When I first began collecting sounds for this project I truly had no idea what I was doing. I had no vision or even a general direction of where I wanted to go, so I just found sounds that I enjoyed. After collecting over twenty sounds I decided to sift through them and see if I could create any storyline. 

When I was younger my grandparents would always take me to Rain Forest Cafe in Atlantic City. It’s basically a restaurant that is themed like a jungle and has all sorts of crazy statues and fish tanks. That is where the inspiration for the jungle came from. I wanted to recreate the childlike feeling of feeling like I was in a jungle while eating a delicious brownie sundae. I feel that the ice cream truck brings in a childish fun element to this jungle with ongoing construction.

Setting the stage for the scene was quite easy using macro noises. The background jungle provided the perfect foundation for me to layer on additional macro sounds such as the construction, ice cream truck, and chatter. From there I had a lot of fun injecting micro noises to really bring my audio to life. The additions of the tiger roar, footsteps, birds, and layered monkeys, gave my piece a lot more depth.

Ice Cream In The Jungle

When finding sounds for John's piece I decided to try and just get everyday sounds that we just block out due to their insignificance. For example, I got the sound of a crinkling water bottle, some change, and even just the sound of an apple air pods case closing. I felt that it would be very interesting to see what he could do with these everyday sounds. I wanted him to manipulate them to be more than just some mundane sounds. I wanted more from the ignored.
 I really struggled with this project. As a result, I decided I was just going to try to make an extremely chaotic sound piece to represent my panic. I continued by making three separate pieces that symbolized how I was feeling while attempting to make them.
 In the beginning, I spent most of my time questioning how I was going to execute the feeling I was going for. I decided to fully utilize the delay, reverb, and equalizer effects to mess with my sounds. I then continued to stretch and compress various sounds to further create a feeling of panic.
 When combing my piece with John's pieces, I cut his pieces to match the feeling of panic I was going for. I feel that I have successfully meshed these six clips to create a strong feeling of panic and chaos.
 In the end, I feel like this project benefited my skills with reaper and with overall music production. Through actively searching for ways to push and stretch these sounds to get the most out of them I dramatically increased my familiarity with reaper. In addition, this project pushed me to be creative and not just to ride off one singular sound.
I really hope you are prepared to listen to this and maybe even enjoy it!

Portrayed Panic

While creating this piece I initially struggled with understanding how to use the synth. I could not even figure out how to pull up the virtual piano. After about an hour of playing with reaper I managed to open a window where I could select individual notes on the synth with my mouse. It was a huge success. I was so happy to be able to finally work the thing that I began to just mess around. After another half hour or so I decided to get to work. I knew I wanted to try to create something that loosely resembled the ups and downs of a romantic relationship, so I began to make scales on the synth with random notes. I began to work in threes. I would create a small beat then repeat it three times slowly raising or lowering the pitch. Not only was this a lot of fun and very satisfying but it also made me much more comfortable with the synth. 
 As I continued to make this sound I tried creating different beats to resemble different aspects of a relationship. I ended with a beat that raises in pitch initially, slowly drops back down, then slowly but surely climbs its way back up, and is finished by an upbeat melody. These sectors represent the beginning of a relationship and the rekindling after a fight. A couple grows stronger as they resolve conflicts, and my piece grows and becomes more complex with time to represent this.

A Lovely Rollercoaster

I have wanted to take a stab at making music with samples for a while now, so I was super excited to start this project when it was assigned. I began by listening to a bunch of different songs and seeing if there was any specific song that stood out to me. When I saw the few songs by Bill Conti, I got really excited because I love the Rocky movies. Since I am from Philadelphia those movies were constantly on in my house throughout my childhood. Initially I was set on using Gonna Fly Now but I struggled to figure out how to build around it. 

After a little while of playing with Gonna Fly Now I decided to download the office theme song and I began to mess around. I began to shorten and stretch the song listening for what I would like best. After slowing it down I realized that it actually sounded quite beautiful so I pitched it down and became quite pleased with the sound. From there I decided to completely ditch the Philadelphia theme I had in my head. The piano from the office proved to sound much better and sounded like it would fit perfectly into a sad song. 

With the piano as a solid base, I continued my search for songs that would fit well with the piano sample. The song from Brown’s A cappella caught my attention as the beginning was quite soft and peaceful. I decided to take the beginning and pitch it down to match the piano because I felt that it matched the sad theme I was going for. Finally, I added the violin from a classical piece that was posted.

Sad Remix

This project was a ton of fun to make. I feel like I really started to get a hang of how to cut, edit, find loops, and really just toy with tracks to make them sound the way that I wanted them to. Initially, I struggled a lot to find workable samples. I found a few different ones that I liked because of a specific loop, but I was never able to get them to work. After a few days of frustration, I decided to suck it up and just stick to a sample. So I did. From there I was able to get the ball rolling and really get a feel for where I was going. Initially, I wanted to make more of a low-fi type of beat but I then fell into the trap of sample searching again. I decided to then just try to make a song fully off of samples. I decided to try to find cool instrumentals that I could stitch together.
Pretty much everything I used besides two songs came from either hip-hop or r&b artist. I did not even mean for that to be the theme, but I kept finding loops that I could include from this genre. Overall, I feel like this is one of the best things I have made in this class. I am very excited to continue to attempt to make music going forward and continue to hone my skills.

Broshkoff22