ds106radio

Oriental Drugs – OK – NOT THAT KIND!

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Oriental Drugs is a pharmacy and store on Milwaukee’s Eastside and has been there for ages. It is one of the landmarks for my character Jerry.

I began by looking up old radio commercials, jingles, scripts, and advertising online. I spent way more time on listening and going off on tangents from links, one after another. Discipline in staying on track needs to improve.

I found some old scripts which were helpful in determining tempo, style, and other things. I also remembered writing for the ear and looked up those tips as well. I can’t say I follow them all – but it allowed me to remember not to be an English teacher tyrant and to write more for listening than report writing or policy and contract documents.

I broke down my script into “ear hear” lines and double spaced for adding in sounds etc. Once I placed all the possible sounds and transitions I went to the next time sucker and visited freesound.org for downloads that might work saving them all to one folder and making sure they had titles that would allow me to read and not have to listen to everyone trying to find what I needed when I needed it.

Once complete it was background music. This is the biggest time warp! So many songs and music and yet going the CC or free copyright path doesn’t always bring about the best choices. They are most certainly there  – but finding them among all the other stuff  – wow! – Who would think listening to 30 second clips could take hours! I narrowed it down to 3 songs.

In Audacity, I recorded my script and divided the ear hear lines into separate sections. I would have preferred someone else reading but really don’t have any willing subjects handy now.  I learned how to finally split a track and to use the time shift tool. I also managed to use the envelope tool, and several effects. I am getting more proficient at keyboard commands that increases efficiency as well.

I had 14 tracks going in this project and found using labeling was helpful as well as shrinking the track sizes, and collapsing once something is in place. Even dawned on me to move tracks up and down when I was working on placements so that other tracks weren’t in between. DUH! It’s those simple things!

While I still hear some things I’d like to work on, I will wait for feedback. Plus I still have another commercial to do and can apply new-found knowledge there. Just trying to keep in mind this is learning and not project outcome for now.

The sounds I used were:

freesound.org Dogs 20130101_131356_vaermland_sledge_dogs_before_start_put_to_sledge.wav
sausages frying.wav
Smoke Detector Alarm
WetDoorOpen2.wav
231255__klankbeeld__pendulum-slow-two-o-clock.wav
1033__rhumphries__rbh-household-refridgerator.wav

Music from Jamendo.com
Shuffle U by Cambo

Eastside Theme song……well almost

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This is v1.0 of the theme song for Eastside and “Jerry”. It is only version 1.0. I still need to find some sounds to add to the music.

I didn’t have a character or person to focus on the unit right before this one. Others who are on the #noir106 journey established their characters in unit 1. The idea of the character or theme from the beginning makes a lot of sense in traveling this ds106 path.

I began with lots of analyzing where in the time of the life of my Dad the story will take place. I have been lost in 1953-56 high school year books, photo albums and memories. The other wall I kept hitting was whether this is an intro bumper, a theme song, or a promo. Because I am not really doing a radio show I get caught up in radio show focus instead of how I will use these. I will probably still use this theme for part of his story. It has brought to light that what I really need is an intro bumper to tell who the story is about. A next audio assignment will be to do something as an intro bumper.

I could have chosen to do something that was from the late 50’s – but that reminded me of Happy Days (the TV Show) and didn’t seem to fit. My Dad loved music – all kinds. His records and CDS and the music channels on cable, the radio he would set up when we would go on vacation in northern Wisconsin each year.

A mix of all his favorites would probably sound like a strange mix. I decided to stay focused on the Eastside story and him as a handsome young man navigating new adulthood in the late 50’s. Determining what that sound would be had me listening to all sorts of things – and boy can you go on a tangents and find some neat things you weren’t looking for – but they eat up your time!

One of his favorites in music was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I decided to take one of their songs and remix it.

Taste of Honey was the song I chose. I remember it playing on the record player when I was a kid . It was way too peppy and dance like for a theme. I worked with the speed of the clips and slowed them down to get a different sound. I also cut portions out to keep it under 1.5 minutes. In trying to get it to sound like it was one song and not something chopped up, I used WAH WAH to blend sounds, the envelope and lots of adjusting, and fade in and fade out.

Other tools I used were normalize and noise reduction. After the noise reduction, I had to go back and increase the sound decibel. Normalize got rid of the clipping. Noise reduction softened the recording sounds. Increasing the decibel meant I could hear the product without cranking my sound up all the way.

The UNDO command became my best friend  but still turned on me at times! The part I haven’t done is add some other sounds yet. That will be version 1.x-2.

After a good 5 hours of tweaking  – I called it version one.

As for ds106/noir106 I don’t think this hits the targets others are going towards. But for my learning plan, it did keep me in Audacity, in audio editing, and in building that skill and understanding so I am going to call it a success.

 

 

So Sorry to miss Noir106 Radio

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tdc1122:  Make a picture with words on them. Your theme: I’m sorry.

I'm Sorry Noir DS106Radio

Click picture to enlarge

Unit 4 is Audio-listening and learning about sound in storytelling and how to use tools to create those sounds and effects.

Sound takes a lot of time to work with – LOTS! Listening, cutting, re-cutting, mixing, layering, compressing….lots of time. Only 2 daily creates completed for this unit and I thought during the day this would be one I would skip.

But then I became time challenged for the second night in a row. I am in the Central time zone and the Noir class is originating from the Eastern time zone. There is no reason for communications to show the time zones when the credit students are all located in the same place. The link is there for the radio line up and independent learners should figure this out. But – I didn’t. Or actually I did, but it didn’t stick in my head and I didn’t change my note that said 9pm.

I opened up Twitter and saw the flood of tweets! OMG – yep an hour late. Reading through the stream it sounded like it was a good one. So I then went to listen to the archive of the radio show. It was good – but what was missing was that back channel talk and interaction. Some activities need real-time interaction with others and not asynchronous.

So my creative energy began flowing. My husband has restored an old radio cabinet. I used a photo I took of it without a flash and the lighting and angle seemed right for this apology picture.
Daily create done!
Under 20 minutes.
Now back to audio work.

Luckily I have two more nights to try and get in on the party!

ds106.ioAnimatedNewOldFriend_290

 

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