For my audio project, I’m planning on telling a story about something I experienced while I was in high school, similar to the way the actor told the story in podcast we had to listen to last week. It’s particularly funny and I think it will be interesting to listen to. It centers around my friend who was dating this girl a few years back, and they probably had one of the most dysfunctional relationships I had ever seen. So, my audio project will kind of follow me through this certain day where I actually witnessed something truly hilarious happen between the two. I plan on interjecting certain sound effects into my brief story wherever I think they fit. In addition to that, I plan on having some background music playing in the background while I’m speaking to make the story a little bit more interesting. I’ve also already decided to include Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” as the intro to my audio project because the story I plan on telling in my audio project is incredibly crazy.

The specific audio I’ve recorded and plan to use in my soundscape project is the door knocking sound. I just recorded it by knocking on my own bedroom door. I may adjust the gain if I need it to be louder in the context of the entire project. But, the door-knock comes in because I will knocking on another friend of mine’s door when I get to his house. And it is at this friend’s house where the entire situation I’ll be describing goes down. I’ll be placing it when I mention arriving at this friend’s house.

For my audio project, I want to try and portray the freshman year experience through audio clips that tell a story from their first days at Pitt until their last day in the dorms. I want to try and use humor in the beginning, to try and depict their lack of experience and overall confusion to the world around them. The flow of the story that my audio track will follow will be the classic exposition, rising action climax and falling action. For the exposition, I want to include clips that have silly questions that only a freshman would ask, for example “Where is market central at?” For the rising action, I want to include tracks that have typical freshman questions such as “Can you buy me beer?” and other things the freshies say. For the climax, I would like to include a track that kind of shows them starting to adapt to the college lifestyle and shows them starting to get used to the new world they have stepped into. Final exams will also play a part in the climax. For the falling action, the freshman quotes will be geared towards leaving the dorms, looking for off campus apartments and declaring their major. The software I plan on using will be either Adobe Premiere Pro or Audacity. I am more familiar with using Adobe Premiere Pro, but I would like to learn different software such as Audacity, plus I believe compiling an audio track would be easier in audacity. I want to use different music in the background to try and contribute to the feeling of confusion that the freshman have. I also would like to add noises such as elevators, bottles clinking, buses passing by, etc. to add to the city vibe and make the video more realistic.

For my soundscape I drew inspiration from one of my all time favorite songs by Dave Matthews Band, “Funny The Way It Is.” The reason I chose this song is because the lyrics talk about so many different occurrences, situations, feelings and actions. When I listen to the song I imagine so many different places and spaces so that is my only concern in using this idea. That being said, I plan on recording someone who I believe has a pretty, light and appropriate voice to be reading the entire song. Not singing, just reading the lyrics. This will be playing the entire time.

Depending on how many different sounds I stick into the recording will decide whether or not I add a variable to the reading. If I plan to do so, I think I would take the person reading the lyrics to Schenley park one day. This is so that the voice will constantly be accompanied by a “woods” feeling; this would be crumbled leaves rolling around, wind gusts, sticks breaking, nuts/other items falling from trees. The reason I would do this is to add a story to the project. Instead of the listener pretending they are actually in all of the different places the lyrics and the sounds that I incorporate indicate, I want the listener to pretend they are in a very peaceful place (the woods) imagining all of the places/ occurrences the lyrics will talk about. This effect could hopefully be accomplished by beginning the recording of just woods noises to set the “place” for the listener, and then start the reading which will include all different noises that you would not actually hear in the woods. The constant voice speaking the lyrics will be much louder than any of the background noises I put onto the track.

For example, here is a lyric from the song: The bomb blast brings the building crashing to the floor/Hear the laughter while the children play war.

I would include a sound recording of something sounding like a bomb blasting after the word floor. Then immediately as the next line starts with “Hear” I would include a recording of little children laughing the whole entire time the line “Hear the laughter while the children play war” is being said.

One of the lines in the song is “Watch the sky, the jet plane so far out of my reach” For this part I am going to use of the classes “created sounds” named rocket. Although jet planes and rockets are not so similar, I will not be getting near any jet planes soon, so I think the rocket engine sound suffices for a jet plane engine sound flying.

The preview is a description of something you’ve been working on related to your soundscape. This can be a sound you’ve made, a clip of sound you’ve layered, a script you’ve written (and/or voice track you’ve recorded) – whatever you’re excited about that it might be interesting for others to hear. Embed your media into your post, and describe what it is and what it’s doing in your larger soundscape. Feel free to ask questions if there’s something you’d like feedback on.

