Audio Ideas for 2007

It’s a New Year and time for some new ideas for 2007! How about starting with a new message on your answering machine? To make one, start with a morphing program like AV Music Morpher Gold, or AV Voice Changer Diamond. Figure out what you want to say and then record it. If you’re using Morpher Gold then you can load and edit it by applying effects and filters. If you want to fool around as you record, and you want to hear the changes immediately, then Voice Changer is your choice, with its stereo duplex support and filtering in real time. Try adding depth and bass to your voice, or soften and raise it, or even alter it to sound computer-generated. Then transfer the recording to your answering machine. When I made my new answering machine greeting, I had to figure out a way to transfer it; I couldn’t find my tape recorder, I was out of CD-Rs, and my speakers are nowhere near my machine. I did find a set of Cobra microtalk walkie talkies; I taped down one so it was constantly broadcasting and placed it near the pc speaker, put my player on infinite loop and played it; then I ran into the other room and held the walkie talkie near the answering machine and hit the record button at the right time. I got a great message and a nice effect out of it.

I also wanted to add some new sounds to my pc; I recorded a few key phrases like “Welcome to my PC”, and “We’re good to go” and then ran them through the morphing program until I had a few funny files and then associated them with my start up, shut down and other functions on my pc. Just be careful which ones you decide to associate with, some of the program calls are used more frequently than you think and you could end up hearing your recording an awful lot. The Sound and Audio Devices Properties/Sounds tab allows you to associate sounds with actions.

Another way to add some fun to your audio is to prepare a few files that introduce your music; you can be your own DJ for your MP3 or audio CDs by simply recording and adding your own audio to the burns. You can use your own voice or morph it to add some interest, and then simply insert it into the order of files to be burned. You can add comments, make jokes, send greetings, etc. If you are giving a CD to a friend or relative, imagine their surprise when they hear your voice, or someone’s, saying hello, using their name and saying some thing personal to them.

You can also attach audio files to your emails to personalize them, a great way to say Happy Birthday, or send a personalized message. Do you have a personal webpage somewhere? It’s an easy thing to embed an audio file into the HTML or add it as a download for people to hear. Tell a joke or a funny story, or just add a hello to the page with audio. That reminds me of an unusual use of a digital camera; I once wanted to take a MP3 to work to share with someone; my email wasn’t working at home, so I grabbed my digital camera and transferred the file to the SD card. I knew it would show up as a drive on my work computer so it was easy to copy it off once I got there; unorthodox, but a good thing to know in an emergency. So enjoy the New Year and have fun bringing some new sounds into it.