Audio 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 audio 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, February 8th.

[mknuth5]

https://github.com/mknuth5/soundscape2022spring/blob/master/Reflection.md Here is my reflection file

[isabellebautista]

Since this was the first time I had ever used Audacity, I wanted to create a simpler scene. My audio narrative consisted of a first date, which I am sure many of us have the experience of. The first date usually goes with introductions, such as where do you work? What do you like to do? These questions are ones I incorporated between my characters, establishing some sense of background to them. In addition to this, first dates can happen at many different places, but more often than not, they happen in a restaurant. This restaurant atmosphere can be identified with the classical piano music playing in the background of the conversation, as well as the sound of the waiter pouring water into their glasses. Through these sounds, I was able to develop the story into one where the characters had discovered they actually knew each other as children. I think this was a surprise ending to the audio narrative, as you cannot tell where it is going to go in the beginning.

In terms of meeting the baseline criteria for this assignment, I believe that I have included every aspect. The first one was ensuring the audio was between 2-4 minutes, in which mine was about 3 minutes and 40 seconds, staying within the recommended time. In addition to this, I had something change from the beginning to the end of the piece, which would be the terms in which each character new each other. In the beginning, the characters were strangers, but within the 4 minutes, they had discovered their shared childhood photograph. The sounds for the characters, water pouring, and bag rustling were all original sounds recorded by myself. In terms of the other sounds, they were all obtained through CC on freesound.org. I was able to establish permission of using these sounds by messaging or commenting on the author’s original audio, thanking them for permission to use the sound in my project. These sources were then all uploaded in an asset list within my repository, with the appropriate links and information for another user to find the original source. Within the audio, I have layered three or more tracks at once, with the classical and talking sounds in the back, the woman character talking, and the bag rustling as one example. In addition to this, I believe everything has been turned in on the deadlines, as directed. Lastly, for the baseline criteria, I used the auto duck affect to affect the fading in and out of the background noise while my characters engaged in conversation.

In terms of aspirational inspirations, I feel as though I used audacity effects that were new to me, especially when Ben was able to introduce me to auto duck for my background noise. I had never used audacity before, so virtually any effect I used was new. I also used other effects like the compressor to edit the sound of the woman’s voice. In addition to this, I was able to use the left location filter for the sound of the glass pouring and the right location filter when the woman was looking around in her bag to provide a sense of direction for the listener.

After editing the man and woman’s voices, I was able to merge them, in the sound clip ‘mix’ where it is as though they are together in one room, since they were recorded separately.

Here is a screenshot of my first draft preview, when I had not yet combined the background noise, but rather had the clips separate so I could edit them to be the same length throughout the audio.

Here is a screenshot of some advice I was given to improve my audio narrative. I took the advice of fading in and fading out the music so that the characters’ conversation would be clearer and easier to hear when listening. Additionally, this really gave me the opportunity to adjust the volume of the music because the audio was able to focus more on the conversation.

Also, here is my link to the reflection file! https://github.com/isabellebautista/soundscape2022spring/blob/master/reflection.md

[jennakupferschmid]

The goal of my project was to create a sound that immersed its listeners into the college library scene. The narrative of this audio was centered around two friends casually talking and avoiding work on the loud ground floor of Hillman library. In order to create a plot for this narrative, one of the characters forgets about a large assignment they have due and therefore needs to miss hanging out with friends in order to finish it. In order to accomplish this audio narrative, I first focused on the background noise needed to create the feeling of being in a loud library. I pulled six background sounds including a college crowd noise, a soft library noise, a backpack zipping, book pages flipping, the card swipe sound needed to access Hillman, and fast paced keyboard typing. All of these sounds contributed to the background noise equally because the louder crowd noises add the effect of a collaborative work environment therefore allowing the main character conversations to ensue while the more subtle noises allow for noises that trigger connections to a library. In order to get the correct combination of sounds, I amplified each to a different volume so that they layered correctly, emphasizing the sound of the louder crowd noises by amplifying them more while the other library noises were amplified less. Consequently, the college crowd noise was the most overpowering sound used while the other sounds were more subtle. Next, I added the four different conversation sections of the audio to create the story aspect. These were easy to amplify and place as they simply needed to be louder than the background noise and I had jurisdiction over the amount of time between each audio. In order to reach the two minute mark, I decided that at least ten seconds needed to separate each conversation audio. They were recorded on voice memos on my iPhone and then imputed into Audacity via an adapter program. After these audios were placed I noticed a lot of dead space between the conversation sections and decided that an event needed to occur between at least two of these audios. There were two events I decided to create within the background of my audio. The first being a drink being spilled followed by an angry voice while the other was a person finishing their drink and getting up to throw it away. First, I added the sound of a soda spilling and women saying "damn it" twice between conversation audios two and three in order to capture the attention of the audience. Lastly, I added the sounds of someone finishing their drink, a chair pulling out, walking, someone throwing a drink away, and a chair pulling in. These sounds effectively added narrative to my story and eliminated focus on the dead background space previously focused on. The last two things I added to my audio were the fade out of the background noise at the end in order to cue to the listeners that the audio narrative had finished and an audio clip of my voice directing listeners towards my list of audio credits. First picture of audio: Last pictures of audio: Picture of feedback: I revised my audio based on this feedback because prior to receiving this feedback there was a lot of dead space between each of my conversation audios. Due to this feedback I added the soda spilling event and the throwing the finished drink away event as well to eliminate this dead space. Baseline Criteria: I think I met the baseline criteria because my audio plays for about 2:15 with multiple sounds overlapping and there is a change within the story centered around the juxtaposition between the relaxed nature of the characters at the beginning and the frantic nature of the scene prompted by the realization that one of the main characters needs to finish an assignment last minute. Also, my audio is a combination of sounds recorded by me and sounds I found online which is outlined in my assests list. I also used multiple Audacity effects including the amplifying function and the fade in and out functions. Aspirational Inspirations: Since this was my first time ever using the Audacity program I think that I met several of the aspirational criteria. Since I worked hard at creating smooth transitions with the Audacity effects that were new to me, I believe that I avoided the problem of sharp cuts within my audio. This also contributed to the audience interpretation being similar to my intentions because this smoothness between audios contributed to the immersive affect of my audio. https://github.com/jennakupferschmid/soundscape2022spring/commit/c275a9437baa1689081ca0dfefa4f8ae90ba7b9a This is my reflection file (need to scroll down for screenshots)

[evankozierok]

Overview

The King of the Jungle was my first real foray into using Audacity and doing audio recording and editing. Quite a fun one, to be honest! I had very briefly used Audacity before to extract some sound clips for a Jeopardy soundboard but I didn't really know what I was doing (I was just following a tutorial). However, this project has helped me become much more proficient.

From the start of the project, I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted it to look (er, sound) like. The setting for the D&D campaign that inspired this project is called Chult, a rich jungle filled with unique life and monsters, including dinosaurs. I knew that the sonic environment would have a lot of possibility, and I think the various layers of sound in the background create a stimulating and enveloping soundscape. I did however prune a lot of the lore from Chult; I thought that even a small subset of it was exciting enough, and that it might have been cumbersome to also expose the fact that Wallace is a lizardfolk, Evelyn is a halfling, there are undead in the jungle, so on and so forth. Even people who are already familiar with basic D&D worlds often find Chult a bit overwhelming, so I thought a lighter setting would be best.

Challenges

This project was obviously not without challenges. I think my main problem was getting the dialogue from Noah (Wallace) and Laurel (Evelyn) to line up and sound the same. Laurel's dialogue was mostly okay after a simple noise reduction, but I did have to manually trim a lot of sibilance (which was surprisingly not hard to do - you can literally just delete some of the waveform and/or deamplify it and it still sounds natural). Noah's mic was unfortunately low quality, and despite my best efforts, it came out muffled, so I had to bring him in for a redo using Hillman's equipment. Another challenge was finding T. rex. sounds, since Freesound (where I got the majority of my sound effects) wasn't as useful for a niche topic like that. I did eventually get the booming footsteps and roar from other sites, but I went with a suggestion from Ben to try foley effects for Wallace being eaten. I went with an overlay of me chewing ice, Starburst candies, and me crushing a dead leaf. Overall it was alright - I think it could have been more convincing (I think maybe pretzels instead of ice might have worked better), but it was a fun experiment and it served the purpose decently well.

Baseline Criteria

For the baseline criteria, the project contains both sounds recorded by me (footsteps, foley sounds) as well as online sounds (insects/birds, music), primarily with CC or other public licenses, detailed in my assets page.

There are certainly more than 3 sounds overlapping (even within the first second) as the various tracks of rain, music, insects, birds, footsteps etc. overlap to create the jungle environment.

(note the long scrollbar - there were a lot more tracks below!!!)

The exported mp3 runs for 2:30 (~2:15 + 0:15 of credits).

Although the soundscape does have a sort of cyclical return to the beginning, something certainly happens - Wallace dies!

Finally, many Audacity effects were used - noise reduction, reverb, fading, high-pass filters... etc.

Aspirational Criteria

For aspirational criteria, most of the Audacity effects I had never used before, so it was fun to try to figure them out - in particular, I had fun experimenting with different settings for the reverb effect and for changing tempo. I had a lot of fun syncing up one of my music clips with the dinosaurs footsteps; it was a very satisfying result when the tempo was just right.

I tried to write useful commit messages. They can't all be winners but the commit list gives a decent overview of the project timeline.

I used fading and reverb to indicate distance - in particular, the dino footsteps get louder as they get closer, and softer as they go back away.

I used left/right panning to try to create a sense of direction. I varied the background sounds to be some left, some right to mimic a 360 experience. I also tried to make Wallace seem like he was to Evelyn's right, but the dino also was to the right, so I ended up putting Evelyn's sounds slightly to the left to make the experience feel less lopsided. This wasn't quite what I wanted unfortunately, but it worked out. I probably should have placed one of Wallace or the dino to the left to keep it varied.

I used fading a lot to create smooth transitions - the music and other background sounds faded out a bit to make sonic room for the dialogue (more on that below) and faded out completely for the action scene, only coming back in at the end. I think it worked pretty well and was fairly seamless.

Finally, I went to a lot of effort to clean up the vocal lines so that the voices were clear. In an ideal world, I would have both Laurel and Noah available for a bunch of takes, but they are graduates with jobs, so I didn't want to make participating a burden.

Peer Feedback

Thank you to Paul, Kaitlyn, and Marty for their feedback! They universally said that the dialogue was hard to hear, so that was one of the first things I changed. I knew going into the draft that would probably be an issue, so it wasn't a big surprise or anything, but still helpful. I also went ahead with Kaitlyn's suggestion to have both characters record in a similar way. Well, not exactly, since Laurel used her personal mic and I used a Zoom recorder for Noah in the end, but she was right that the difference between their initial lines was distracting, leading me to the re-record. From there, both lines were clean enough that they seemed like they were in the same space. I chose not to have Evie react more when Wallace was eaten as a point of dark humor, the idea being that she's more fascinated by the dino than she is terrified that Wallace just died. I think it would have been fine either way to be honest. I did however make the scream and the death a bit more dramatic with the reverb on the scream and the big musical hit which hopefully conveys the climax a bit more clearly.

[andres-trujillo7]

Reflection:

https://github.com/andrestrujillo11/soundscape2022spring/blob/master/reflection.md

In both screenshots, you can see the "Winterish music" clip in my project. In the before, I had only split a part of the track and done nothing else. In the after, I added a fade-in and fade-out to have a more seamless transition indicating a scene change, rather than making the song just "come at" the listener.

Before:

After

Lastly, I took all the suggestions into consideration and implemented them! I made it more obvious that the main character slipped on ice. I also made the heartbeat louder and made the branch sound like it broke in the distance. So, shoutout to Gabe, Amanda, and Makenzi! I wouldn't have been able to make this as good as I could without you guys!

[jsw64]

Like many others, this was my first time using Audacity, and I’m happy to say that it was a fun experience. I’m glad that Audacity is pretty noob-friendly and intuitive to use. Whenever I made a video for a school project in the past, I used Windows Movie Maker, which had nowhere near the amount of features and convenience that Audacity offers (and less headaches too).

The idea of my soundscape project, A Fisher’s Tale was to tell a simple but eventful narrative of a fisherman going down to a river to catch some fish. I liked this idea because I personally love hearing the sounds of the outdoors, and I wanted to replicate this as best as possible in my project. After I had the idea, I constructed the plot of the narrative, and then I made a list of assets to collect. Almost all of my assets were from the Internet, because it was simply more convenient to get them there versus going outside and trying to record them on my phone. Assembling the list of assets was somewhat difficult, as I was relatively picky with the tracks I wanted to include. The tracks I wanted were kind of generic, but still had to fit the context of the narrative. For example, I wanted audio of rainfall, but I could not have rain that was audibly hitting a hard surface.

After I had assembled my initial list of sounds, I put them all onto an Audacity file and let them play one after another with the “River” sound playing in the background.

The next step that I did was to add some more sounds (can, phone vibrating, rain) to enhance the plot, sort them out, adjust the tracks’ amplitude, and then it was ready for peer review.

A common suggestion that I had gotten from peer reviews was to smooth the transitions, such as the fly buzzing in and the sudden rainfall. To address this, I employed the use of the envelope tool to make the tracks' audio fade in and slowly become louder, which made the transitions sound more gradual and realistic. Additionally for the rainfall audio, I decided to silence the birds chirping audio and quiet the river flowing audio to make the rainfall stand out more. It was a bit chaotic beforehand to have three tracks playing simultaneously in the background, and the rainfall is more recognizable now.

In terms of baseline criteria, I believe that I satisfy all of them. I had exactly one sound recorded by myself, which was the dialogue for the Fisherman character. I had several other sounds in which I had permission to use, as cited in my credits.md file. I did indeed have three tracks overlaying at several points as well as stayed in between 2-4 minutes in length. I also used several effects, most frequently the “Amplify” feature to help the tracks’ volumes fit more in conjunction with each other.

As for the aspirational criteria, I certainly used a few Audacity effects that were new to me. The most notable effects were the envelope tool to smooth transitions, increasing bass to deepen the river audio, adding reverb to the rain, birds chirping, and river flowing to produce a more “spacious” sound, playing with left/right panning while the fly was buzzing around, and adding echo to the Thunder track to make it sound more realistic. I believe that I have a clear organizational scheme in my soundscape as well as seamless transitions, and also an emotional intention that I articulated (the testing of patience while fishing). I also did use speech effects (adjusting bass, reverb, amplitude) and tried to make my speech as clear as possible with the noise reduction feature in Audacity. One area that I could have improved upon was adding more unique and descriptive commit messages, which I kind of forgot about as I made more and more commits.

[amo104]

I had a little experience with Audacity prior to this project, but I only ever used it as a means to record and trim audio that would eventually go into a video editor. This was my first time really delving into Audacity as a tool to create entire projects. As such, I wanted to select a topic that would let me explore how actions could be described for an audience without seeing them. A heist was my first and best idea for this goal, being personally exciting to create and filled with potential for fast-paced and dynamic action.

My first challenge in the development of Stealing the Sanguine Fang was understanding how to frame the narrative. It occurred to me that there would have to be dialog to link together the actions in the heist, but I struggled with how that dialog would be justified in the story world. I considered framing this as the story someone was telling in an interrogation. Ultimately I settled on the end result, where the previous explanation of the plan and the present execution of the plan are being expressed concurrently. Then it also dawned on me that I would actually have to solve the heist to depict it. The best way I went about this was making lists of actions that could potentially happen in a heist, and then picking some out and organizing them into a timeline. Below is a picture of that process, where I plotted my narrative out on my bedroom wall. What was most useful about this process is that it let me practice thinking about what audio components create different but similar scenes, and how these components transition into each other. From this outline, I looked for matching audio from Freesound to lay it out in Audacity.

To discuss the baseline criteria, I have an exported mp3 of the final product on my fork of the repository, running just a little over four minutes. The soundscape itself is ~3:30, but adding on the ending accreditation makes it run a bit longer. The end of the mp3 directs listeners to my assets.md file which shows the credits for my sourced sounds, as well as listing the sounds I created. Some of these original sounds include my narration, papers unfurling, the detonator button pressing, a door closing and locking, and a lamp turning on (most of these occur at the very beginning of the piece). There are usually at least three tracks overlapping due to my narration, the background sound, and the sounds of the actions occurring. The most notable overlapping of sounds occurs during the climax: the fire alarm, the crowd panic, the sounds of running, and the sounds of stealing the dagger all come to a head here. I use several effects throughout the project, including fading in & out (ex. police sirens), noise reduction (ex. the voice lines), and reverb (ex. the sound of microphone tapping)

As for the aspirational criteria, all the effects listed above are new to me, as well as the use of the envelope tool. The envelope tool was incredibly useful in fine-tuning the volume, especially in situations where I want to make the background noise a little quieter while I'm talking and then go back to its regular volume. I use left/right panning to create locationality in my piece. The best example of this is the police siren coming from the left, picking up the fall guys at the center, and then driving away to the right. I did this by splitting the left and right tracks and then using fades to make it sound like a continuous motion between them. Below is an example of both the envelope tool and panning. While I did my best to clean up the lines recorded by my siblings (shoutout to Nichy and Ate), there is still some fuzz to them due to them recording remotely rather than using my microphone. However, I'd argue that all the narration recorded by myself is clear and effectively paced through the narrative. The organizational scheme is clear; the scenes follow the narrator's descriptions, using sharp-cut transitions facilitated by a "whoosh" effect whenever the location changes. I justify the "woosh" as a representation of the main character jumping to different ideas in the plan, bridging the gap between the real-time events as they happen and the description of the events as they're discussed. Lastly, my commit messages usually refer back to the scheduled date they're associated with and/or provide a brief description of what has been edited.

Finally, thank you to everyone who provided feedback! I incorporated a few of everyone's suggestions into the final draft. From Isabelle's feedback, I added the bathroom door and the sound of footsteps entering and exiting the house at the start and end of the narration. It may be hard to tell, but there are three sets of footsteps at the beginning, and only two at the end since Buzz stays behind to talk to the main character. From Kaitlyn's feedback, I worked on cutting a lot of the space within the project in general. Initially, I thought it was paced with realistic timing, but after workshopping I found it better to lean into the tightness of describing the plan and keeping the momentum going. (I also experimented with music, but in the end found it hard to balance without being distracting and retiming a lot of my stuff. Maybe I'll come back to it!) From Jenna's feedback, I improved the noise reduction on the dialog. But more importantly, because of this comment, I realized that there was a static sound in the ambient museum noise I was looping through the whole piece, so I was able to cut that out.

[ellagrant]

My narrative follows the main character as she- me? you?- encounters an unexpected and frightening stranger. It opens with the main character and her friend walking home one night while her friend complains about walking in heels (for clarity purposes, I will be referring to the main character as “the main character” and her friend as “her friend,” using she/her pronouns for both, as neither of them have names). Her friend stops and tells her that she’s going into the store- but wait, what store? There doesn’t seem to be any store here. Too late now though, because when a car horn from the street distracts her, her friend has already disappeared. Confused, she approaches a man nearby, explaining what just happened, then, horrified, confessing that she does not know where she is or how she got here. The man informs her that she is in “the belly of the beast,” which confuses and scares her even more. He gets close to her and starts telling her cryptic things that do not make sense and sometimes speaking in reverse. He refuses to leave her alone, despite her begging. Finally, her friend reappears, and the main character tells her friend that they must run and that she doesn’t have time to explain. They run- where they are running to is unclear- while a distorted version of a classical music song which played in the beginning sings them out. It ends with repeated, high-pitched alarm clock noises- it was all a dream! However, this “reveal” does not afford the relief it normally does upon waking from a nightmare. The eerie, disorienting atmosphere is arguably augmented by the alarms.

