Sci-Fi Soundscapes

Last year I decided that I wanted to do a project with Garage Band but did not want to do a music project or a podcast.  I was searching around and I came upon some very cool science fiction soundscapes on Youtube.  I shared this with a few of my students and they thought it was awesome.  I did the project with a few of my classes and they loved it.

It was a great project, it taught students about audio production, and the science fiction genre.  It tied in nicely to some novel studies that they were doing in other classes, while keeping relevant with popular culture.

 Below I have posted an quick outline of what I did, feel free to use it if you would like.

Sci Fi Soundscape Audio Processing Assignment

Work in groups of two, you will need to use an Imac Computer.

You will learn about the science fiction genre of films, how to process and alter audio recordings, and how to use and move files using an Imac.

Here are some important definitions before you start.

Science Fiction: A genre of fiction based on an imagined or speculative future portraying technological advances and/or major social and environmental changes. Examples would be films such as Star Wars, Transformers, The Avengers, etc

Soundscape: A collage of different sounds portraying a certain theme.

Audio Processing: When you intentionally alter audio signals

1.  Listen to one of the following youtube clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6l0X5CHDsk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHQIiB4dJfs&feature=relmfu

These are science fiction sound scapes.  These are heavily processed and altered sounds.

2.  Go to http://www.soundjay.com/mechanical-sounds.html
You need to download a few of these sounds.  To do so do a control + click on the mp3 and select save link as.  This will download the sound file to your downloads folder.  To check if it is there, click the finder icon on the dock and then click your name on the left.  This opens up your user directory.  Select downloads to make sure that the file is there.

3.  Open up Garage Band from the dock.  Create a new project and leave all of the settings on their defaults.  

4.  Open up your downloads in the finder and drag each sound file that you downloaded into Garage Band.  Be sure to place each file on its own track.

5.  Double click one of the tracks on the far left.  Click where it lists the track instrument.  This will open up a menu on the right that allows you to select track effects.  Experiment with these until you find a really creepy science fiction like sound.  Repeat for each of the sounds you downloaded.

6.  Arrange your sounds so that they overlap, if you want you can add more sounds.  

Congratulations you have created a science fiction sound scape.