Your preview should be around 300 words, and is due Sunday, 2/21 by
11:59PM. Post it to the blog, tagged with “audio preview.”

I chose the sound of the dishwasher. The scene I immediately pictured was in my kitchen because my dishwasher sounds very similar to this one. A circular table is to the right of the white, work out dishwasher with myself and my three roommates sitting in chairs around the table. Because of the annoying and loud sound, all four of us are trying to talk over it. Talking about The Bachelorette while all sitting on our computers, the dishwasher proceeds to make itself heard to the right of us. My roommate Ally can’t stand the noise any longer and storms off into her bedroom. My roommate Tal is studying a powerpoint; however, she is tapping a pen and grinding her teeth. My roommate Jules decides to aid the situation by playing music other laptop. She chooses the song Paper Planes by M.I.A. Unfortunately, this song is not very heavy on the melody of the music. The lyrics are definitely the loudest aspect of the song. The song also displays a ton of special effect noises like: gun shots, cash register clicking, fingers snapping, car door slamming. I focus in on the lyrics and start trying to figure out what they mean. The line, “I fly like paper, get high like planes” sticks in my head and begs for an explanation. I rack my brain to figure out how this female singer could fly like paper. And then I realize, “Oh, like a paper plane, that’s the name of the song!” All of a sudden I realize the song captivated my attention and I forgot about the droning sounds of the dishwasher. But, that 30 second distraction is now gone, and I am back listening to the splish-splashing loud noise coming from my right. I immediately pick up my computer and pace into my bedroom away from the dishwasher noise.

I chose the market mp3 posted by Andrew Kendell. It was obviously recorded in the market at Pitt so the sounds are quite familiar. You can hear the clinking of forks and spoons on the dishes, multiple people having multiple indistinguishable conversations at different volumes, and people walking by while talking so that their voices get louder then much quieter. In general it sounds like any busy commercial area.

I imagine the sound is from a busy airport. A single business man is sitting at a cafe in the terminal in one of the tables that sit outside in the main walkway. There are people everywhere walking in every direction and every other table is also full of people grabbing a bite to eat just before their flights. He sits there in his suit sipping a black coffee with a half eaten warm croissant sitting on the plate in front of him. He listens to the faint generic music playing from inside the actual cafe while he watches the many different people go by. He watches the people because he’s waiting for his associate who has a connecting flight to this airport so that they can travel together on the next flight. Wow this is really hard to make a 300 word description out of 10 seconds of sound.

The sound I’m choosing to use in my scene is the keyboard typing noise. I can picture this sound in a scene set in a big city. Someone is in a room typing rapidly. Text message noises are going off. Noises in the city are in the background, such as cars honking and people talking. A phone rings for a while, but after a few rings, it is greeted by someone’s voicemail. Because of the typing, it becomes obvious this person is actually available but chooses to avoid this phone call. The mood in the room is tense. Someone sighs loudly. Someone begins to play music through speakers. At this point you can still hear the sounds of the city outside.

I envision this scene as a bombardment of technological noises. I want it to use noises from computers and cellphones to highlight the fact that there is an overwhelming variety of technologies today. What inspired this soundscape idea is a commercial on TV about the “Amazon echo”, which is basically similar to Siri on an iPhone, but it’s a product on its own. This made me think about how we are constantly being introduced to new technologies and how some of them may be pretty unnecessary. Therefore I want my soundscape to show how overwhelming the noises of day to day life today can be. These technological noises mixed with cars honking outside and other busy noises like that create an environment with a stressful mood.

I chose the one that was titled “Red Bull Can”.  I imagine this scene being held in a kitchen, living room, or common area. I see it as someone just getting up after taking a shower, making some food, and eating while opening a red bull to get ready for the day. I see this as somebody getting ready for going out during the night. I can see it as friend coming over later to talk and socialize afterwards. After having a get together, he/she and their friends would go out to a club downtown to have even more fun. This scene would preferably happen before noon. Nobody is speaking and there is no background music. The only over thing I can hear is the moving of the can after it being opened. However, since I imagine it as a social gathering, I would add more noise tracks such as a music track and/or people talking in the background. Specifically, the music and the noises of the people would have to be really loud but not to loud that you couldn’t hear the opening of cans.