OCR National Level 2 ICT Module 22: Sound

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Unit 22 Sound OCR National Level 2 ICT

This tutorial should help you to pass the OCR National Level 2 Sound module.  Basically I would suggest creating an advert for radio using a mixture of voice recordings, sound effects and music tracks and then blending all these together to create your radio ad. This tutorial will help you to get started and discover some of the joys of Audacity  http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ which is a screen reader accessible open source audio project.

This tutorial uses keystrokes and no mouse.

We used Audacity  to create the spoken audio sections of the advert as well as to edit and assemble all the various sections of sound clip into a broadcast quality recording.  To make things easy for you I have written a tutorial that you can follow, you don't even need a microphone to try it out as all the sound files are available below.

Now before you get started I would suggest that you write a script for all your voice recordings and record the voice part of the advert in separate files using Microsoft's Sound recorder program.

See below for the script we are going to use.  We will create a radio advert for “Hairy Bob's” used car sales dealership.  I have also included a couple of completed adverts that my students have created.

Advert Text	Sound effect
Honk, Honk (Sound Effect)	Filename: carhorn
Are you looking for a good used car?	Filename: part1
Hairy Bob's, he's got the lot.	Filename: hairy bobs
Ewwwwww (Sound Effect)	Filename: eewwww
It's crammed full of bargains.	Filename: bargains
Just off junction 3 on the M180.	Filename: m180
Squealing tyres (Sound effect)	Filename: car
Finished Adverts	Jacks Advert      Lawrences Advert

1a. Create some basic sound files to work on.

Open Sound recorder by hitting the windows key, tapping “P” for Programmes followed by “Enter”, then "A" for Accessories followed by “Enter”, and “E” for entertainment followed by “Enter”, then finally “S” for Sound recorder followed by “Enter”.
Record a sound by hitting the “spacebar” to start recording and “spacebar” to stop.  Save the file by tapping “Alt” followed by down arrow and then tap “S” for Save. Once saved tap “Alt” followed by down arrow and  then “N” for a new recording.

Tidying up your sound files using trimming

1. Opening Audacity

Do “Windows key + tab”, then tap “tab” a few times until you reach the desktop.  Now tap the letter “A” until you reach “Audacity 1.3.6” then hit “Enter”.  An Audacity window will open.

2. Creating a voice recording

The first task is to create some audio.  Plug your microphone into the correct socket  AND connect a set of headphones as well.  If you are using a screenreader then you MUST use headphones or you will end up recording the voice of the screenreader as well as the “Actors” voice.

2a. Setting the volume of your microphone

Start by setting the volume of your microphone.  “Ctrl + F6” will move you between the various frames in Audacity, they cycle between Track view table frame. Audio position frame; you will probably hear “End radio button checked” and the recording tools frame; you will probably hear “Pause button” when you reach this frame.
Do “Ctrl + F6” and when you reach the recording tools frame usually indicated by “Pause button”, hit the “tab” key until you hear “Slider output button”, this is the volume level for your headphones, tap “tab” again and you will hear “Slider input button” this is the volume level for your microphone.  Depending on the microphone that you are using set the recording level of the microphone using the left and right arrow keys.  I would suggest setting at about 50 % initially.

2b. Trimming off the silences.

When you do homemade recordings there is always a slight delay in speaking and turning off the recording when you have finished speaking, so one of the first jobs is to remove the silences at the start and end of a recording.
Do “Ctrl + O” to open up a recording, locate\the directory using “Alt + i”, using the up and down arrows to change the selection, followed by “tab” key a few times until you hear “Folder, view list view” and then tap the first letter of the required directory followed by “Enter”.
Locate the filename “Part1” and play the recording through to begin with by tapping the “spacebar”.
Go to the start of the recording by tapping the “Home” key and then get it to play by hitting the “spacebar”.   The first job is to to work out how much silence is at the start of the recording and then to remove it.  Do this by tapping the right arrow key, each time you tap the right arrow key you are moving the starting cursor position to the right by 0.01 seconds.
Right arrow: forward by 0.01 seconds
Left arrow: back by 0.01 seconds
Full stop: Forward by 1 second
Comma: Back by one second

3. Removing silence from the start of the track.

Once you get to the point where the voice starts as soon as you press the spacebar, you will know that you can clean off the unwanted silence by selecting the remaining audio by doing “Shift + Home”, then hit the “Delete” key to remove the selection. Tap “Home” and then tap the “spacebar” again to play through the selected audio.

4. Trimming silence off the end.

Go to the end of the track by tapping “End”, tap the left arrow a few times to move the cursor position into the track, tap the “spacebar” to play the selection between the cursor and the end of the track, keep tapping the “left arrow” followed by the cursor until you have worked out how much silence can be removed.  Now select the usable audio by doing “Shift + Home”, and remove the excess silence by doing “Ctrl + T” for Trim selection.

5. Using the trimmed up audio.

Go to the start of the cleaned up track by tapping “Home”, now select and copy the audio by doing “Ctrl + C”.  You now have a fully trimmed piece of audio which is ready to be pasted into a new project.    The reason behind creating a new project is that Audacity uses its own file system and when you save a file as an Audacity project, it creates a folder with a load of data files that accompany the project.  I would suggest that to avoid complexity it is good too keep the sound bites and sound effects separate from the main project . So what we will create a new Audacity project and copy and paste all our trimmed files into the project.

