AudioAssignments769 – Assignment Bank

Audio Assignment: Music Tag (2pts.)- “Sebastian Crane Modern Music Tag.”

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Let me start off this post by saying…this should be worth more than 2 stars! It took me a very long time to do this so that the words of the songs matched one another at the end/start points. The songs I chose for this assignment are in my Spotify playlist and the process of picking them out was fairly simple. Connecting the songs by the words they had in common was a little tedious, but I did enjoy this assignment since it made me think of how the songs could somehow relate to each other. But my larger problem came with copyright. I remade my mashup at least 5 different ways and it was still subject to copyright according to SoundCloud, so it was removed every single time. This was extremely (emphasis on extremely!) frustrating. I fist tweeted about my frustrations to Professor Burtis and she was very helpful in the advice she gave me, which was to try different songs or try just posting onto this page. But she warned me of the risks I’d be taking if I were to just post, so I didn’t want to try it. I then asked one of my friends what to do and she told me to play with adjusting the pitch and it should be fine. And here we are…success! I also adjusted the tempos slightly in some of the songs, which gave it a faster pace which kind of grew on me. With the pitch, I only adjusted it by one point and it still sounded nice for me. Since I did struggle through this ongoing copyright issue, I began to understand it a bit more. Personally, I have never had a copyright issue happen to me so this was definitely a first, and hopefully only time this will happen to me. In my mind after the copyright readings, I thought one could use the songs if they were using them in a new, innovative way, but Sound Cloud stated that as an invalid reason, so I did not dispute the claims.

But as for the mash-up of songs, here is the layout…

These songs are from the 2000s-present and represent how Sebastian views himself and how others view him. I felt like breaking away from the 1950s time period I placed him in to show how the experiences he goes through and how others view him are understandable and tangible to our current times. Each of the songs can directly connect to Sebastian’s internal views of himself and situations he finds himself in as well as how others view him.

1.“Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse- how Sebastian felt for Margaret, his ex-lover, when he was with her. He was “a fool” for her as one of the lyrics lends to and she set his soul alight,” meaning that she enchanted him in this way that brought his soul to life. This song illustrates how she drove him crazy at times, but he still loved her so intensely.

2.“Womanizer” by Britney Spears- how most women view Sebastian since he refuses to settle down; he is viewed as a player, but women still come to him knowing that he may not ever contact them after their one-night together. He does not mean to treat women in this manner since he knows nothing serious will come of them, but women view him as a womanizer all the same.

3.“I Don’t Care” by Fall Out Boy- how he tends to think of himself and does not pay mind to others’ opinions and if he does, it is only internally. Also can lend to his frequent egotistical attitude he can hold. Sebastian holds himself with high regard and some of his actions may be selfish, but he is willing to do what ever it takes to preserve himself, even if that means stepping on others’ toes.

4.“Love Me Again” by John Newman- how Sebastian wants a love like he had with Margaret again; he wants to be loved and love again soon, but is fearful of it because of his bad experience. In ways, he wants Margaret to be his again so he can feel that love he had before, but he knows how wrong it is to feel that way about someone who hurt him so badly.

5.“Undisclosed Desires” by Muse- how Sebastian views Sasha Kellogg: he wants to know what’s under the surface and he is deeply attracted to her. Sebastian senses that she has “demons” in her past and is evermore curious about Sasha since she is not the most open book about who she was and is now. Sebastian is intrigued by her because of her mysterious demeanor and this song can truly describe that tension between them.

6.“Afraid” by The Neighbourhood- how Sebastian is afraid that his dark side will consume him. He does not want to become someone who is loathed and this can even apply to his drinking habits since he drinks frequently, and therefore, fears he will become like his father in this way. Also the line “you make me wanna die” is how John Reeves (the man he publicly shamed) feels when he thinks of Sebastian or encounters him.

