For audio week during #prisoner106, one of the assignments we were asked to do was to create a morning announcement for the Village like in The Prisoner.
Since I’m the Village Philosopher, mine had some philosophical content. Do you know the Ship of Theseus?
The process
I wanted this to sound like it was coming over a radio or through a loudspeaker, so I didn’t want a “clean” voice sound like I usually do. Time to use the crappy phone mic and speaker! I recorded the voice parts on some built-in recorder app on my phone (can’t remember what it was), and then I played that through the phone speaker while holding it near my laptop built in mic and recorded it into Audacity. Two crappy mics and one crappy speaker and voilà.
I wanted to do the same thing with the “technical difficulties” clip, but that would be a bit harder. I recorded that from my system audio using Soundflower. So it went straight into Audacity from there. I would have had to then record it on my phone from my laptop, then back into the laptop using the same procedure as above. I decided to just let that go and have it not sound like it was coming through the loudspeaker.
BTW, here are a couple of sites I found useful when I had to try to remember how to use Soundflower (I didn’t remember):
- Basics: http://osxdaily.com/2013/02/25/record-system-audio-mac-os-x-soundflower/
- How to still be able to hear your system audio while you’re using Soundflower to record it: http://www.macworld.com/article/1159440/soundflower_capture.html
I recorded the Rover sound using Soundflower as well, while watching The Chimes of Big Ben on the Prisoner106 archive. I then uploaded that Rover sound into a #prisoner106 sound collection that Melanie Barker started, that we can all use and contribute to.
The Rover sound from that episode has music in parts of it, though, and I didn’t want the music, so I had to cut and paste parts of the Rover sequence into my audio file. I tried and tried to make the two parts fit together smoothly, but it just wasn’t working. So I gave up and there’s an obvious jump between parts of the Rover sequence. But hey…who said Rover’s noise had to be smooth?
Sounds
Mostly made by me, except:
Birds sound is licensed CC0 from freesound.org, but in case anyone wants to find it (or in case I want to find it again), here it is: http://freesound.org/people/sphion/sounds/158527/
Technical difficulties voice sound was made from here: http://onlinetonegenerator.com/voice-generator.html
The Village announcement chime came from the Prisoner106 archive.
Update:
At the end of this broadcast Rover got me, and I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital. And I saw this. What could they possibly be doing to my legs?!
Really nice mix of sounds.
Brilliant, I was hooked, hopefully the Village Philosopher avoided Rover or is recovering in the hospital.
Thanks, John. I’ve been recovering in hospital for a few days but they have let me out. Will be back in the Village this week!
Brilliant! Put together nicely on a technical level and was its own story. I thought you were sounding dangerous and unbalanced for a moment. I am glad the situation was rectified. I will be sure to visit you in hospital. Be seeing you.
Thanks! Was really fun to do. I was unbalanced for a moment, but all has been fixed. They have made me better!
I enjoyed the questioning of independent existence. The ship of Theseus was new to me (or long forgotten) but the concept is a recurring thought, considering that after about seven yours a human body is completely new matter. Who was I seven years ago, and 14, and 21, and 28, and …
I particularly liked your explanation of recording a recording from the speaker rather than transferring the digital file and working with that. I’ll have to try seven generations of that! Also, I can record audio in Audacity whenever I am playing an audio source. I couldn’t do that with my previous laptop, so it may not be universally possible.
Get well soon. Be sure to remove the blue tape to avoid strange-patterned suntans.
Whoa, I had forgotten about the thing where the body is completely different matter every seven years. Do we then become different people? Hmmmm.
I don’t think I can record audio directly; I think with a Mac you have to use Soundflower or something like that? Maybe with another kind of computer you don’t. Not sure.
Feeling better…they have let me out of the hospital after an attitude adjustment.
You could use a phone-plug cable to loop from your computer’s headphone audio out back to the mic audio in jack. The trick with this is you can’t hear at the same time, and you need to watch out for the levels. And you might pick up a bit of buzz, especially with a cheap or aged cable.
Keep interrogating your technology!
Ah, interesting workaround! But on my laptop the headphone audio out is the same as the mic audio in (unless you use a USB for the mic–is that what you’re talking about?).
Gee, hope the Village Philosopher is ok! The philosophically deprived Villagers need the Socratic questioning skills provided by our resident philosopher!!
I am better! Or so they tell me. They let me out, anyway. Questions are a burden, they told me.