincing, I added an air raid siren as well as a police car and made them both sound distant. Both of these clips were fairly short so I had to cut sections out and repeat them to elongate it. All of this got me to about here:

I met with my friend Madi to record the dialog the following weekend. Before I met up with her, I found a fake emergency alert on YouTube that I cut up and used the text to speech voice from. Once I synced that up with everything else, Madi and I recorded the dialogue in tune with what I had already created. When we recorded it, I had us position ourselves in spots to make it sound like we were in this room that I had created via various sounds. I think it turned out pretty good. Once I had cleaned it up a bit and timed it up with the rest of it, I had something that looked like this: The very bottom track in this is the dialog, and directly above that is the emergency alert voice. This is what I considered the full draft. After the peer review, a couple of my cards suggested fading out the ending and making it less abrupt. I faded out both the air raid siren as well as the police siren and had an EAS tone mark the ending of the soundscape. I think that the alert sound with the sirens fading out in the background gives off an almost chilling energy that I really like. Another thing that I did to tweak the ending was add in a sound of the two starting up a car and driving away. I noticed a small pause in the alert noise so I placed it in between that. The final thing that I did for the soundscape was cut the sound of the door closing out of the dialog and placing it in its own track so that I could manipulate the pan and make it sound more like it was coming from the left. Here is a picture of the final draft and a picture of the note cards:

In regards to criteria, I've met all of the baseline. The dialogue is the one sound recorded by me. I have tons of sounds not recorded by me and permission to use all of them. I have over three layers overlapping for most of the track. My time is a little over three and a half minutes. I also think that I've met quite a few of the aspirational goals. Many of my sounds are balanced to the left/right to create a sense of direction. The sirens and cars had their volume edited to create a sense of distance. I like to think that my dialogue is clear. Also, judging from the cards, my audience interpretation is what I intended. Overall, I really enjoyed doing this project. Audio manipulation is something I've wanted to do for a long time but I never got around to it until now. I think that it was even more fun that I thought it would be and I can see myself doing more with it in the future.

[sydneymasterson]

When I first started my project, I decided to set the scene of a school cafeteria. I really liked the work I had done which summed up to around thirty seconds. However, Audacity crashed, and my work was lost… typical. Luckily, I wasn’t to far into the project and was able to start over without losing too much time. When I did, I started to take a new direction as I thought the cafeteria scene would be too reliant on dialogue. The first thing I had to do when starting my soundscape over was picking a new topic. I ended up going with something we are all very familiar with, a ride in the car. I wanted to start from the very beginning of the drive so the first sound I looked up was that of a car starting. Going forward, I was surprised at just how many options for all different kinds of care are out there. I usually ended up listening to at least five different clips before deciding on one to use to in my soundscape. I was able to create the entire beginning of my soundscape from clips found on FreeSound.org. Here is what the beginning of the work looked like before I entered any self-recorded clips:

While Freesound.org was very helpful, there were some sounds I decided would be better to record myself. I sat in my car for about half an hour recording any noise I thought I might want to use in my soundscape. One challenge I faced while doing this was preventing unwanted background noise from contaminating my clips. Overcoming this challenge included turning off the heat and waiting for a time when other cars weren’t driving by. I used the app “Mp3 Recorder” to record the sounds in my car. When it was time to submit a full draft for class on January 23, I had about one minute and forty-five seconds of what I thought was pretty average work. One of my biggest drawbacks was the fact that my own voice was in the soundscape, which is gross. However, a lot of the feedback I got from the peer review made me feel a lot better. Angeline’s note card specifically was very encouraging.

Jake’s note card brought up a very real problem I was facing – I had no ending to my soundscape. I knew I wanted to have a bit of a mysterious and ominous ending, but I still wanted the listener to know it was over.