7.“Into the Past” by Nero- how Sasha Kellogg wants to know about Sebastian’s past so she can understand him and be with him now. This song was featured in “The Great Gatsby,” which alluded to the quote, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” With this idea of going into the past, it can also represent how Sebastian is somewhat consumed by his past since the fears he does have reflect his painful past; he relives his past when he can’t fully trust in someone because he has been physically and emotionally broken in the past and has not fully recovered. It was mainly with his mother’s departure, his father’s drunken beatings, and Margaret’s cheating habits that affected him so. He does not feel far from his past, even though his father and him began to mend their relationship and he is not involved with Margaret (he still has not heard from his mother). With regards to Donny, his younger brother who was enlisted in war and now has paralysis, he feels responsible for that injury since he could not go in his place because of his fractured shoulder from his father’s past rage.

8.“Do I Wanna Know” by The Arctic Monkeys- how Sebastian catches himself wanting Margaret back and he knows she wants him too, but he will not crawl back to the woman who cheated on him. This is a story I want to touch on in a writing section in the future to demonstrate how complicated Sebastian’s mind is when it comes to her. She remains a puzzle to him because he can’t fully believe she would hurt him the way she did and dreams about if things were different.

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Gloria, digital witness, plays song tag

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songs used:
Patti Smith – Gloria
Mine – Beyonce feat. Drake
Angel – Fleetwood Mac
Ghost Tonight – Chairlift
Digital Witness – St. Vincent

Let me tell you, for only being two stars, this assignment was not easy. I was really intrigued when I read about this assignment, but it wasn’t until I listened to some past examples that I truly understood the full idea. After listening, though, I definitely knew I wanted to try my hand at this. I really thought it would be easy. I like a wide range and assortment of music so I thought, sure, I’ll easily be able to find five songs that can connect.

no.

Finding the songs was much harder than I anticipated. It took a lot of trial and error and lyric searching in order to find the words that could connect certain songs. Additionally, I wanted to follow the standard set by others that completed the assignment and try to arrange songs from various time periods and genres. I think I accomplished that pretty well.

It was definitely time consuming working in Audacity to cut the portions of the songs at the exact right moment where the words would merge. I learned, though, that you can zoom really far into an audio file and get very specific about where to cut the audio. I kept starting and stopping in little portions of the song so I could cut in the exact place, which got pretty annoying when I kept hearing the same syllables sung over and over again.

However, I go so excited every time I would merge two songs and play it back. That moment when it switches to the next song at the same word is so cool I could barely stand it. I couldn’t wait to upload it…

but Soundcloud wouldn’t let me. Since the songs are obviously not mine, my track was blocked from being uploaded and Soundcloud promptly emailed me informing me that they detected copyright infringement.

So let it be known that it was never my intention to steal this amazing music or take credit for it. I was simply completing an assignment for class (read: I was doing my homework, your honor).

I can’t say I’m surprised #noir106 skirts close to the law…

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Five Songs in One

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I love music and when I was looking through what assignments I could do I came across one called music tag. This one was very challenging because I had to take 5 songs and combine part on them with a connecting word. First, I thought of some songs that would overlap and I looked up their lyrics, then played them and picked out the sections to do. I used the Audio Cutter app on my mac that my brother purchased and loaded to my mac. This allowed me to easily cut and save the parts I wanted, and then I used an app called audio merger pro to put all the clips together. The first transition isn’t too good, but I think the others turned out much better. The hardest part was choosing the songs and cutting them at just the right moment! I also tried to make it an entire song so the parts I chose started off in the beginning for the first song and then middle of 3 songs and then the last one was the end of that song.

