I thought the “make it 800% slower prompt was an interesting one in that you’re making a song sound fundamentally different simply by changing its speed.  I decided to find a particularly cheery sounding song, since the slow down effect would almost certainly make anything sound more ambient or moody.  I also wanted to try something without lyrics because any vocals would just be turned into ambient nonsense anyway.  I went with “Rockmen” from the FTL (Faster Than Light) soundtrack.  It’s a fast paced and fun song, so I thought it would be a cool track to try the slow down effect on.  The resulting file was over 30 minutes long, so I took a segment from the middle.

Not only did it come out sounding very different from its source, it even had a specific sound it instead of vague ambiance.  It sounds like music that would be played in an 80s horror movie, just as the tension starts rising.  It was interesting that there was almost a shift of genre in the tone of the song, created by just slowing it down.

Here is the original song if you are interested in listening to the source.

This audio assignment I chose to complete is called “Make It 800% Slower” and is worth 3 points. Here’s the link to this assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/make-it-800-slower/

This assignment seemed easy at first, however, it ended up being extremely frustrating. Plus, I am no pro at Audacity yet which I’m sure made this even more difficult.

This assignment was completed by importing the song into Audacity and then choosing an effect for the entire song. Once the song was slowed down, the pitch needed to be changed. This was the most difficult part for me because I could not figure out how to do it. Once I thought I had it, I would have to wait up to an hour for the song to change in the Audacity program before I could hear it. This may just be something with my computer, but it took so long to change anything in the song. So after waiting hours upon hours to see if I finally did this right, I ended up with an extremely slowed down song that sounds terrible. Seriously, it sounds awful… Maybe I still haven’t gotten the pitch right and that’s why it sounds so bad, but it is definitely slowed down!

Also, while just now trying to upload this extremely long song onto soundcloud to put into this post, I was notified by soundcloud that I went over my upload minute limit. Therefore, they hid all of my previously uploaded work along with this song that I was trying to upload. With that being said, I’m even more frustrated now.

I went back into Audacity and cut the song to 10 minutes. Still extremely slowed down, but only 10 minutes of it will be going onto soundcloud. Now I can hopefully get all of my work back up on my soundcloud account and have this one work as well. And honestly, who really wants to listen to more than 10 minutes of this really bad slowed down song anyway?

This is how the original song sounds:

And here is the slowed down version on my soundcloud (first 10 minutes):

Music producer Nick Pittsinger slowed Bieber’s “U Smile” down 800% and the result was ethereal magic. Find a song to experiment with and slow it down to the point where it becomes an amazing piece of ambient music. If doing this with Audacity or any other non-linear digital editor, you’ll likely have to perform multiple lengthings of the song. Be sure to pitch shift so that even though the track is longer, it doesn’t become just a low pitched version

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/make-it-800-slower/

3 Stars

For this assignment I chose Hotel California by The Eagles. I have to say I regret this decision as this song is already a slow song. I resorted to slowing the song down 8 times instead of 800% percent. Yes, I tried 800% but it was just painful. You couldn’t even tell what you were hearing. Gibberish. I found the song on YouTube, then converted it so that it could be uploaded to Audacity. I worked through audacity, slowing the speed as well as the tempo and I am happy with the final product. I converted the audacity file to an MP3 so that it could be uploaded to Sound Cloud and I was finished. After completing this assignment it is hard to say which version I like more, the original or the slowed down version. I have completed 9 stars of assignments and feel much more comfortable with the app Audacity. Look forward to creating more!

For one of my audio assignments this week I did the make it 800% slower. The object of doing this is to transform a song to ambient noise. I found this so fascinating. I even-GASP downloaded audacity because I could not for the life of me figure out to make this happen on Garage Band.

I feel like my computer is like ten times slower after downloading the program. However, I really liked how the product turned out. The song was transformed to sound almost annoying but I like it. “Explosions” by Ellie Goulding is one of my favorite songs. It was weird to slow down the tempo to make it sound completely different. I would never listen to this version.

Audacity was a strange program to figure out. In fact I am still annoyed by it and I do not get in 100% but it was an all right program to use. Below is the picture of the sound clip before I changed the tempo:

And this is after:

So cool right!? I recommend trying this one out. Why not pick your favorite song and give it try using audacity. Slowing it down was so easy. All you have to click is effect and change tempo, pick your speed and BAM you are golden.

The next Audio Assignment that I chose to do was Make it 800% Slower, where our task was to slow down a track to the point where it becomes ambient. The song that I chose to do for this is September by Earth Wind & Fire.

I chose this song, cause it’s personally one of my favorites. It’s a classic, that’ll never get old. I also chose this because it already has a very soft, ambient tone, which would make it ideal for this assignment.

To accomplish this assignment I used Audacity. My steps were simply:

1. Importing “September” song into Audacity file

2. In the menu bar clicked Effect > Change Tempo

I then fiddled around with the percent change I wanted, to slow down use a negative change, to speed up use a positive change. I also decided to change the tempo instead of the speed, because when I changed the speed I had problems with the pitch that were hard to overcome. Changing the tempo, was an easy way around this.

3. Select Percent Change, and Hit “Ok”

I then waited a few minutes and the product was this:

I really liked how this turned out, because if you listen, you can tell what song it is. It is vastly slower, and sounds completely different, but the vocals are still understandable, and with close listening, the rhythm can be picked up.

This assignment is worth a total of 3 out of 5 stars.

Giving me a total of 6 stars on the week. Overall, I really liked this assignment, even though at times it was a pain in the a$$. Again, if you’d like to check out the assignment, here it is. I hope y’all enjoyed this post, have a great weekend everyone!