Leading up to the crash, the listener is placed right in the car with – or even as – the driver, so I decided the crash should go the same way. After the crash, all we hear for a while is a deafening ring in our ears followed by panicked breathing as the driver comes to grips with what just happened. As they do this, their heart begins to beat very loudly and sirens approach for the second time in this soundscape – only this time we are hoping they are coming for us. All of the sounds begin to fade as the driver once again loses consciousness and their heart begins to beat slower, and slower, and finally, stops. Now that I finally had an ending, I felt a lot better about my project and now felt that I could call it a complete soundscape. After some fine tuning and touch-ups, I had my final product.

For the minimum criteria: • Contain at least one sound originally recorded by you; duration is flexible, depending on your soundscape and narrative. o Several of the sounds, including the radio, horn, and breathing, were recorded by myself. • Contain at least one sound NOT originally recorded by you, but fair game for you to use (e.g. Fair Use or open licensed) o I utilized many clips from FreeSound.org, including the car starting, accelerating, and police sirens. • Have three layers (tracks) of sound overlapping at least once in the file o There are three sounds overlapping at multiple times throughout the soundscape, the first of which at 1 minute into the project. • Play for 2-4 minutes o My soundscape is approximately 2 minutes and 37 seconds long. • Have something change from the beginning to the end of the piece; Meets deadlines and requirements from the assignment prompt README; Export a playable .mp3 file o Completed For the aspirational criteria: • Use relative volume and other effects to signal distance o I utilized both the fade in / fade out and the envelope effects several times throughout the project. This included when the police siren approached for the first time. At first it grows, signaling the police car was approaching the driver. However, it begins to fade after it passes, much to the relief of the driver. I also used the effect on the heartbeat, which grows louder as the situation dawns on the driver and fades out as they lose consciousness. These tools are utilized multiple other times including with the ringing ears sound, the second police siren, and the car accelerating and braking. • IF dialogue, some should be clear o Even though my voice is very difficult to listen to, I believe that the words I am saying are easy to understand and no or negligible background noise is heard in the clips. • Clear organizational scheme that you can articulate; Seamless transitions from scene to scene / clip to clip o I believe the clips I used create a clear story: The driver starts the car, leaves the garage, accelerates away, and starts trying ti find a radio station. Then the driver hears police sirens, turns off the radio, ands pleads the police won’t pull her over. Once they pass, the driver is relieved and once gain works to find a radio station. A car horn is heard in the background foreshadowing the crash that occurs next. Following this, their ears begin ringing and their breathing becomes very shallow and rapid as their heartbeat grows louder. Police sirens are heard again but this time in a completely different context. They fade away along with the heartbeat as it gets slower, slower, and stops. I also utilized the fade in / fade out to end sounds more realistically instead of unnaturally abruptly. • Show off how many sounds you can overlap without losing focus o During the crash I have several sounds overlapping at once and combined two separate clips from Freesound.org in order to create a crashing sound that I was satisfied with. While a ton of stuff is going on; the driver’s ears are ringing, their heart is pumping, they are breathing rapidly, and sirens are approaching. • Have an emotional or intellectual intention that you can articulate o I wanted to first out the listener in a comfortable and familiar situation – a ride in the car. However, I didn’t want to leave them there for too long. First, the anxiety of being pulled over is presented, followed by the relief of the police car flying past you. As the listener gets settled back in – listening to short clips of a bunch of fun, familiar songs – BOOM! A driver’s worst nightmare, they have been in a terrible accident. This shock becomes anxiety, fear, and sadness as the driver realizes what has happened, becomes incredibly panicked, and eventually fades out of consciousness as their heartbeat slows to a stop. I purposefully do not explicitly present whether the driver survives or not because I’m just not that nice and want the listener to be left with the mystery and anxiety of not knowing.
• Use Audacity effects that are new to you o They’re all new to me! Something I had a lot of fun messing with specifically however, was the “Change Speed” effect that I used to slow the heartbeat.

[jerols4]

When we first started talking about this project, I thought I would do something rooted in my personal life like we did in the exercise. After giving it some thought, I decided that I wanted mine to be more cinematographic and challenge myself to create an atmosphere that none of us could live in today. That's when I decided to make a wild west soundscape.

At first, my soundscape was going to be a cliche Hollywood scene, where a cowboy sitting at a saloon is challenged by an outlaw, and the cowboy fights him and wins. After first working on the project, I found this to be a bit boring, and that I should add in a twist that it's actually a sheriff in the fight who tragically loses. With my first draft, I thought I had this narrative down, but after having my peers listen, I found that without dialogue, this wasn't very clear. I took Emma's advice (attached above) and decided to space out the transition from the bar scene to the fight outside in order to give a more clear transitioning of scenes. I also added narration to the start of the soundscape that briefly summarizes the setting and gives a bit of a taste of what is to follow. Lastly, I had Kevin record a voice line from the outlaw challenging the sheriff, making the transition even clearer. These key changes (screenshots below) made all the difference in the narrative, and really gave the whole piece the cohesion that it needed. The first screenshot shows the addition of opening music and narration, and the second screenshot shows the outlaw's dialogue added to the transition, as well as the space between the outside and inside scenes.

I went into this project with basic Audacity skills, but mostly from just recording my voice or splicing together two pieces of audio. After working on this project, I have much more of a feel for Audacity and sound editing in general. In the screenshot below, you can see how I utilized the envelope tool to give the abrupt, but not too abrupt, interruption of the outlaw entering the bar. Alongside that, I used the fade in and fade out effects on all of the music in the soundscape, and I even experimented with the equalizer and compressor when it came to making dialogue sound more rugged. I also experimented a lot with the left/right pan and sound levels in order to give each specific sound byte a specific placement in the auditory environment. I definitely see how this class could prepare one for real world usage of audio tools, even if they aren't strictly in Audacity. On top of the technical skills that I gained, I also learned how to form a better narrative. This was mostly thanks to the advice of my peers, who guided me on my dialogue, transitions, and introduction. Before I added those in, it was quite confusing for the listeners to understand exactly what was going on, but now it is much more clear.

As for the criteria:
I feel I met and exceeded all baseline criteria. My soundscape runs for 3:01, contains five sounds recorded by me, contains sixteen sounds I outsourced and credited on my ASSETS.md page, has twenty three layers of audio, of which four overlap at some time. It also has a narrative with a beginning and ending and an exported mp3 file.
For the aspiration criteria, I used both track volume and left/right pan as described above to create a more realistic sense of space for the soundscape. I used a clear microphone for all dialogue, and the dialogue is easily understood. I took advice from my peers and broke up the inside and outside scene with a few seconds of silence in order to delineate between them. I feel that after heeding their advice my peers would say that the story is much more clear, and after having Kevin listen to it again, he would agree. I layered twenty three sounds, but didn't get too carried away with them all playing at the same time. I created a somber emotional moment in my narrative with the tragic ending of the sheriff's death. Finally, as explained above, I used many Audacity effects that I hadn't used before in order to make great improvements to my project.

[ktdemay]

From when this project was introduced to us, I knew exactly what I wanted to make my project about generally. I knew I wanted to make it something about hockey. Hockey is my favorite sport and a big part of my life so I wanted to make a project to show the sounds of hockey and how it would feel if you could only hear.

In the beginning I was just going to do an ordinary play in a hockey game that ended with a goal being scored. The more I thought about it I decided to make it into an emotional overtime that led to a team winning the championship. I wanted to take the audience through a journey and make them feel like they were a fly on the wall during this underdog story. I appreciated all the feedback I got from my group members and implemented it all. I added dialogue between the players and with the coach's speech in the beginning. I made the skating sounds transition from left to right a couple times to make the motion of the game felt. I also added a story behind it to connect the audience to the piece.

I had never used Audacity or any sound editing software before this project so getting used to it took some time. I definitely think this project greatly improved my skills and I now feel comfortable creating a narrative using sounds either sourced by me or by others.

For the criteria: I met all of the baseline criteria. My narrative lasted for 3:41 which was in the required 2-4 minutes. I have multiple sounds recorded by me and multiple sounds outsourced which complete the requirement of at least one of each. During parts of the piece I have up to 7 sounds playing in unison which satisfying the need for at least 3. As for having something change from the beginning to end, I started the piece off with a coach giving an inspirational speech to his team, who were underdogs. This rallies the team who eventually win the championship. I met all deadlines and requirements (all my sounds are in CREDITS.md) and I included a playable mp3 file of my project.

As for the aspirational part, I feel I hit almost every one of those as well. I made the crowd seem like it's in the distance and you can hear this very well in the beginning when the coach enters the locker room and you can hear the crowd louder when the door is open. I also made the players sound a little quieter to make them seem farther away. Those two and more satisfy using relative volume to signal distance. The skating sounds pan from left to right throughout the piece to give a sense of motion which satisfies the use left/right pan. The dialogue that needs to be clear is very clear, this being the coach's speech. I purposefully diluted the player talk a little bit to make it seem like they aren't right next to the listener. I definitely have a clear organizational scheme with the entire piece flowing together nicely with no sudden cuts. I didn't want any hard cuts in the audio because it was meant to mimic the smooth flow of a hockey game. Anyone slightly familiar with hockey will be able to interpret what I was portraying with this piece, and even someone unfamiliar will be able to gather what is happening based on character dialogue. For showing off how many sounds you can overlap, I previously mentioned how at parts I had 7 sounds overlapping and the focus is still very clear. I connected the audience emotionally because who doesn't love a good underdog story? I set it up with the audience being let in on the fact that the other team is better in the coach's speech. Then the piece ends with the underdogs scoring and winning the championship with a feel good ending. Finally for the Audacity effects, I used echo on the coach's footsteps, fade out with the crowd cheering and song at the end, the envelop tool to reduce crowd sound in the locker room and to create the left/right pan, and the amplify effect to enhance certain sounds like the final shot.

Attached below is my progress throughout the project (you can't see the full project in the final screenshot):

[katmiller10]

I found this project a little challenging, but also really rewarding because I’m proud of what I created and how far I have come in terms of using Audacity.

When first brainstorming ideas, I wanted to do something realistic and that captured an experience that I would have gone through. I decided to create the narrative of me going out to the bar with friends on the weekend. I knew going into this project that I wanted it to be as authentic as possible so most of my sounds are self-recorded.

I began my project by sourcing some sounds from online that would help tell the part of my story that was me getting ready. I organized my sounds on Audacity in chronological order. This was my first time using Audacity, and in the beginning it was a little frustrating. I have only ever used Garage Band in the past, so learning to use this audio software was challenge for me because many of the buttons are fairly different. Over time however, I feel as though I really got the hang of it and I’m actually really glad that I now know how to use it properly!

I’d say one of the hardest parts of this project was finding music online that would go well with my narrative and that didn’t sound cheesy. Before the peer review I put in placement holder music that really sounded quite horrible in my soundscape. Many of my peer comments also brought up the music and how they thought that it should flow better and connect more with my story. They also talked about how I should play around with the volume so that my overall soundscape would be more cohesive. I’m really grateful for my classmates’ feedback, and Brawler even recommended I use the free music provided on YouTube, and that is where I ended up sourcing my music from. After adding the new music I worked on transitioning it better as An suggested by tweaking the volume at the beginning of the track and at the end.

After my first draft I also added more filler sounds like crowds on the street and additional bar sounds like the sliding of a shot glass and more chaotic dialogue to add to my story. In addition I also really played a lot around with the volume of my tracks in order so I could fade out my background music when I wanted to highlight certain sounds and voices.