I used parts from these songs:

Sam Hunt “Leave the Night On”, Florida Georgia Line “Dirt”, Brantley Gilbert “Bottoms Up”, Brain Davis “Pull up a Tailgate”, Luke Bryan “Crash my Party”

And here are the lyrics, if you wanna follow along, (the spaces indicate song change):

“They roll the sidewalks in this town
All up after the sun goes down
They say nothin’ good happens here
When midnight rolls around
But layin’ down would be in vain
I can’t sleep with you on my brain
And I ain’t anywhere close to tired
Your kiss has got me wired
Girl, you got the beat right, killin’ in your Levis
High on your loving’s got me buzzin’ like a streetlight
It’s still early out in Cali, baby, don’t you wanna rally again
We’ll find a road with no name, lay back in the slow lane
The sky is dropping Jupiter around us like some old train
We’ll be rolling down the windows, I bet you we’re catchin’ our second wind
We don’t have to go home, we can leave the night on
We can leave the night on
Now all the stars are turnin’ blue
Just kissed the clock 2:22
Baby, I know what you’re wishin’ for
I’m wishin’ for it too
Now all the lights are flashin’ gold
Nobody cares how fast we go
Our soundtrack’s in the stereo
This DJ’s on a roll

Girl, you got the beat right, killin’ in your Levis
High on your loving’s got me buzzin’ like a streetlight
It’s still early out in Cali, baby, don’t you wanna rally again
We’ll find a road with no name

on it, spin your tires on it
Build your corn field, whiskey bonfires on it
You bet your life on it
It’s that elm shade, red rust clay you grew up on
That plowed-up ground that your dad damned his luck on
That post-game party field you circle up on
And when it rains you get stuck on
Drift a cloud back behind county roads that you run up
The mud on her jeans that she

ridin shot gun like it ain’t no thing
Turn the radio up so the girl can sing right
Pull into the party like, “Y’all wassup”
Tonight is bottoms up
Throw it on down
Rock this quiet, little country town
Get up
Drop a

tailgate,Time to get unwound
Truck-bed, beer in the back, ya’ll iced down
The only thing we own around here is the weekend. So pull out the six strings and the shine drinks and hang on tight to our
sweet things. It’s another paycheck party out in the county – So pull up a tailgate.
I ain’t talkin’ bout a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday kinda thing. I’m talkin’ bout a Friday, Saturday throw down til
the weekend’s gone kinda

party anytime.
(Call me, call me, call me)
Baby you can crash my party anytime”

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The Riff Off!

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Welllll, here is my final audio creation for this week. The assignment description is found here. But when I read it I knew I had to do it. It is exactly like my favorite scene from Pitch Perfect, the Riff Off! How they could think that stuff up on the fly was beyond me. It was hard to do even with Google to help me.

How I did it:

First I picked the song that I wanted to start out with, which may not have been a good decision but I rolled with it because I liked the song. I started with American Kids by Kenny Chesney because it’s such a dang catchy song. I didn’t want to cut it off in the middle of a verse or a line and that may have been my problem. It probably would have been a lot easier–and more fun, quite frankly–if I didn’t try to make the end of one verse match up with the beginning of another. But oh well, it’s done and over now. Anyway, so I went with the word “alright” as my double word. So the next song I had needed to start a verse (because of my stupid rules) with “alright.” Honestly, I tried to just think of some but I resorted to looking at songs that I already had downloaded on my computer and ctrl+f their lyrics. When that didn’t work, though, I googled “songs that have alright in the title.” Sad, I know haha. Anyway, I found Alright by Darius Rucker and went on from there to Too Much Fun by Daryle Singletary, Fun Fun Fun by The Beach Boys, How Do You Like Me Now? by Toby Keith, and Who You’d Be Today by Kenny Chesney.

The fun part for me was the editing. I don’t know why but I like editing songs and making them fit together. I imported the songs in order into Audacity and cut out the parts that I needed. Then I lined them up so they sounded good together and faded in or out if I needed to. Again I had problems with moving tracks and I still haven’t figured it out but after some angry clicking they finally moved. Maybe that is the trick ;).

Alright, well here is my tweet about the Riff Off which should allow you to click to the link about where I posted the audio track on known. But I also am going to attach the audio track to the post so here you go!

My Own Little Riff Off http://t.co/fyLYiZPSgT

— Brittany Scites (@brittanyns13) September 19, 2014

I also refused to use songs that I didn’t know. It would have been a lot easier if I didn’t but I wanted them to all be songs that I knew. But anyway, I looooved this idea for an assignment. It was fun and I hope you enjoy my take on it

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Here is How You Rock out Till to Tomorrow

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For this assignment we were asked to create a story using audio snippets form songs for the DS106 assignment named Music Tag. This assignment placed more emphasis on the lyrics of each song used and the requirement was that the last word of each clip used had to be the first word of the next clip. I also took on the other challenge in using different genres and decades.

The songs I used for the story with corresponding lyrics are as follows:

Rock That Body – Black Eyed Peas (2010)

I wanna rock right now
I want I wanna rock right now
I want I wanna rock right now
Now, now, rock right now
I want I wanna rock right now
I want I wanna rock right now
I want I wanna rock

Rock and Roll is Here to Stay – Sha Na Na cover (1968)

Rock (rock) – oh baby – rock (rock) – oh baby – rock (rock)
Oh baby – rock (rock) – oh baby
Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay, it will never die
It was meant to be that way, though I don’t know why
I don’t care what people say, rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay

Stay – Rihanna (2013)

I want you to stay. Ooh, ooh, ooh, the reason I hold on
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ’cause I need this hole gone

Gone – Switchfoot (2003)

Gone, like yesterday is gone
Like history is gone
Just try and prove me wrong and
pretend like you’re immortal. She said, he said, live like no tomorrow

Annie – Tomorrow (1977)

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow
You’re always a day away Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow
You’re always a day away …

The challenge for me was not knowing the songs since I knew all the songs I used, I just couldn’t remember all of them be name, but choruses and hooks from songs are usually the most remembered parts of songs.

This project also reminded me of creating mix-tapes on cassettes back in the 1990s. This small documentary is of rapper Nas talking about creating mix-tapes by listening to the radio and having to record the songs you want and also to make sure you didn’t re-record over the portion of tape you recorded the songs on, in addition to getting full versions of the songs you wanted in the order you wanted. In these times if you wanted to have the songs you heard at a show or on the radio you would listen for when it was in rotation on the stations playing hip hop or rap.

This short clip more or less sums up how what was known as mix-tapes in the past were created compared to how in this current day a mix-tape is simply done by dragging and dropping songs on a computer into a playlist.

I used a similar approach to making the sound story without using a vinyl cassette. I used Audition for this project and I used the multi-track editing for this project. For each song I first researched the lyrics for each song so that my editing would make sense. Then after I had the lyrics, I was able to source the position of the audio clip in relation to the selected lyrics and using the the selection and cut tools in Audition, I was then able to select and cut the portions of the song I needed. I then was able to line up each audio clip in 5 tracks below each other and line up the end of each track with the beginning of the corresponding clip so the clip could be continuous. I also altered the gain on clips where needed, so that I didn’t have some clips being louder or quieter in than the next and the volume wouldn’t be jumping from song to song greatly.

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Music Tag

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The most challenging part of this assignment was going through my iTunes library
and picking out the songs that I wanted to use. Another challenging part of the
assignment was finding words in each song that matched up to each other so it’s
kind of flowed. After that it was just a matter of cutting down the song to just
the part I wanted to use and then lining up the ending clip at the end part of
one clip with the beginning part of the next.

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Audio Assignments- Music Tag – 3 stars

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One of my favorite type of assignments is audio! Lyrics and songs are great ways to tell stories. Have you notice similar themes extend genres… lyrics overlapping. Your task is to create a story by using audio snippets from songs. The trick is you have to have the last word of your clip, be the same word that starts the next clip. Use at least 5 different songs, try to include different genres or decades.

Link to Assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/music-tag/

For this assignment I used these songs:

Haddaway – What is love
Nazareth – Love Hurts
Three Days Grace – Pain
KC and the Sunshine Band – Get Down Tonight
The Beatles – All You Need is Love

I used the program Audacity for this assignment. First I listened to the songs and picked which parts suited my needs. Then I trimmed the songs, and lined them up.

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Lyric Tag — ???

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For this week, I needed to complete a couple of audio assignments from the repository.

When I saw Music Tag, I knew I had to do it. Really, I like anything with mixing music.

This is the assignment description:

Lyrics and songs are great ways to tell stories. Have you notice similar themes extend genres… lyrics overlapping. Your task is to create a story by using audio snippets from songs. The trick is you have to have the last word of your clip, be the same word that starts the next clip. Use at least 5 different songs, try to include different genres or decades.

I originally wanted to do something that was more than the typical story you hear in songs, but when I started doing that, the song clips were so short you couldn’t appreciate the songs at all. So I created a break-up story, basically.

The assignment gave a short tutorial on how to do this. It suggested using YouTube and recording them into Audacity. That’s not my thing.

Instead, I’m going to take you through what I did. I didn’t use YouTube videos, but I’m putting the links to the songs from YouTube so you can hear what songs I used.

The Short Version

This took the longest time. I started with a Taylor Swift song, “Breathe,” because one of the lines linked to another song I had been listening to recently, “Without You,” originally by David Guetta and Usher, but in this assignment, I used the Glee version.

But then I realized that I couldn’t start with the Taylor Swift song. First off, the part I wanted to use would have been so long, probably around 50 seconds, and this is supposed to be Music Tag!

Now this is when I started having to do some real work.

I went to lyrics sites of songs that I wanted to use, and I started matching up words so they didn’t sound strange. I put all the lyrics into a text document so I could lay out my story.

Then I pulled all the songs into a playlist in iTunes.

I used Audacity for this assignment because this was pretty basic editing.

I imported one song at a time, cut it down to just before the word or just in the middle in of the word I wanted to “play tag” with. Then I imported the next song until I had finished my story.

Here is the finished product

The list of songs in order with the lyrics used

Imagine Dragons, “It’s Time”

So this is what you meant
When you said that you were spent
And now…

Taylor Swift, “Breathe”

Now I don’t know what to be without you around
And we know it’s never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand
And I can’t breathe, without

Glee Cast, “Without You”

Without you, without you
I am lost, I am vain
I will never be

Red, “Never Be The Same”

Be the same, I’m caught inside the memories, the promises,
Our yesterdays, when I belonged to you

Ellie Goulding, “Every Time You Go”

You said I’m arresting, you said I had heat
I really thought that we’d go further, the second time we meet
Cause I’m tired of trying to

Ra Ra Riot, “Can You Tell”

To wait, I think about you nightly
Oh, can you tell I’m losing sleep?
Oh, what am I supposed

The Script, “Breakeven”

Supposed to do when the best part of me was always you
And, what am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay
I’m falling

Katy Perry, “Wide Awake”

Falling from cloud nine, crashing from the high
I’m letting go tonight, yea, I’m

David Guetta feat. Sia, “Titanium”

I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim, fire away, fire away
You shoot me down

La Roux, “Bulletproof”

Down, now I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet
This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof
This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof

So what’s the story?

I wanted to do the entire relationship, but I was already at 10 songs, so I thought I should stop…

So I went for the breakup. Breakups are messy.

I wanted to do the story of the ups and downs of a break up–for a girl especially.

Now, I’m a bit surprised that this worked out in a different way, too. The guy (male-lead songs) is whiny and the girl (female-lead songs) is getting over him. So I’m going to act like this was completely my idea and not a coincidence.

All the male singers are the guy’s perspective of the breakup: kind of upbeat in the beginning. The woman is confused and hurt, missing him. Then we go back to the guy, and he’s starting to struggle with being alone. But the girl is starting to get over him and isn’t feeling so down anymore. The guy is losing sleep over this and having trouble with how “okay” she is doing. She’s not perfect, though, still feeling like she’s “crashing from the high,” but she’s “letting go” finally. The last two songs are her basically saying she’s okay now and isn’t affected by him anymore.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. It was definitely the most fun to create this story and have it turn out so well. It flows, and that is what I wanted.

