Things Aren't As They Seem

The place I chose was the place that I am at the most while spending my time at OSU. And that is my dorm room. I do 99% of my homework in my room, and pretty much live there when not attending classes. I also have gotten used to many of the sounds of my room, which include the sounds I recorded for my video. Closing my eyes, all I can hear is a fan that is placed on my desk and running all day everyday, my speaker system playing some kind of music, ranging from rap to country, and often, people talking and conversing with each other. These are all sounds that are the dominant sonic landscape of my dorm room. 

The aftereffects of my tinkering with GarageBand have changed most of my recordings dramatically. Two of them are still recognizable of what they were originally, but my fan turned out completely different. Most of the results are the result of completely random testing of sound effects from GarageBand, and choosing the ones I liked the best or took the sounds in the direction I felt I wanted to go. The fan was the first sound I was playing with, and this is why it ended up unrecognizable. I was originally going for its amplification to make it sound like an airplane, since, next to my ear, it is quite loud, and I wanted to exaggerate it. But after adding “thickened drums” and “intense whispering” it sounded like a train yard, which was a surprising, but great result. I think it sounds a lot like some sort of industrial location, which just is cool to me.

After making the fan something it wasn’t, I decided to go with a more familiar approach with my other two sounds, trying to see how much I could change them and keep them recognizable. My second changed sound was my speaker system. I knew right away I wanted to make it seem like the speakers were close to their max volume with someone standing right next to them, like at a concert, maybe with a headache or something. I knew I wanted to make it uncomfortable for the listener to get through. And I think I succeeded – it is painful to listen to. I used the effects “microphone”, “crunchy drums”, and “fade out drums” to achieve my end result. My favorite clip, just because of the overpowering sensory barrage from it.

The last recording change is of my friend and her friend talking to each other about some trivial woman gossip. It was planned and recorded without them knowing, which makes it by far the most entertaining clip of all three. It’s topic is almost perfect when someone thinks of pointless chatter. To make this exaggerated, I wanted to make it sound trippy. I missed my mark though and instead it sounds extraterrestrial, which in hindsight only makes it funnier and to me makes the joke that women are unrelated to men and from another planet. I used the effects “orion vocals”, “filter can”, and “wandering around”. Finishing with the weirdest seemed the best way to end to me.

My pictures go in order from most familiar to weirdest, because concerts and train stations are pretty normal, but end with the alien theme. I decided to use Google images to find the pictures I needed for the video, and added a credit title to the end with a popular beat that ends too soon, begging to be played longer. I liked this project the most so far, just because I could mess around with something I haven’t used much, GarageBand, and could make interesting sounds and video with it.