HW 8.1 - My Home Sound Piece

HOME SOUNDS: The significant sounds of my home environment, layered.

For my sound piece, I used only sounds heard in my apartment. I wanted to use more ambient sounds - the sounds heard in quiet times in my apartment. I layered these and cut these together. The sounds I chose to use were: each of the different radiators in my apartment, as they each have a different a different pitch, speed, tone; I also recorded the sounds of my refrigerator at different times; the final sounds I recorded were of my chewing - eating a bagel. Most of my sounds were sounds that I cannot control, and for which I had to wait, sitting, listening, in order to record them. I enjoyed these sorts of limits and parameters. I wanted to use sounds I didn't create, and I didn't want to use my voice. I find the ambient sounds of my household very comforting - I love the sounds of old New York City radiators. They click and clang, and grow louder, as they ensure that tenants are warm and cared for. I find the constant hum of a refrigerator, even a new energy star rated one, to be really pleasant. I have always wanted to record refrigerator noises as my own white noise, so it was great to finally achieve this goal.

I really enjoyed using Audacity. I so appreciate that this software is free and accessible, and can provide really professional results without a large price tag or difficult to use interface. I really liked how easy to use Audacity was - I watched a YouTube tutorial to get the hang of it. Each of the controls and levels was easy to find and easy to use. The cutting/editing techniques were super easy to use. The issue I encountered, however, was saving the file in an Apple compatible format. I tried many times, and had to download many extra library items to try to achieve this. This crashed the program each time I tried, and lost my work. I did not find a work around of this issue. The next time I use Audacity I'll have to work around this, and research which format I should save my file in, and if I can convert it to a QuickTime/iTunes compatible format after the fact. I ended up researching free audio editing programs for iPad and downloaded Hokusai. It is a free editing app with a very easy to use interface, quality results, and was very fast to work with. It is less robust and has less professional capabilities than Audacity, but it was great in a pinch.