Original Assignment (3 stars)

For this assignment, I decided to browse Youtube in search of some kind of speech or debate. Originally, I thought about using clips of Bill O’Reilly getting “owned” on his own show (can’t stand that guy) but decided to pass. About five minutes later, I found a video from Piers Morgan’s show discussing gun control. His guest was radio host, Alex Jones. The two got into a heated debate (mainly Alex) about the issue. The discussion lasted about twenty minutes. I converted the video into mp3 format, and ended up using about three minutes of it. My final task was to find an instrumental to throw in the background. My iTunes library is full of instrumentals, so I just chose one from there. Both tracks were imported in Logic (production software), where my next step was to balance out the levels. I did not want the music to drain out the conversation that was taking place, so balancing the levels of each track is very important.

In Logic

For a smooth start and finish, I applied fades at the beginning and end of both tracks. A noise gate (used to eliminate unwanted noise in audio) and a limiter (prevents audio from being too loud and distorted) were also applied to improve the overall sound. Here is the final product of my mashup.

For this assignment, I had the task of mashing up something along the lines of a public apology, a commercial, or a pandering political speech with an accompanying tune. I decided to go with a collection of pandering political speeches by good ole George Bush. Politics aside, he had his fair share of gaffes and humorous moments which I though would go well with a whimsical song. I eventually settled on a song called Westminster Cathedral by The New Vaudeville Band and I think it turned out alright.

As far as completing this assignment, I started off in Youtube trying to find both a good speech and song. Once I found them, I used YoutubeMp3.org to save them to my computer. I then upload both to Audacity and edited them to necessity. Since the Speech was longer than the song, quite a bit was trimmed off and it took out some laughing sequences to make the speech more apparent. Here’s a screenshot of what it looked like when done. The speech was on the top and the song on the bottom.

Assignment – 3 Stars

It has been a very chaotic semester so far. Taking two math classes, working and other personal business. This Post is all about the previous audio work which was to pick assignments that add up to 10 stars. Here they are (I had fun with them actually) I chose these assignments because they seem fun [...]

So I had this other mash up interview I did with David Letterman. Was flipping through channels and saw NBC which sparked me to post this. Will do my detail tomorrow or later.

Hey So I am just trying another assignment for the Sardonic Mashups, in the DS106 Sound Bank. So for this one I decided to use the GEICO commercial, where Maxwell the pig is on a date and is waiting in the car after calling for a tow truck using his GEICO app. For me this commercial is funny but I felt I could add a little more to it. So what I did was to get the audio using Video 2 mp3 once again.

So what I did was to open all audio files I would use in Audacity using the, “Import File” under File. Then using the, “Shift Tool” again I was able to line up the original commercial with the area of Elton John’s song that I wanted to go with the commercial. What I wanted do was to take out the silence between the Maxwell and his date’s dialogue and replace it with a record scratch for the effect I wanted. So using the “Selection” tool I simply highlighted the section of audio I wanted out (after zooming in to see the wave properly) then to Edit then Clip Boundaries then use “Split”. What this did was to separate the audio into 3 parts. The before the silence, the silence and after the silence.  So I just highlighted and deleted this silence and copy and pasted the record scratch into it’s place, and “Mix and Render” the 3 sections back as one. For the audio before the now added scratch it was a bit fast for my song so I highlighted that section, then under Effect went to “change Speed” where I slowed it down just a bit. After I worked on that part, I just used the “Split” tool on the Elton John song then deleted the excess sound as well. But then I wanted to use a cover to Hound Dog, I prefer the version performed in Grease the movie by Sha Na Na. I placed a selected  part of it after the record scratch and plays with the end of the commercial. Most importantly I wanted the music to sound like the radio was playing softly in the background so I also had to lower the volume of those sections so that it didn’t drown out the original commercial. After I was satisfied, a now simple select all and, “Mix and Render”.

Here are the sounds I originally used:

1. Maxwell the GEICO pig goes on a date

2. Elton John – Can You Feel The Love

3. Record Scratch

4. Sha Na Na – Hound Dog

This sound clip I did was for the Sardonic Mashups, from the Audio Assignments bank which asked to make a mash along the lines of a public apology, a commercial, a pandering politcial speech or anything you’d like to mock for the public good.

So for my mash up I chose the Lance Armstrong interview. This was more specifically a snippet from ABC News on Good Morning America about the full interview he did with Oprah. So what I did was to pull the audio using the online tool Video to mp3, which is great because you don’t have to download any software and can download audio rom anything on YouTube. So I also had to download and install Audacity. Ok so what I did was open the interview audio in into Audacity, then import all the other songs I used. I used this tutorial which was really helpful. What I then had to do was to import the other audio files I wanted, then use the “selection” and “time shift” tools. With the selection tool you can actually grab the part of audio from a file you want to take out and and paste in back on another part of the time line. With the time shift tool you can actually move a selected part of audio along the timeline. So what I did was to copy and paste selections of the interview that I wanted to manipulate. Then with each son I used I was able to select and copy out a selection of the audio I wanted and paste it directly in line where the section of the interview ends so that it flows, then add the continued part of the interview and this is done several times. Audacity puts each file stacked on each other so you have to be scrolling up and down to work on each file and muting and non-muting files allows you to work on different files. When you line up your pieces of audio it shows a yellow highlight so you know when separate files are lined up in synch. After this tedious task of going through the selected parts of each audio file I chose to use I then was able to delete the rest of audio not needed from each sound. Then I listen to see if it flowed and when satisfied I select all and under tracks click “Mix and Render”, which pulls all the files into one.

Here is my list of songs I used for the mash up:

1. Third Eye Blind – Deep Inside Of You

2. D-12 – Purple Pills

3. Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come

4. Timbaland ft. One Republic – Apologize

5. 2 Chainz ft. Drake – No Lie

6. Drake – HYFR

7. Blood Brothers – Tell Me Its Not True

8. Lady Gaga – No Way

9. Michael Jackson – Bad

10. Destiny Child – No No No remix

11. Drake – Headlines

12. Big Comfy Couch Tv clip – Liar Liar

The original interview: