The Sex Pistols are by far, the greatest boy band of all time. You cannot debate me on that. They were a band put together by record producers, featuring people who couldn’t play their instruments (at least Sid Vicious), but I still love them. Motley Crue, is my favorite band, and sure, they wore makeup and big hair, but they were as punk rock as hair metal could be (I mean, their first album was pretty much Glam Punk, in the style of the New York Dolls).

The Sex Pistols released their song Anarchy in the UK as a single in 1976, and it would on their first (and only real) album, Never Mind The Bullocks… Here’s the Sex Pistols. It really sent a message in the UK that would be picked up by bands like Crass and the Subhumans, and later on by numerous anarcho-punk bands across the world. It would be covered by acts like Megadeth and Green Jello, and become a common stable in the world of hard rock, where we all know the lyrics, even if we don’t know what Johnny Rotten was really saying.

Years later, Motley Crue would cover the song and feature it on their 1991 compilation Decade of Decadence. Their version would be slightly faster, adding that metal edge to their version of the song. I’ve mashed these two versions up, as it adds a layer of dissonance to both songs. It’s almost if the original version echos after the cover, reinforcing the message of chaos that that combined tracks preach. Personally, I want to go join a black bloc when I hear this version, and it’s only half because of the complete perversion of a great song from two amazing bands that I want to get away from.

http://youtubedoubler.com/lv0R

Audio #2: Combining Covers

Stand By Me is a classic song by Ben E. King. But what happens when you mix the original with it’s cover? Well that’s what I had to discover for this assignment. I took Ben E. King’s classic and combined it with Florence + the Machine’s cover version. I chose to do this combination because I wanted to pick a song that was relatively well known. Furthermore, I think it’s rare to find a cover version of a song that is just as good as the original.

For copyright purposes I wasn’t able to post the following song rendition to SoundCloud.

I decided to do this specific assignment because I was curious to see how these two songs would flow together. In the beginning they sounded relatively good, until they became out of sync (around 0:19). I think this rendition had an indie soulful vibe to it. I think the emotion for this combination slightly intensifies. The reasoning being, that the song itself delivers a powerful message, but the way they are both sung gives it the additional ‘oomph’. Creating this rendition only involved using the program Audacity. The procedure is listed below if you would like to recreate this assignment.

Procedure

Step 1: Open Audacity and go to the file tab. Select the import option and click the audio subcatergory. Upload both the original song and its cover in step 1

Step 2: The first audio file should be Stand By Me by Ben King and the second one should be the version by Florence + the Machines. Select the Florence version and highlight the audio frequency, then select the trim audio tool. This will get rid of the end of the song, the fade (seen in the second screenshot below).

Step 3: Move the Florence audio over by using the move tool next to the Record button. Move the audio to where the first big peak of Ben’s song is, so that the beginning of both songs sync up.

Step 4: Go to the file tab and select the export audio option.

Step 5: When saving your new song double check that you save it as an MP3 file. If you do not have the option to save as an MP3 go to this website and download the plug-in for Audacity.

Link to assignment is tagged above in ‘Audio #2: Combining Covers?

http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLRP8d7hhpoQ&start1=2&video2=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dy8AWFf7EAc4&start2=80&authorName=Chris+Markham

My punny title has nothing to do with spring break, other than it being right around the corner. I chose Hallelujah because there have been many very good covers of the song with a variety of sounds to them. The Pentatonix version has arguably surpassed Jeff Buckley’s original version, but the two are still very different. Buckley’s version feel much more sad and depressing while the Pentatonix version is intense and focused the whole time.

The hard part of this was finding the timing in which the lyrics synced up, which still isn’t perfect because they sing at different paces. But once I did find a good idea of where they lined up, listening to them at the same time was very cool. It made it much easier to compare and contrast the two versions and almost feel the different experiences that the two songs present.

So this took me a little bit longer than expected because it wouldn’t allow me to post it onto my soundcloud but I just made a quick imovie so I could upload it on my youtube channel.  I chose this song because my girlfriend has been singing it all day and I like it a lot too.  I attempted to have the songs matchup but changing either speed made it sound a bit wonky so I settled for the small delay that is happening.  I basically uploaded everything to audacity and went through to cut out any unnecessary audio in the beginning and end.  I think its interesting to hear them in delay and you can also hear the difference in their voices even though they are very similar.  But its also noticeable how they both sing the song with a lot of emotion.

For this assignment I chose to work with Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. It’s a song I’m very fond of and was curious to see how my feelings towards it would change, if at all. It was pretty hard finding a cover that fit well with the song; either the cover wasn’t of the entire song or it was sung at a different pace that just didn’t go well with the original. I finally found a cover by The Wind and The Wave that went perfectly with the original. I combined the songs using Audacity. I used the sound shift tool to align the songs and I had to amplify the cover song a little so that it wasn’t overpowered by the vocals from the original. This combo made me love this song even more. I like that it has both male and female vocals so it sounds like a duo. I think it makes the song much more powerful and interesting. I tried uploading it to SoundCloud but was unsuccessful due to copyright legal stuff. But yeah credits to Snow Patrol and The Wind and The Wave!