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Music Tag

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So this assignment is called Music Tag. The objective was to to create a story by using audio snippets from songs. The trick is you have to have the last word of your clip, be the same word that starts the next clip. Use at least 5 different songs, try to include different genres or decades. So it took me a couple of tries to get it done. But this is what I got.

The box is not working right but here is my soundcloud for now because I cant get it to work on my blog. so just click on >>SoundCloud.

The songs are Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, I will always love you by Whitney Houston, I knew I love you by Savage Garden, All my life by K-Ci and JoJo and All that I’m asking for by Lifehouse.

The bold/italic/capitalized words are the transitions. The lyrics are…….Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love, I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love, Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding LOVE, I will always love you. I will always love YOU. I knew I loved you before I met you, I think I dreamed you into life I knew I loved you before I met you, I have been waiting all my LIFE. I’ve prayed for someone like you, And I thank God that I, that I finally found you, All my life, I’ve prayed for someone, like you, And I hope that you feel the same way too, Yes, I pray that you do love me too, I said you’re all that I’m thinkin’ of…..baby, Said, I promise to never fall in love with a stranger YOU’RE ALL I’M, All I’m asking for, Is that you need nothing more, And nothing comes in between, Our love and it’s fragile, see All that I’m asking for You’re all that I’m asking for.

I think that the toughest thing about this was figuring out which song I should choose and when I picked the songs, I couldn’t get the words to line up properly. I used YouTube to find all the songs and then I used Audacity to record them. I recorded one by one and then I had cut the pieces where I had stopped to play the next song. The one thing is I cant figure out how to post the song from Soundcloud to my blog. Ok I just figured out how to post the audio from soundcloud to my blog. You have to download the Plugin in WordPress which is “Soundcloud is gold”. After activate the plugin and then you should see the plugin on the left hand side of the screen at the bottom. Click on it and then put in your username in the username box at the top and active your account by clicking on your picture. Then you can go to your post and plugin the wordpress code directly into your post and wallah. It should work. But when I tried to do it at home. It says the track is currently unavailable. So what I did was click on the soundcloud thing, where you can delete it and change the color. I clicked on the pencil icon on the soundcloud and then click on show and the dropbox open. I kept the settings at “show comments and show artwork”, I changed the player type to “HTML” and kept everything else the same. I clicked on “Insert Soundcloud Player” at the bottom of the screen. Then I updated my post and viewed it and it finally showed on my blog. See you guys around. Maybe that help some of you.

This is three out of ten.

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I’m Not Gonna Write You a Love Song ***

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Yes, that’s right. It is Sara Bareilles time! For those of you who may not know (which is probably most), my favorite singer has been and probably always will be Sara. Yeah, I love her so much I like to think that we are on a first name basis. What makes her even better is that she has a song about princesses, which I feel is more like my life. Check it out, it’s called Fairytale. If she sings it, I own it. If she covers it, I have it. If she sings near me, I see it. Call it a girl crush or whatever you like, just know that I love her. So when I came across the opportunity to make a music tag assignment, I jumped right on it.

I know exactly what you are thinking “What? The princess isn’t doing something based on Disney? That seems insane!” Well don’t worry I totally made a Disney one. Actually I made my Disney one first. When I saw the assignment I was just so excited to do something similar to the riff-off from Pitch Perfect that I didn’t really focus on telling a story. When planning my Disney music tag I just focused on combining different songs from Hercules, which is my favorite movie when it comes to the music. It was really easy to access the songs because there was a YouTube video which included all of the songs, and I came across and amazing web-site that had all of the lyrics to the songs together which made catching duplicated words easy with the find feature. And here was my final product for the Hercules Riff-Off as I like to call it.

