In my upcoming days, I have multiple stops for my tours. I have gotten a lot of recognition for being a cover artist and this is one of those songs! Songs are all about interpretation and the music/instrumentals in the song. This has been my favorite song that I have done so far.
Remix Song
Original Song
Step 1: Open Audacity. Click on the red “Record” button and speak into for the audio you want to record.
Step 2: Go to freesound.org and find an audio that would add the effect you would like for the recording and download it to your computer.
Step 3: Go back to Audacity and Follow File > Import > Audio, to upload the audio you found on freesound
Step 4: Toggle with the settings! The best time is playing with all the features Audacity has. This was my first time working with a mixer and definitely everything came together in a great mess. I followed this YouTube tutorial while working on my assignment to get the rundown of everything.
Step 5: Save! Or Export. I was trying to do the usual Save As to name and save the file, but it gave me a warning that it needs to be “Exported” to be able to be used outside of Audacity.
Step 6: Upload! It is exported as an MP3 file so it is very simple to upload to other platforms for sharing and use. Also add any cover art or photos you have to add to the theme of the music!
? If you said goodbye to me tonight There would still be music left to write What else could I do –
(HOLD UP, I get to post the actual song for this post! :- D )
THE LONGEST TIME! Aaaaaaaand post ~~~~>
I’m takin’ it back to some good ol’ fashioned 80’s Do-Wop music with Billy Joel’s, ‘The Longest Time.’ This was for the assignment, Dramatic Reading Remix, which tasked bloggers to “take a song that you love, and record yourself doing a dramatic reading of the lyrics. Then take another piece of music (obviously without lyrics) and set your dramatic reading to it. This should result in something that sounds very different than the original song. Post both the original song (for comparison) and your new dramatic reading remix in a blog post.”
I chose to do a dramatic reading of ‘The Longest Time,’ because it’s one of, if not the, best 80’s song in existence. That’s a pretty bold claim, but one that I can make because it’s such a timeless masterpiece. It’s fun. It’s upbeat. It’s infectious. If one person starts singing the lyrics, it’s almost guaranteed that another person will join in with the next part of the song. It’s like the ‘PokĂŠmon’ theme song. You can’t not sing it once it starts. (I’ve witnessed both ‘The Longest Time,’ and the PokĂŠmon theme song turn into a group sing along).
Fun Fact: Billy Joel sang the entire song himself. He sang the part of lead vocals and all the backing vocals. Joel recorded and mixed 14 tracks of himself singing and only used a bass guitar and a snare drum being played with brushes for backup instruments. The rest of the sounds are finger snaps and hand claps. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the difficulty of singing a song that’s meant to be sung by a group, and then singing it in a near a cappella style.
The Art of the Spoken Word
For my dramatic reading of ‘The Longest Time,’ I had to visualize myself pouring my heart out to another person. It’s difficult to say a song, because the melody of pop songs are so ingrained in our heads, that our first inclination is to sing the lyrics. I had to put aside the song’s tune and focus on the words. A song in it’s purest form is really just a poem, after all. They (usually, but not always) have a rhyming scheme, and the lines flow into each other. One of my favorite lines is:
I don’t care what consequence it brings I have been a fool for lesser things
This could have just as easily been a sentence. One might say, “I don’t care about the consequences; I’ve been foolish over dumber things than this.” Doesn’t have the same ring to it. This is the power of poetry and music- each line is a pause to let the words sink in (followed by a, ah ah AHH AHHHH).
Once I had my spoken rendition of the song, I set it to some instrumentals from Soundcloud. I had originally intended to use an acoustic guitar sound for backup since it’s easiest to set words to a guitar strum, but I wasn’t diggin’ it. The guitar gave my dramatic reading a corny, overly sentimental feel, which is not really what I wanted. I swapped it out with some piano, and it worked better for a somber feel, although it was harder to sync. The song I chose was, ‘Everyone Falls In Love Sometimes (Acoustic Piano Version) (Instrumental)’ by PEĂA. The piano’s rhythm was a little too fast for my speaking pace though, so I slowed down the tempo a bit.
After cutting up the piano instrumentals and stitching it back together, I noticed that the beat got very monotonous, causing a droning effect to the words. I played around with all the sound effects in an effort to find something that would break it up without sounding too out of place. I decided on the ‘wahwah’ effect, the vocal reducer/isolater, and the envelope tool to create a sort of beat drop in the middle. I’m not sure how audio mixers create music- It’s really hard to do and takes a lot of patience. The final touches were treally just trying to line up the voice recording with the piano melody. After that, I hit export and uploaded to Soundcloud.
For this assignment, take a song that you love, and record yourself doing a dramatic reading of the lyrics. Then take another piece of music (obviously without lyrics) and set your dramatic reading to it. This should result in something that sounds very different than the original song. Post both the original song (for comparrison) and your new dramatic reading remix in a blog post.
Here are the original songs, utilized in this remix.
I chose this particular assignment from the assignment bank because I saw it as a great oppertunity to explore how a change in music, tone, and format can transform a song! This was a simple and fun little romp that allowed me see just how much atmosphere goes into creating a song–and what occurs when you take that away.
Also it’s just very fun to read the lyrics to “Crawling” as a dramatic reading, and to also hear it backed by a very happy track.
