Sound Design

This assignment is only the second one I’ve done so far for my Sound Design class! That said, I really did have fun working on it and putting all the pieces together. For this assignment, we were basically given full creative freedom to use whatever sound effects we had available to use. Spoiler, we have access to a lot of sound effects. The concept of free reign is one I’ve seen time and time again, yet every time, it always scares me. It takes me a while to ground myself, and grant myself structure on my own terms. Once that structure is built, however, it’s miles easier for me to get my work done! This image here shows the entire mixdown of my assignment, showing each and every piece that came together to create this 30 second piece.

In my Sound Design class, one of the most important things I had to do for this assignment, and what was taught directly before being given the assignment, was compression. Compression allows me to basically level out the highs and lows in my volume levels. For example, if there were any bits in my voiceover that were a little too quiet compared to the rest, compression would fix it.
This tool is one used by pretty much everybody in the audio producing world, and is especially important for anything preparing to publish music!

Another important effect taught in my Sound Design class was EQ’s! The panel for this is a bit more confusing, and when working with it, can make your audio sound a little distorted before finding the right spot. EQ helps with frequencies. It allows me to slowly adjust and cut off specific frequencies, high or low, to make it so it’s not very squeaky or super bass heavy.

This assignment is the first of two I’ve currently been given in my Sound Design class. This assignment was very interesting and allowed me to realize just how complex reading from a script can be. Taking my time to re-do lines and experiment with my vocals was extremely important to make this assignment as good as I could. Overall, I believe this assignment is one that I’ll look back on fondly, as it was my first time actually using Adobe Audition!

In the process of recording this voiceover, I wanted give myself a way to keep track of my progression. In doing so, I saved multiple versions of this project. This let me test multiple versions of my edits to see what sounded clear and controlled. By saving each version separately, it allows me to practice my file organization, and lets me easily swap between versions without worry of losing anything.