The title “On a Winter’s Night” is a reference to Italo Calvino’s 1979 meta-fictive, postmodern novel If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which puts the reader in the position of the main character by addressing them in the second person “you.” In my narrative, I wanted to create some ambiguity around who exactly is experiencing the events that take place. When the main character asks “where did you go?”, for example, it is unclear whether she actually says this out loud or if this is something she is thinking. This is the first narration that uses the reverb effect, which sets it apart from the previous narration. However, all narration going forward uses reverb, so it is unclear exactly what is actually said vs. what exists in the characters’ heads. Using the left/right functions, I tried to put the listener in the physical location of the main character so that they experience the same things in a way that is spatially accurate. This was actually something I decided to do after receiving feedback from a classmate:

I thought this was a cool idea and decided to incorporate it. When the main character talks/walks/runs, the sound is centered. However, her friend’s voice and footsteps are set slightly to the right. When her friend walks away, her footsteps get quieter and to the right, suggesting both distance and orientation. Another example is the sound of the car horn, which you can see in this screenshot is far to the left:

I also used a lot of fade-ins and fade-outs to build the space and create the illusion of distance. For example, when the friend walks away into “the store” the sound of her footsteps is set to the right and fades-out. When paired with the car horn on the left, this helps place the listener in the “center” of the action, ie where the main character is:

I believe that I fulfilled the baseline criteria for the soundscape narrative as well as some aspirational criteria. I used several effects in Audacity, the majority of which were new for me. Besides having experience with fade-outs and fade-ins from Adobe and reverb from GarageBand, I was not familiar with changing pitch, tempo, stretching audio, left/right controls, or working with audio in reverse. I also think I took some risks with my project, like intentionally amplifying audio into the red to elicit a specific, jarring effect. While some of my choices didn’t work out the way I wanted and I wasn’t able to make everything sound the way it sounded in my head, I’d rather try out new, potentially risky choices than play it safe. Overall, I’m satisfied with my work and look forward to working more with sound editing in the future.

[glittaua]

When I first learned about this project I was really excited. This class and project afforded me the ability to create and pick out ideas from my own imagination; something that classes I have taken before did not really do for me. This semester I had a lot of free time on my hands and was able to put more time and effort into this project. For this audio narrative, I basically had it done from the first weekend because I knew exactly what I wanted and needed. For starters, I knew it would be a sci-fi battle scene. But the sequence of events came to me while writing the script. I knew I wanted the story to focus on an elite team of soldiers but also have there be a sequence of traveling. I wanted to make the listener really feel like they were in a battle.

The story starts off aboard the USF Manticore with Captain Tharpe doing his daily log. They are protecting the planet Arcadia down below them when all of a sudden enemy ships begin to warp in and assault the planet. Tharpe immediately takes action by sending reinforcements to the planet's surface including three fireteams made of elite soldiers called Jaegers: Hades, Osiris, and Apollo. The main team you follow is Hades consisting of Vayne, Kingsley, and Cloe.

As they descend, their airship is greeted by anti-aircraft fire. They engage in some playful dialogue. Once on the surface, they engage in a firefight with the enemies down below. In the distance, sounds of battle can be heard. When the doors of their airship open the sounds of battle and closer gunfire can be heard. As they advance towards their first objective they fight through the enemies, constantly firing their weapons. Finally, when they get close enough to the artillery gun they struggle to find an open shot. But finally, Kingsley finds an opportunity and fires his rocket launcher. The scene ends with the team taking a small break as the music and battle sounds fade out.

I greatly appreciated all the feedback from Ellie, Elise, and Andres! They really liked the layering of sounds and because I believe it was a very complete project when they first heard it they were not able to give as much advice as others so that may be on me. I did look at their feedback and the main criticism was that they did not know who the enemies were in the story. I planned to add a line but looking back I want it to be open-ended. I think it would be better for others to use their imagination to leave some freedom for listeners to create their own aliens or enemies.

[KatelynKunzmann]

My soundscape goal was to capture an experience of walking through a botanical gardens and transforming it into something most people haven't experienced, a psychedelic version of that trip. My goals at the beginning were to capture an entire walk-through of Phipps Conservatory, find psychedelic background music with a creative commons license, and then to add many distorted and psychedelic sounds to make the walk-through sound trippy. I bought a ticket and recorded the trip at Phipps, which is always such a beautiful and magic place by the way. I made sure to spend more time in rooms I thought were providing the best ambience and the most discourse in the background, since I wanted to edit people's voices. During the walk-through I would have some various reflections during the trip to kind of hint to the user that I am experiencing more than just a visit at Phipps, it's a trip WITH Phipps. I then went home and added all of the audio to audacity, here is a screenshot of that;

I then ordered them so they were in chronological order of how I walked through. I started to truncate some clips and delete mundane audio. I also found some very trippy music that ended up not having a CC license so I deleted that and found another one called ambient waves which was exactly as it sounds. I also found another song with a CC license that had a man narrating something about forgetting who you are and I thought it would be perfect for setting the theme of the trip and also hinting to the listener about what I am experiencing in the soundscape trip. Next was the feedback portion, where most of the feedback from my classmates was telling me that it needed to be shorter and needed more mood capture, as I would put it. Their reflections on my piece noticed it felt like a psychedelic trip, but needed more.

