Sonic Design / TASK 3 [Audio Storytelling (Audiobook)]

 

Week 8 - Week 11 (10 November 2025 - 7 December 2025)

Muhammad Zaky Aulia [0367842]
Bachelor of Computer Science
Exercises and Audio Fundamentals  
________________________________________________________________________________

TASK 3: Audio Storytelling (Audio-book)

WEEK 9 / Project 3: Audio Storytelling

For our third project, which would be the second serious-project that I count, Mr. Razif told us to pick one popular fairy-tale, folklore, or any children's short story and create an audio book. However, it won't be as how a normal audio book only features voice narration, but the task asks us to also incorporate sound effects that would bring the immersion of the story higher. 

In summary, our current task is to create an audio book of the chosen story we want, to record ourselves narrating the story and voice acting as the characters in the story, where each characters obviously will have different voices and quirks to them, so we will have to change our voices to suit the characters or edit them in Adobe Audition, and finally to add sound effects in-between the story.

 ________________

 CHOSEN STORY and VISUALS

There are many stories to choose from for this project, the thought of making one based-off a folklore intrigued me, however in the end, I settled on doing an audio-book for a children's short story called "The Wind and The Sun" as the story seems interesting to incorporate sound effects for and for some reason, the story feels awfully nostalgic for me. 

Below would be the script of the story with some color-coding where "Blue" means "Sound Effects" and "Yellow" means "Dialogues" that I would need to read and the list of sound effects I would need to implement in the audio-book, alongside the sources of where each sound effect came from;      

 

Figure 1.1 Story for Project 3: Audio Storytelling with List of Sound Effects w/ Sources

For the visuals of the audio-book, thankfully there was a website that provided the story with the visuals and also a YouTube video hosted by the same people who made the website where I can screenshot some additional visuals from. Below are the visuals I have compiled and will be using for my audio-book project;

Figure 1.2 Compilation of Visuals for Audio-book 

 ________________

VOICE-OVER RECORDING

The first task I have to do in this project would be to record a voice-over for the audio-book. This ranges from the narration until the dialogues of each characters in said story. In order to record a voice-over with the best quality possible, using my Samsung phone as a microphone, I had to create a surrounding with the least white noise possible. 

The air-conditioning had to be turned off, and I had to make a make-shift recording studio with my pillows and a blanket to make sure the sound won't reflect as much. The recording was done using the default Samsung voice recorder app. Below is how my make-shift recording studio looks like;

 

Figure 2.1 Make-Shift Recording Studio

For the narration, I try to be very clear with my words by taking my time in-between words, not too much time, but enough that will be clear enough and not be gargled. I also decided to split the recording into three different separate parts as to give myself less pressure of having to narrate the entire story in one go. 

I tried to make every character's voices distinct to one another by reflecting their personality into it. Mr. Wind, since he is very arrogant and strong-headed, I voiced him to have a deeper and very arrogant voice, whilst for Ms. Sun, I gave her a lighter more happy-go-lucky voice-over. I used my normal voice for the traveler with some exaggerations here and there.

Below are the voice recording and how many takes I did for each of the scenes;

 

Figure 2.2 Voice-Over Recordings 

The takes I ended up using in the end were, second take for scene 1, third take for scene 2, and the first take for scene 3.

 ________________

AUDIO EDITING

After I recorded the voice-over of the narration and dialogues for the audio-book, I imported all of the sound recordings from my phone to my laptop and imported it straight to Adobe Audition to get to the sound editing.

I downloaded the sound effects that would be needed in the audio book through the websites below; 

- FreeSound.org     :    https://freesound.org/ 
- BBC Rewind        :    https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/  

Before I started with being more specific in the editing and using different effects and such, first, I had to separate the specific clips of me voicing the different characters of the story from the full audio file and put each of them into distinct stereo tracks. The reasoning why I wanted to do this was so I would be able to edit each character's voices in a more consistent and convenient manner as I can just add the effects I wanted into the track's effect rack.

In addition, I had to trim the silence in certain parts of the full audio and position the cut audio clips neatly next to each other. 

