Audio+Activities

Audio Activities

Audio Activity 1 | Audio Activity 2



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For my project I selected part of Hawaii Slang, which states “No Rain, No Rainbows”, perhaps it comes from the full quote from Dolly Parton which says, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain” but I think “No Rain, No Rainbows” is much more to the point. I selected this quote because it is currently raining in my life. I need a reminder that sometimes you need to put up with the bad to have the good. Other interpretations would be more literal. It is a fact that rainbows come after rain, you need the sun shining through the moisture filled atmosphere to bend the light and produce a rainbow. For my project, I decided that the literal translation can easily represent what I am going thru in my life. I know all this rain will fall, but in the background somewhere, there is a rainbow.

Starting the process was the hardest part. There are so many good quotes out there, settling on one that represents where I am right now, and one that would look good pictorially was really hard. But once the idea about a rainbow overshadowing gray skies popped into my head, I was off to the races. I had a pretty solid idea on what I wanted to do, a nice clean collage with four pictures with a rainbow layered on top. To complete the task I found a very easy to follow tutorial online for creating collages in Photoshop.

1) Created the paper to 200 px by 200 px 2) Added Gridlines at 20 and 180 Horizontally 3) Added Gridlines at 20 and 180 Vertically. 4) Using the draw tool, selected fixed size rectangle. 5) Created four rectangles of equal size and placed them in the four corners of the document. 6) Painted those squares red so I could see their borders, I left some white space to separate the pictures. 7) Placed the pictures into the drawings, and scaled them to the size of the red rectangles. 8)I then created another layer and placed the picture of the rainbow on that layer. 9) I put the rainbow on the top layer and manipulated the color and saturation so it would blend into the lower layers and give a cool illusion. 10) I added a graphics box, and then selected a template that allowed me to enter the text in a “flag” pattern. 11) I entered the text, and realized it was exactly how I envisioned it in my mind. 12) I hit “save for web”.

I never really considered myself a creative person so expressing my self in writing or in art is something I never would have done. I think creatively this project just took on a life of its own, and I was done, when it told me I was.

I spent a lot of time looking around the web for the “perfect” picture. After downloading about a dozen, I selected the ones I liked the best. I also downloaded a few “natural” rainbow pictures, but the color was not vivid enough. So I selected a hand drawn image that had bolder color choices.

Sources:

[|Lightning:]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11039104@N08/2926143475/

[|Impending Storm] []

[|HALF RAIN] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bvstratum/7166565126/sizes/z/in/photolist-bVhw8G-bVhwsb-eW5kHP-cK5xCN-cK5xXS-cK5xRN-cK

[|Waterfall:]

[]

[|Rainbow] []



= Audio Activity 2  =

My college roommate once told me I had a face for radio so that is the approach I took with this project.

I decided to do my best DJ impression and have some fun with this project.

I began by finding copyright free music on a website called "Jamendo." My radio station is "DVL".. So I picked a song by the Sons of Sin.

After selecting the music, I imported the track "The Dream" into Audacity.

I then proceeded with my DJ impersonation and introduced the tune.

At first I had the moved the starting point of the song to begin about 1.5 seconds after I began talking and it sounded good, but then I decided that was too easy.. so I tried more effects.

I moved the track to begin at the same point as my narrative and used the "Fade In" effect for the first 3 seconds of the song.

Realizing Audacity had many other features I decided to explore the program further.

I experimented with the pitch feature.. first lowering it all the way to "C" hoping I could make my voice sound like Josh Turner or Johnny Cash, but it just sounded garbled. I decided to go the other way and raise the pitch. After changing the pitch, I sounded like I just inhalled helium or was the leader of the Munckin's. I thought it was cool, so I left it.

Deciding I wanted to take it one step further, I looked at other effects and decided I wanted to use reverb. That effect is placed at the beginning of the track so it sounds like I am speaking in a big empty room, in reality I am sitting about a foot from the computer microphone.

I was thinking about taking it one step further, so i started playing with the reverse feature. This feature was cool, but I don't know how I would use it in my project. I may go pull some of my Black Sabbath mp3 and play them backwards just for the fun of it.

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The source for the Audio [|File]