I followed their advice and continued to truncate audio clips and add effects. The truncating was a little more involved than just deleting parts of audio because I had background music in the entire Phipps walk-through, so I made sure to delete portions that still lined up perfectly with the background music because I didn't want the listener to think that meant a transition and it just doesn't sound pleasant. I used a lot of effects to tone down some loud noises and increase volume on others I wanted emphasis on. To get some of the distorted and psychedelic sounds, I would change the pitch, volume, speed, tempo, and add echoes to people's voices then add them throughout the soundscape. All of the edited voices are on the "Voices" block, as I made sure to organize all my sounds so that it was much easier to keep track. I also edited the sounds of doors and used those to indicate transitions in the piece, like entering a new room or the trip progressing and becoming more trippy.

After editing, adding effects, and making it all cohesive, I realized I wanted more to indicate that I was at Phipps. I forgot to record the entrance and employee scanning my ticket, so I thought that would be perfect to add to the beginning of the piece. I returned to Phipps and recorded that part, but the employee never spoke about where I was so I decided to record my girlfriend answering a call and saying she is at Phipps over the phone then adding it into the beginning of the soundscape to further cement to the listener where the location of the soundscape is. I also further edited the employee's voice to make it sound like I was tripping. All of this in the beginning of the soundscape I believe really set the tone for the soundscape, which is exactly what I needed to finish the project. Here is a screenshot of me editing the entrance to Phipps:

For the baseline criteria, my soundscape:

• Is over 4 minutes long
• Has multiple changes, such as the entrance/welcome to Phipps into the actual walk-through
• Most of the sounds are recorded by me
• 2 sounds are sourced from online with CC licenses
• Sources are credited appropriately
• I have 2 areas of 3 layers of sounds
• deadlines and requirements met
• mp3 file is exported

For the aspirational criteria, my soundscape:

• Has seamless transitions by means of different doors opening to new rooms or to outside
• Has an emotional/intellectual intention that is captured through the ambience, my reflections, and the distorted/psychedelic edited sounds
• Has evidence that audience interpretation matches my intention of it seeming like a psychedelic trip: "dream or drug trip"

"surreal feeling"

• Used audacity effects that were new to me: Reverb, change tempo, pitch, speed

[ellsimm]

I began with an idea inspired by a friend’s cat, but eventually pivoted to a storyline that felt more like a story I could tell “accurately.” In order to form the story, I drew from my own experiences of growing up with a myriad of adopted animals. There was always a sense of nostalgia surrounding our pets and our love for them, as my parents grew up with pets. The feeling I was trying to give this narrative was the one that I know my parents feel about having their children grow up with pets, and how one day I know I will feel when my child asks to get an animal. The storyline mimics times in my life where a parent swore we wouldn’t be taking in another dog, but ultimately caved with love (at one point we had 5 adopted dogs). I began the recording process by writing out what I thought would be the storyline, and then of course changing it to what it is in the final narrative. I wrote sort of “mini-scripts” for every time I added an audio that I recorded and recorded each piece individually over several takes. The first audacity effect I learned how to use was the pitch changer. I used this feature to adjust my voice to sound younger. I forgot to take a screenshot, but I did take a photo of this as to remember the change I made to keep it consistent throughout the daughter audio.

I went back and forth between recording original audio and layering on other tracks I found on the internet. One thing I wish I had done was record all the original audio in one sitting. It was hard to recreate that exact environment again in order to have continuity in the characters voice levels and the recordings background noise. I found that if I moved even an inch away from the microphone, the level would change pretty noticeably. I found sourcing tracks and sound effects online easier than I thought it would be; however, finding just the right track for the moment was difficult. The sites I used included bigsoundbank.com, freesfx.co.uk, and pixabay.com, all which included very clear and easy to find permissions within their sites. The most difficult background sound to create was the sounds of the shelter. I couldn’t find the perfect “shop door opening” sound anywhere, so I decided not to include it. I mixed several cats meowing all together over top of a constant stream of kitten sounds. If I were to go further with this project, I would like to record my own shop door opening as well as put in some background conversations or maybe other sounds you might here in an animal shelter like dogs and birds. One suggestion that I incorporated from a classmate was to edit out the mic cutting in and out on my original recordings. I did this for all recordings by deleting the initial “bump” in, as seen below in a before and after. (The comment was from andrestrujillo11, thank you Andres  )

Overall, I believe I met that baseline goals put forth by the assignment. I also believe that my audience accurately interpreted the story I was trying to tell, which is great! I would say I learned and honed several audacity skills in a short period of time and am happy to have more knowledge of the program - I think it could come in handy in the future!

