Audio Project – Overview
The project asks you to record, edit, and mix a soundscape that has the listener hearing and imagining a particular environment from one of 4 choices you are given herein, or from the images you created in your graphics project. It should be 60 – 90 seconds in length and is worth 50 points.
The project is divided into three assignments that you will complete during weeks 8, 9, 10, and 11 of the course. Each assignment has specific directions that you’ll see when you click on it, but here is an overview:
• This week’s project assignment Part One (Assignment Week 8) is to write a list of all of the sounds one would hear if they were in the environment that you show in the various frames of your graphics project OR from one of the following 4 choices:
1) a playground during recess at an elementary school,
2) a Summer day on a heavily populated beach in southern California,
3) A busy street corner in downtown San Francisco during lunch hour
4) an adventurous hike in a jungle in South America
• Next week’s assignment Part Two (Assignment Week 9) is to record sound effects (SFX) for your soundscape and/or download sound effects that you can find on free SFX web sites that I will direct you to and assemble them into multiple tracks in an audio timeline of whatever audio editing software you have available to you. (examples: Garageband, Adobe Audition, Avid Pro Tools, Apple Final Cut, Cubase, Sonar, or the free downloadable audio editing software, Audacity. Adobe Audition provides a free 30-day trial which works perfect with the timeline of this project.)
• The last step, Part Three (Assignment Week 10) is to edit and mix the various tracks down to a 2-track audio file that will finally be compressed into an MP3 that you will upload to a forum I will have ready for you using the title: your first name and last name initial_119Soundscape_F13.mp3
(as in ArthurP_119Soundscape_F13.mp3)
Assignment Part One: (week 8) Soundscape written list
This week's assignment is to write the list of all of the sounds one would hear in the environment in each of the frames of your graphics project or in one of the four provided choices you made Example: say one of your choices was the sound of a swim team and water polo team in a high school gym at a practice/workout. Your list might look like this:
• Swimming pool splashing from lots of bodies in the water
• Polo ball hitting the water at various times
• Coaches whistle blowing
• Sounds of heavy breathing as swimmer’s finished laps
• Swimmers diving off the blocks with a heavier splash
Part 2. Record, download, assemble sound effects from your list
You may already own a portable digital recorder (or perhaps you can borrow one from someone?) to capture some sounds that you think will fit into your soundscape. You could use your smartphone but make sure the initial quality sounds decent. Remember that you can make a sound and edit into sounding like something else after the fact: for example, Hitchcock liked the idea of recording carrots being broken in half to sound like bones breaking and you can change the pitch of the sound in the editor you use and actually manipulate it in a multitude of ways In addition, I will have a lot of sounds that you can download and manipulate into whatever you like to make the proper effect in your soundscape.
These sounds will then be placed into various tracks in your editor since many sounds happen simultaneously in our world and they need to be happening at the same time in your soundscape so you will have multiple audio tracks happening in the same part of the timeline in the software. In my swimming pool example, you would hear the ball splashes, the swimmer’s splashes, the coaches whistle, etc all happening in the same time but sporadically, of course, with the whistle for example and those are laid out in multiple audio tracks which you will learn about in Week 9.
Part 3. Edit and Mix your multiple tracks down to a stereo WAV file and then compress to an MP3.
Once you’ve finished recording and transferring your files and downloading any others provided, you are now ready to edit and manipulate them using a few of the plug-ins (like Reverb and Pitch Shift) and complete by mixing them all down to a stereo file. Your listeners cannot listen to your project in the various software applications that each of you are using. You must make it listenable in a more universal way and that is to mix it down to a stereo file that one could hear on any computer audio playback system.
There will be more explicit details in each of the week’s assignment sheets. This is to give you an overview of the soundscape project you will be creating.
UPDATE by mjr on 10/27/13: My audio file is online at this location: http://djnmarti.com/martha/edu/ccsf/bcst119/projects/1027-audio/myAudio.html
Feedback from the Teacher
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Arthur Pines
Wednesday, 13 November 2013, 09:50 AM
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Grade: 47.00 / 50.00
You found some really great sounds for your project -- some alarming and others pleasing. All the sounds pushed the story along well. Some of you music and effects were mixed a little loud. The voice quality sounded hollow, so I wondered how you recorded it or if you added a little too much reverb. The music was great in most places, but it overpowered your voice toward the end of the piece. Overall, this was a high quality project that was fun because it was creative and different from the rest, which I appreciate. |