6. Creating a new Audacity project.

I am assuming that you still have Audacity open, so create a new project by doing “Ctrl + N”.
Paste the previously trimmed audio into the project by doing “Ctrl + V”, then tap the “Home” key to move the cursor to the start of the recording and play the recording by tapping the “spacebar”.
Now save the project as “Advert Tutorial” by doing “Ctrl + S” and tapping “tab” or “Shift + tab” to get to the “Save as” box.  To see which directory you are saving the project into do “Alt + I”.

7. Moving between open files.

You now have to go back to the “Part1” file and close it without saving.  Move between open files by holding down the “Alt” key and tapping “tab”, when you get to the “Part 1” file let go of the “Alt” key.  Close the Part1 file by doing “Ctrl + W”, do not save the changes, just tab to the “No” button and hit “Enter”.

8. Inserting sound effects

We are now going to insert the sound of a car horn at the start of the recording to wake up our listeners and alert them to the fact that this is a quality piece of audio they are listening to.
Open the sound file “carhorn” by doing “Ctrl + O” and then “Shift + tab” to move to list view, now tap the letter “C” to move through all files beginning with the letter “C”.  When you reach “carhorn” hit “Enter”.  Move to the start of “carhorn” by tapping “Home”, and play it by tapping the “spacebar”.  Copy the track by doing “Ctrl + C” and move to “Advert Tutorial” by doing “Alt + tab”.  Move the cursor to the start of the track “Advert Tutorial” by hitting the “home” key and paste in the sound effect by doing “Ctrl + V”.  Tap the “home” key again to go to the start of the track and play it through using the “spacebar”.  Save your changes by doing “Ctrl + S”.  Now move back to the “carhorn” track by doing “Alt + tab” and close it using “Ctrl + W”, do not save the changes, just tab to the “No” button and hit “Enter”.

9. Inserting the next bit of audio and increasing its volume.

We are now going to open the track “hairy bobs” by doing “Ctrl + O”, then “Shift + tab” to move to list view, then tapping the letter “h” until we reach the track “hairy bobs” followed by “Enter”.
Move the cursor to the start of the track by tapping “home” and play it through by tapping the “spacebar”.  You will see that the track is rather quiet and crackles a lot, this is not really suitable for radio so needs it's volume increasing and the crackles and silences removing.

10. Remove silence at the start

We will start by removing the silences, move to the start of the track by tapping “home”, then move the cursor to the right by tapping the “right arrow” key a few times and then tapping the “spacebar” until the voice starts as soon as the “spacebar” is pressed.  Select the silence by doing “Shift + Home” and get rid of it by hitting the “Delete” key.

11. Remove silence at the end

Go to the end of the track by tapping the “End” key.  Move the cursor to the left using the left arrow key and tap the “spacebar” to listen to the amount of silence between the cursor position and the end of the track, keep repeating this until you have worked out how much unwanted silence can be safely removed.  Now select the useable audio by doing “Shift + Home” and then trim it to a useable length by doing “Ctrl + T”.

12. Removing the horrid crackling sound.

We will now remove the horrid crackling sound by using a “Low Pass Filter”.  The audio should still be selected, but make sure that it is by doing “Ctrl + A”.  Now go to the “Effect” menu by doing “Alt + C” and down arrow to “Filter” followed by “Enter”, select “Lowpass” using the Up or Down arrow key and hit “Enter”, then down arrow to “Low Pass Filter” followed by “Enter”.  A “Low Pass Filter” dialogue window will open.  I would suggest just accepting the default values and tapping the “tab” key until you reach the OK button followed by “Enter”. Play the track through by tapping the spacebar and you should find that the crackles have disappeared.

13.  Increasing the volume

As the track is a bit quiet it would be a good idea to increase the volume.
Ensure the audio is selected by doing “Ctrl + A” then go to the “Effect” menu by doing “Alt + C”, now tap the down arrow to go to “Amplifier” followed by “Enter” and then up or down arrow to go to “Amplify” followed by “Enter”.  An amplify dialogue window will open.  I would suggest just accepting the default values and tapping the “tab” key until you reach the “OK” button followed by “Enter”.  Play the track through by tapping the spacebar and you should find that the volume of the track has increased.
We now have to copy the track by doing “Ctrl + C” before we paste it onto the end of our advert.

14. Pasting audio onto the end of a track.

We now move back to the advert by holding down the “Alt” key and tapping “tab” until you reach “Advert Tutorial”.  Tap the “End” key to move the cursor to the end of the track and then paste in the audio using “Ctrl + V”. Now move the cursor back to the start of the advert by tapping “Home” and play the advert by tapping the “spacebar”.  You should now find that you have a longer advert  with the new audio added at the end.  Save your work by doing “Ctrl + S”.
We now need to close the “hairy bobs” track without saving it so do “Alt + tab” to go back to it and then do “Ctrl + W” to close it and then tap “tab” to go to the “No” button followed by “Enter”.

15. Adding the rest of the advert pieces.

I would now suggest that you practice your new found skills by adding the rest of the adverts pieces by using the shortcut keys outlined above.  Clean up the audio by removing silence at the start and end of the tracks, removing the crackling sounds, amplifying where appropriate and then copying and pasting the clean audio into the “Advert Tutorial”.  There are many more things that you can do  with Audacity, but this will get you started so that you are competent with all the basics.

16. Exporting to an alternative audio format

Once your advert is finished it needs to be exported in an alternative file format such as .ogg or .mp3