[19jinjinwu]

Reflection is after the introduction https://github.com/19jinjinwu/soundscape2022spring/blob/master/README.md

[elisewebb6]

I had never used Audacity until this class so the whole experience was very new to me. I decided to make my narrative about a young boys life beginning with his birth and ending with him having a child of his own. The audio narrative basically depicts the circle of life. In order to complete this I thought about each specific stage in life and brainstormed sounds that correlated to each of these moments. For the birth of the boy I had a heartbeat and a baby's cry layered over very calm and relaxing music. In the transition into childhood I chose a more upbeat tune to layer sounds over. In this part of the audio I included laughs and sounds of children playing. I had these sounds fade out and then input the sound of a car pulling out of the driveway to signal the boy was now at the age where he was leaving home. I had some peaceful music eventually fade in as the next transition was the boy falling in love. During this part of the narrative I included a self recorded "I love you" and sounds of a couple laughing. As this faded out I had a heartbeat fade in to represent the birth of the boy's own child.

I responded to this feedback by increasing the sound of the baby's cry in my audio narrative. I also fixed my Assest.md file to make it more organized which was suggested in another comment. It was also suggest I include the baby's cry at the end as well to further emphasize this circle of life. While I considered doing this I decided not to in the end because I wanted to put more emphasis on the heartbeat. I wanted to show how this heartbeat is the symbol of life. Whether or not one interpret the heartbeat at the end as the boy dying or a new child being more I believe either way it shows the importance of this heartbeat and how its crucial for us to have life.

In the end I found it pretty simple to complete all the baseline criteria. It was a little harder to complete some of the aspirational criteria with the time constraints and being quite new to Audacity. Overall, I found my audience able to accurately interpret the story I was trying to share and I learned a lot about the tools Audacity offers. I think it was a great experience and I believe Audacity is a great program that I will continue to work with.

[kfm24]

I came up with this idea since my friends and I go to our local bar all the time. I was excited about having the people that work there who I am familiar with take part in this project and see their voice acting potential. It was great to be able to collaborate with people that I would not normally ask to help with my assignments. I did enjoy this project but was overwhelmed by the software at first. I was able to fiddle around with different tools from what I learned from the tutorial video however I am not as comfortable with the resource as I would want to be--but I remember Ben saying that things will feel rushed. I enjoyed moving sounds around and adding more audios. It was a little bit challenging to listen to the same things over and over again but I am sure that comes with the producing audio business.

I had really positive feedback which I appreciate but I had a hard time coming up with dialogue. I went into the project thinking the conversation would be natural and easy, however that was not the case. When I went into Genes to record my mind went blank of what people should say except for ordering their drinks. I added more dialogue as my feedback suggested and tried to play around with the sound to make it flow when all the voices were recorded with different backgrounds. I enjoyed listening to other people's audios and giving them feedback on their work. I found it to be a nice change of pace and took me out of a critical mindset I sometimes have with my own work and make it constructive for others to better their projects.

I felt that I exceed the baseline especially from the state I was in when first introduced to Audacity. I am honestly just impressed that I figured out the envelope tool and was able to utilize it in my audio. I also tried to play around with adjusting the audios to make them seem like they were louder on purpose when it was the bouncer and further away when it was the bartender (but I am not sure my listeners were able to notice that aspect of my audio). Something defiantly happened in my audio whether it is ordering drinks or noticing a certain person at the bar they did not want to see--- I hope I created a clear image to my listeners. I am also happy with the fact that I gave myself a good amount of time in case of error for this project. I recorded on Friday night and actually ended up going back to the bar to get more sounds and voices on Saturday from what I felt was missing while editing the day before. I hope to continue giving myself enough time for error for future projects in the class because I will have a feeling that new things will come and go quickly.

[aej37]

Explanation of Work

This was my first time working with Audacity, so I didn’t want to do a complicated story. That lead me to do something that was more realistic. Also, the previous audio narratives inspired me to do something more natural because those are the ones I preferred when I listened to all of them. However, when I listened to “A Haunted Halt” I really liked how there was a twist during it. So I decided that when I would make mine, I would add a twist. This lead me to do to “A Night at the Orchestra” because the story wouldn’t be too complicated and the sounds could be simple to find and record. For my twist, I wanted the conductor to pass out during the beginning of the first song. For the beginning I wanted to create a gloomy atmosphere to foreshadow something bad happening later, so I had a woman walking outside on a stormy night. I also wanted it to take place in Pittsburgh so I added car sounds in the background to indicate she’s going to Heinz Hall which is downtown. Later, I added a phone conversation with her saying she's going to Heinz Hall, which is further clarification. Then for transitions I added a door opening and closing then added the fade in and fade out effects to specify that the character is entering a new space. The concert hall entrance is created by small talk and shoes squeaking. I also recorded the sound of my voice for the character of the ticket collector. Within the effects tab I used the Filter Curve EQ and added the Walkie-Talkie filter to make it seem like she is speaking into a microphone behind a glass window. Then, the actual concert hall is created by the sounds of instruments tuning, shoes on carpet, and the sounds of the character squeezing past people to get to her seat. To specify that the conductor walked out I faded out the small talk and added applause, and in the background there is a faint sound of him walking out on the stage. I added some orchestra music so that when the conductor passed out, it would happen on the same beat of the music. Finally at the end I added some gasps sounds and the audience breaking out into small talk. To indicate a passing of time I once again used the fading in and out effect, because I wanted to have some time pass before the ambulance arrived. It would’ve been unrealistic for the ambulance to immediately show up after he just collapsed. So the twist and "music" that the listener is listening to is the sound of the ambulance.