 

Narration
The  Narration for the audiobook only used my real and natural voice as opposed to me exaggerating it with added effects. The effects I added were only the Parametric Equalizer and the Dynamics. Below is the full final track for the Narration;

 

Figure 3.1 Final Track for Narration

The Parametric Equalizer was used only to remove the bassiness of the original audio recording as the recording features very high bass as the location of the recording was in a very stuffy closet with clothes and such. To be more concise, The Parametric Equalizer was used to make the narration sound clearer and "cleaner".

 

Figure 3.2 Parametric Equalizer for Narration 

The Dynamics effect, specifically the Autogate, was used to clear out tiny imperfections in the audio clips, such as small breathing noises and small interference in the audio-clip. I had to be very specific with how I tuned the dynamics as I didn't want the audio to be choppy. I also used the compressor to make sure that the entire audio clip sounds consistent and not to exceed the dB limit. 

 

Figure 3.3 Dynamics Effect for Narration track

Mr. Wind Voice Editing
During the recording of The Wind's dialogues, I made sure to deliver the dialogues with a very deep and exaggerated arrogant-ness, however I wanted to exaggerate the deepness of the voice even more. I wanted to make The Wind's voice very mighty, a voice that the listener would expect how the literal embodiment of The Wind would be like. I used multiple effects to achieve on what I wanted, I used the Pitch Shifter mainly, the Parametric Equalizer, and Dynamics.

 

Figure 4.1 Final Wind Track

I just shifted the Pitch Shifter by a bit to make the voice deeper, but not too deep. 

 

Figure 4.2 Final Wind Pitch Shifter

I used the Parametric Equalizer to make the voice clearer, because the original voice track was also a bit too bassy, added with the pitch shifter making it a bit unclear at times, therefore I had to tune the higher frequency to make what is being said clearer.

 

Figure 4.3 Final Parametric Equalizer

The Dynamics served the same function as previously, which is to deter small noise interruptions and such.

 

Figure 4.4 Final Dynamics Function

Ms. Sun Voice Editing

Same with how the editing for Mr. Wind was, I wanted to exaggerate how the Sun sounds. I wanted the Sun to sound even friendlier, thus is why I wanted her to have an even higher voice. Same as previously, I mainly used the Pitch Shifter, the Parametric Equalizer, and the Dynamics.

 

Figure 5.1 Final Sun Track

The Pitch Shifter was used to make the voice to sound higher, I just shifted it by a bit, as to not make the voice not too robotic. 

 

Figure 5.2 Final Sun Pitch Shifter

The Parametric Equalizer is used as before to make the voice clearer and to make the voice have more oomph. 

 

Figure 5.3 Final Sun Parametric Equalizer

The Dynamics functions as before again, which is to clear the voice clips from small inference and to make the clip have a consistent volume. 

 

Figure 5.4 Final Sun Dynamics

Traveller Voice Editing
The Traveller also just uses my normal voice, alas a bit exaggerated. The only effect I gave him was the Dynamics, same reasoning as before.

 

Figure 6.1 Final Traveller Dynamics

Sound Effects Editing
The Sound effects also mainly only used Dynamics for the effects and some slight manual volume tweaks for specific clips.

 

Figure 7.1 Final Sun Track

Final Multitrack
Below is how the final multitrack for the Audio Story Telling project looks like. 

As can be seen, I have separated/organized how I edit the audio files into seven different tracks. I've put the narration in it's own track and separated the three other characters into their own tracks. The reasoning for this being that it would be easier to add the effects to the specific characters through the tracks instead of having to do it with individual clips. I also added three other tracks to keep track of which character does what sound effects.

Figure 8.1 : Final Multitrack of Project 3: Audio Storytelling

 

 ________________

FINAL AUDIO STORYTELLING 

Google Drive Link of Sound Files, Mix down, Final WAV, and Video: 
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1 folders/1dIE5HtqI3gaPOZwpijrty2OuPL-Y9nXT 

 

Final Audio Storytelling

 

Figure 9.1 : Final Audio Story Telling

 

 ________________

REFLECTION

The Audio Story Telling project was a bit easier than the first major project, however, it came with its own challenges. This project made me appreciate how voice-acting is, especially the effort you have to put in with an amateur and makeshift set-up. From turning the air conditioning off to making my own makeshift recording studio in my closet, it really taught me a lot on how much is done to even make the simplest audiobook. Of course I also integrated the knowledge I've gathered and learned from the previous projects and exercises, thus is what helped to ease of the challenge of this project. All in all, it was quite the experience to do this project.