Assignment #1

Assignment one required us to create two separate ringtones, one fifteen seconds long and the other twenty, using various recording and editing techniques. This is what I did:

For the first clip (entitled ‘Drip Drop’), I recorded a faucet pouring water into a glass with increasing intensity. As the clip progresses, there are three “stages” of intensity, in which the water first drips slowly, then pours slowly, then finally pours most intensely.
- After recording this sound, I edited it (primarily in Logic Pro).
- I faded in the very beginning of the ringtone so that it did not begin so harshly. It is a short fade, however, because the recording contains its own manner of varying intensity.
- I then normalized the volume of the clip, and used the gain tool to create greater consistency between the volume of the different water types.
- I slowed the tempo of the clip at two points – at both times when the water type changes, so as to slightly reduce the harshness of each change.
- Finally, I faded out the clip so that it might be more effective if “looped” on a cell phone ringtone.

This is what the end product sounds like:

The process for creating the second piece was slightly different, as this piece requires more digital manipulation of the sound clips.

I began the clip with a recording of a man’s fingers typing on a laptop keyboard. There is an intentional lack of traditional rhythm or time signature to the keystrokes, but they are easily recognized as the true rhythm of typing – the rhythm of the keystrokes, punctuated by strong hits of the space bar, is easily recognizable as type.
- From this clip (which was originally :25), I cropped it down to a roughly :03.5 segment, and separated these segments by a half-second of silence.
(The clip of length :03.5 was first slowed by 10%).
- I normalized the clip’s volume, and then copied the clip five times in different tracks.
- The first track/repetition fades in (to give the cell phone user a chance to answer their phone before the ringtone becomes loud interrupting).
- Each subsequent clip has a markedly increased volume (through gain modulation - +30/70/120/180%) and also a raised pitch (+20/40/60/80%). This is designed to get the listener’s attention more effectively than a static volume/pitch.

This is what the end product sounds like:

(UPDATE: Now it's working! Thanks for staying tuned.)


Hope you liked these ringtones, and feel free to use them on your phone!

- james