Baseline Criteria

The first baseline criteria that I met was that I had a narrative that was 2-4 minutes long, mine was 3 minutes and 36 seconds. Then the character transitioning into new places (outside to the entrance to the hall) was something that changed from the beginning to the end. Also, the surprise twist with the conductor passing out was something that changed. The original sounds that I recorded myself were the woman speaking on the phone, the ticket collector and the man saying the conductor passed out. I also had three sounds overlapping each other at the beginning.

I also used many sounds that weren’t recorded by me that I got on Freesound and FreeMusicArchive. I listed all my sources and cited all the licenses to show that I have the credit to use them. I also used effects such as fade in, fade out and the Filter Curve EQ.

Aspirational Criteria

Since I have never used Audacity before a lot of the effects were new to me, but the one effect I used that was really new to me was the Filter Curve EQ. For the fade in and fade out effects, I knew what they were and how they were going to work but with the Filter Curve EQ I never would’ve known how to use it until I really played around with Audacity and searched online on how to add voice filters. I also rented a podcast microphone from Hillman in order to have clear speech (thank you Ben for your help on that). Then I tried to use the sound of a door to create transitions that seem smooth and help the listener feel like they are entering another space.

Peer Review

First of all, thank you Gabe, Mackenzie, and Elise! Initially, after I got the feedback I didn’t really know how to go about editing my project to fix it, but with additional help from Ben, I understood what more characterization meant and like Gabe suggested I added dialogue by having the woman talk on the phone. Also within the conversation, I added where she was going and a little foreshadowing because I feel that from the comments, the audience interpretation wasn’t matching my intentions. Also with me recording the phone conversation myself, it clears the thoughts that I didn't have an original sound.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really enjoyed working with Audacity! Before, I never really thought about the importance of audio in story-telling but it really does have a large impact on what the creator is trying to convey. Also, something important I learned through this project was the different ways to cite sources and how many different licenses they are to acquire sounds. I never knew that there were so many with different requirements. This has been a great learning experience for me and I hope to use Audacity again one day!

[Mapatterson379]

With my sound narrative titled, Self-Care, I aimed to emulate a what a regular morning or day of self care looks like for me. From the beginning I set the tone of the sound narrative with a jazzy/blues like song in the background. I added an alarm clock and birds chirping quietly to signal the start of the day. There are recognizable sounds such as brushing teeth, washing hands, doors opening and closing. It was important to me that the sounds were specific and detailed so that it drew a picture for the audience without much dialogue from me. I also included a snippet of internal monologue, of me counting my breaths and stretches, to reflect what I personally prioritize in the morning. I experimented a lot with the effects menu in Audacity, often just playing with the effects until I achieved the sound I was looking for. For example, I used noise reduction for the alarm clock to soften the volume/pitch. I also used a lot of studio fade out to mesh the change in sounds like the opening of the door and when the water starts running. I found this sounded better than the regular fade in and out effect. Sometimes this wasn’t as easy and instead I used the fade in/out effect in addition to the envelope tool to adjust the volume accordingly. Other effects I used included repeat, change pitch, and crossfade tracks. Adjusting the direction of the sounds, in terms of left span or right span, I felt helped add an evenness or balance to the introductory sounds. I have met all the baseline criteria, in addition to a significant number of the aspirational. Such as, using effects that were new to me, using commit messages that were specific, adjusting volume to indicate distance and direction, expressing the intention of a morning routine/self care routine, and utilizing unique speech for my specific narrative.

First, thank you Elise for the feedback. It was really affirming to get feedback that confirmed what I was aiming for was being received in the way I wanted to. With that being said, I adjusted the volume of the background music to make it easier to hear everything going on throughout the audio. I also added the opening and closing of doors to give direction and signal change in movement. While I couldn’t really find a good sample for bare feet walking on the ground I found alternatives such as the alarm clock to indicate the start of the day.

Overall, I really enjoyed the process of working on this project. I went into being really unsure of what I wanted to do, but was able to take an idea and bring it to life. This gave me an opportunity to be really creative, something that I rarely get in regards to school/work. Going forward, I think my biggest take away has been going with the flow creatively and allowing myself to think outside the box. I’m really into music already so being able to experiment with sound in a new way has also been a great experience.