As for the criteria, I think I completed all of the baseline and almost all of the aspirational criteria as well. My project is just under four minutes with over nine sounds sourced from online and over 15 different self-recorded sounds. I feel as though the one thing I really excelled at was making my project realistic with the dialogue and random conversations that I had with my friends while going out. I intentionally chopped dialogue up to make it sound a little disjunct and messy because in reality that is what happens when you go out late on the weekends at Southside. I cited all my sources and I completed a full and clear story narrative documenting my night out. I layered a large amount of my sounds as well to create something full, and I played around with the volume on each separate track; something that I have never done before using Audacity or any other audio software. The comments from the peers were all really nice and people had a clear idea of what my story was. They also touched upon how real some of my sounds were, which was one my biggest goals from the start. Overall, I think that what I created, given this was the first time using Audacity and recording sounds from my own experiences, was really good, and I’m really proud of what I made.

[onewport23]

For my soundscape project, I wanted to create an audio narrative that I felt I had a lot of personal experience with, and thus the knowledge to develop a thorough, detailed soundscape. With this in mind, "Hiking to the Top" is a narrative inspired by my favorite trail that I hike with my dog and family at home. In order to achieve this, I reflected on my own associations with hiking and that specific trail, and considered which sounds encompass the experience. After I completed this process, I began sourcing audio files both online and through self-recording.

In terms of the baseline criteria, I accomplished the sourcing requirements by recording seven of my own audio files (including: drinking from water bottle, background breathing, climactic heavy breathing, and periodic narration), in addition to seven outsourced clips, all cited in my ASSETS.md file, and all permitted under a CC license. I determined which sounds to outsource by considering the audio quality that I could realistically achieve with my own equipment/geographic location, and whether sed quality would be sufficient for a well crafted soundscape. Furthermore, my narrative reaches the time requirement of 2-4 minutes (mine is 3:48 minutes). When overlapping audio throughout the soundscape, I maintained a minimum of three overlapping tracks throughout almost the entire file, aside from the final 20 seconds. At two points in the file I have a total of six overlapping tracks. This subsequently implies that something changed from the beginning to the end of the piece. This occurs within the hiker's physical state (increased breathing, eating, drinking, etc.), and the geographic landscape created in the narrative (passing a stream, stopping at a higher aerial overlook, etc.). Lastly, I met the baseline criteria by meeting all of the project deadlines, and exporting a playable .mp3 file with each draft.

When considering the aspirational criteria, I feel as though I have used many of the inspirations in my project. To start, Audacity was completely new to me when I began my soundscape, so in turn, all of the effects that I implemented were new to me. I heavily utilized the amplify and noise reduction effects (see attached screenshots), as well as the fade-in and fade-out effects. I used the latter specifically to create the impression of changing location. Using the "stream" track as an example, I manipulated it with fade-in and fade-out to suggest that the hiker was getting close to it, walked over it, and eventually trailed away from it. I also used the fade-out function with the "squirrel" track to suggest that after it was spotted by the dog, it ran in the opposite direction. When discussing these two tracks in particular, I also implemented right pan in conjunction with relative volume to create a sense of their location in relation to the hiker. I did this because knowing my own dog, he is rarely ever walking right in front of me, but rather looking for squirrels and exploring on his own outside of the trail.

After presenting the full draft to my classmates during our revision section, I received some very valuable feedback that I incorporated into my final draft. In the photo that I included below, Sydney mentioned that she felt like there should be a “breathing” track throughout the entire soundscape rather than the one that I had only placed at the end in order to signal the hiker perspective at the beginning of the narrative. I agreed with her suggestion, and recorded another “breathing” track for my final draft. Additionally, Sydney commented that she didn’t immediately recognize the “hiking” track as “hiking.” I believe this was partially due to the lower volume that I had set that track to. I significantly increased the volume for my final draft. These two notes in particular suggested to me that I had not achieved the explicit narrative that I was attempting to - a person hiking on a trail that leads to an aerial overlook. Although I was initially avoiding narration in order to create a more authentic, natural soundscape, I decided that it was ultimately necessary to deliver my desired story. For this reason, I added my original narration throughout the file to provide more context for the readers, and articulate my intended emotional response, which was that of serenity, peacefulness, and physical achievement.