(SoundCloud is currently processing this mp3, so I will post it as soon as I can).

After looking back at the assignment I realized that this was telling the story of Hercules, and not a story that I was creating. So I went back to the drawing board and focused on the songs that I know, Sara’s songs. (See? A first name basis.) The songs that most people know from Sara are very upbeat “screw you” type songs. So I knew that I wanted to tell the story of a break-up and what I like the call the 5 stages of breaking up. Consider it my artistic interpretation to the 7 steps of grief. So give it a listen here (but I must warn you that there are some “grown-up words” in it) and read along with the words below if you want!

Lyrics (bolded lyrics are the transitions):

Once upon another time, somebody’s hands who felt like mine turned the key and took a drive, was free. Highway curve, the sun sank low, Buckley on the radio, cigarette was burning slow, so breathe. Just yellow lines and tire marks, and sun-kissed skin and handle bars, and where I stood was where I was to be. No enemies to call my own, no porch light on to pull me home, and where I was is beautiful because I was free. Leave me be. I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity. Here I am, and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be, but you’re onto me and all over me. You loved me cause I’m fragile, when I thought that I was strong. But you touched me for a little while, and all my fragile strength is gone. It’s clear this conversation ain’t doing a thing, cause these boys only listen to me when I sing. And I don’t feel like singing tonight all the same songs. Here in these deep city lights, girl could get lost tonight. I’m finding every reason to be gone, nothing here to hold on to. Could I hold you? The situation’s always the same, you’ve got your wolves and they’re close whispering Hollywood’s name. Stealing gold from the silver they see, but it’s not me anymore. And I’m not the girl that I intend to be. But I dare you darling, just you wait and see; but this time not for you, but just for me. I said, how am I gonna get over you? I’ll be alright, just not tonight. But someday. I wish you want me to stay. I’ll be alright, just not tonight. But like most creatures down here on the ground I’m composed of the elements moving around, and I grow and change and I shift and I switch. And it turns out I’m actually kind of a bitch, but that only happens when I get provoked by some piece of shit asshole we all sadly know. And I sit and I write while reminding you all that mean songs are still better than going postal. And that guy’s an asshole, and that girl’s a bitch. Baby it’s natural, no getting away from it. So sing it out with me, and then let it go. Fuck that guy he’s just an asshole.

So here is my analysis of it all:

I start if off with the song Once Upon Another Time because it is the beginning of the story, and it talks about what the relationship was all about. It was relaxing and she had no worries during it. But, the somber tone of the song plus the title of it being another time ago is what is causing the audience to know that this is in fact a break up. This is her reflecting on the relationship about what it was. I call this stage lamenting.

Second on the line up is probably the song that you have heard if you kind of listen to Sara, Gravity. It’s pretty simple to understand she was tired of being held down and back. She is sick of having to depend on them for everything, and breaking up just made her realize how much they pushed, and still is pushing her down. I call this stage realization.

Next up is City in which Sara talks about getting lost in the land of independence as I like to call it. I like to imagine this as she is finally ready to branch out, she has learned how to be dependent but the whole idea of actually being independent is scaring her. I call this stage self-realization (not to be confused with the realization stage).

Self-realization then turns into courage when Gonna Get Over You starts playing. We go from the sad slower songs to the more upbeat and happy song, and you finally hear that she is feeling a lot more confident and realizes that she will get over the guy that brought her down. Like I stated earlier, this is the courage stage.

Then comes the grand finale, and grand it is indeed. Sorry for those who don’t like curse words (I’m from Jersey, it’s pretty much second nature to me), but it just all fit so perfectly together. Needless to say, this is the closure stage. Do I really need to explain it? The guy is a jerk and she is over it and has no problem telling the whole entire word. You go glen coco!! The best part about this song is the title, Sweet As Whole (get it???).

How I Did This:

Since this post is super long, I’m going to write up a separate tutorial for how I did this and post it on the tutorials aspect as well. You can read it here!