Overall, I believe that I challenged myself with this soundscape project by learning and exploring the Audacity program, creating a thorough narrative that reflects my personal experiences, and seriously considering others feedback in my final revisions.

[anngx]

Even though the scenario presented in my final soundscape narrative is different than the original idea that I had in mind, the underlying tones are still the same. From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to create something intense and evocative. In the preliminary stages of this project, I had plans to recreate a scene of an altercation through sound. As the project went on, however, that idea began to fall apart and slowly morph into something else.

As I searched for sounds, I found myself attracted to certain ones and wanting to find ways to incorporate them specifically into my project. Many of these sounds were loud ones that alluded to aspects to violence such as the gunshots and the sound of someone cocking their gun. So with the decision of incorporating the sound of gunshots into my project as well as the desire to create an evocative piece cemented in my mind, the choice to recreate a violent mass shooting through sound seemed like an obvious one. This way, the project could also work to shed light on the unfortunate reality of large-scale gun violence in America.

After recreating the shooting scene, however, I found that the project came out too short. Because of this, I decided to add on an abduction and murder scene following the shooting. In the end, I am happy with this decision because it allows the piece a more gradual build up as well as better pacing altogether. With all of the transformations that this project went through, I learned that creating art through sound is largely a process of experimentation and putting things together to hear if they sequentially sound good or not. It definitely gives me better appreciation and respect for sound artists as creatives seeing first hand how difficult it can be to create pieces that evoke certain moods. Overall, I think my project sufficiently meets the baseline criteria because it includes an insourced sound, an outsourced sound, changes, and is at least 2 minutes long. As for aspirational criteria, my main aspiration was to create something that would evoke intense feelings for its listeners. I think that I successfully did this because someone mentioned that they were disturbed by my preview, and I consider disturbance an intensely unsettling feeling.

This first screenshot is of my project at the beginning stages. Basically, it shows my preview which only includes the beginning shooting scene. During this stage, all that listeners heard was intense gunshots and footsteps that were one right after another. Among the people who gave me a notecard, one mentioned that this as a beginning scene was too abrupt and suggested that I include a series of gunshots with time intervals of silence in between in order to build up emotional suspense. In my second screenshot, which shows my project toward the end, there are intervals of silence in between the gunshots and footsteps. This person also suggested that I give the sound of the gunshots more direction in order to add some variation and spatial depth to my scene. With this suggestion, I used the “fade-in” and “fade-out” effects on selective gunshot sounds in order to make them sound as though they are further away from the listener.

Notecard:

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

[mjb-123]

Overall I am really happy with this first project I turned in. I have never worked with Audacity before so playing around and figuring things out was challenging, but I think I did a good job adjusting to it and putting my project together. I had the idea from the beginning of what I wanted my project to be, the challenging part was finding what sounds I needed to find and record. I tried my best to hit all the baseline criteria and a few things in the aspirational list. I think I told a story pretty well that was easy to follow along with and the sounds I used went really well with it. I took the approach to work from the beginning first to see what I needed and to understand where I wanted to go with the sound and then work from there.

This first image was my rough draft for the project. I had sounds of a bus engine that I normally hear when we travel for competitions and sounds of people talking which is usually how the locker room sounds. I then went back and added in some sounds from how my morning would usually sound by incorporating an alarm clock and sheets rustling. It felt like going through what a typical day sounds like to me and it was really cool to hear an almost speed up version of what my day consists of.

My rough draft came a long way from when we did peer reviews. Without dialogue it was hard for people to really grasp the concept I was going for so I knew I had a lot of work to do before submitting it. I thought I did a good job keeping those critiques in mind when finalizing my project and although it is no where near perfect I was really impressed with my project. I hope to continue to learn new things with the sites we are using (like Github) and keep everything with an open mind. In this first project I was really nervous and it took me a while to really dive in and get comfortable with everything and by the time I did the project was almost over. I want to jump right into the next project and be able to learn more and give myself more time to get to know the app. Again, not a professional, but I was proud of my work and am proud of what I put together.