This assignment was worth 4.5 Stars. I used the song “My Adidas” by Run-D.M.C because I thought it fit well with the idea that Jane Smith, the character we will be using for our radio hour has super speed.
I chose a song related to something we could advertise that Jane could use while performing her duties as a super hero. I decided on shoes because everyone knows that as a runner, you need good shoes or you may hurt your feet.
I used the lyrics:
We make a good team my Adidas and me We get around together, rhyme forever And we won’t be mad when worn in bad weather My Adidas My Adidas My Adidas
because I thought it helped solidify that shoes are good teammates when it comes to assistance in running. I decided to add some random music and a part at the end that tells listeners to buy the shoes because they are good for Jane Smith and will be good for them too.
For my dramatic reading remix, I decided to take the lyrics of Angel Olsen’s “Unfucktheworld” and read them over Death Grips “Runway Y”.
The original is a melancholic song that’s played over the strumming of a guitar. Placing the lyrics over a hip-hop/industrial track changes the tone from sad to intense. While I felt silly reading the lyrics the way I did, emphasizing certain words resulted in a rather angry and empowering vibe. I’ve embedded both the original track and my new dramatic reading for comparison.
So I tried out the Dramatic Song Reading Remix for 4 1/2 stars. I decided to read out the song put the gun down by ZZ Ward. So there were a couple of reasons I decided to use this song. One was that the song lends itself to being dramatically read because it’s talking about a woman who has been cheating with the singers man holding a gun up to the singer. So the whole basics is about trying to convince her to put her gun down and steal anything other than the man. Plus while ZZ Ward is becoming a better known artist (shes one of my favorites I have seen her live 5 times) she is not so big that I figured I could still do the spoken version and hopefully it will stay up on sound cloud without a problem.
I ran through reading the song several times to practice and decide where would be best to sound certain ways. Originally I thought about only recording repeating verses one time and just copying them and using them again. However when I went through and listened to it this way it just felt kinda stale. So I went through and did the whole thing so that none of the clips were repeated and I really like the way that turned out much better.
Now the second part of this assignment was to add instrumental audio to it that has a different context. I thought about going all out classical and shaking things up but it sounded way to jarring. Since ZZ Ward’s original sound has a grittier aspect to it, particular her earlier work such as this song, I decided to try and find something that sorta matched a sound I liked but that was more opposite of her sound. I went to Free Music Archive and looked up instrumental pieces. The first most recent uploads were all hip hop and had beats that reminded me of some of her sounds so I decided it was too similar. Instead at the very bottom of the page was a song by Kathleen Martin called I Disown You it had a sound I liked and a CC license so I decided to go with it! It also had a good pace that I liked for the reading match up.
I played around with the levels to try and get it so the music was heard and a part but not over controlling. I think I got a nice balance in the end though I might not have been dramatic enough but I tried!
I decided to do the assignment http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/dramatic-reading-remix/. The assignment was rated 4 stars. This satisfies my 12 star requirement of audio assignments since I am over it with 14 1/2 stars. For this assignment, I was instructed to take a song and record myself doing a dramatic reading of it and put the dramatic lyrics to a different music. It took a while to choose a song that I waned to dramatically read but in the end I choose the song ” Big girl’s Don’t Cry” by Fergie and since I had to choose a different song to the lyrics I wanted a song that will compare great with my lyrics. Therefore, I went to YouTube and picked the instrumental of Selena Gomez song called Same old Love. This song was perfect and I am glad that I choose it. I used Audacity to record my voice reciting the lyrics which was easy to do however the only struggle I had was when I kept messing up the lyrics so I had to start over constantly. It became frustrating to restart from the beginning when you were almost to the end. Finally I had one perfect take so I was super happy about that. After that I had Audacity merge the two songs together and it created my final product. I am happy on how it turned out considering I had a hard time at first. I have the original song and my dramatic reading of the song down below so it is compared. Enjoy!
In this assignment, Dramatic Reading Remix, we were assigned to take a song and dramatically read the lyrics. Then put them with different music to make it sound different. At first, I misread the instructions and dramatically read a songs lyrics to the song’s own music. I did Eye of the Tiger at first and then decided to change it up. Then I was trying to pick two songs that sort of “clash” I guess you could say. I wanted two different feelings of songs. I knew what music or instrumental song I wanted at the very beginning, but I was trying to find a song to go with it. So, here is what I made!
The songs I decided to use were, “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz for the music in the background, and “The Reason” by Hoobastank for the lyrics.
I am actually quite impressed that my voice recording turned out so well. For this assignment I used my earbuds microphone and my laptop’s Garageband. So, I even surprised myself on how well this turned out! Now down below is both of the originals:
*For the assignment I decided to take a country song and sort of tie it into my southern belle. She is singing this song to her old bf to remember all the good memories they had together. I chose the song remember when by Alan Jackson and got the Selena Gomez the heart wants what it wants lyric video. I had a lot of fun creating this, and it was a good way to incorporate my character. This whole time my character has been going through hard times with her significant other, and this was the last set of it. I loved seeing how country and pop music untied. I think the pop background really gave. This was 4 1/2 stars and incorporated my character. So now I have half a star left to incorporate my character.
I thought this assignment was HILARIOUS!!! When I saw it I knew I had to do it. The hardest part was matching up the words and the background music. I chose the song âShake it Off,â of course because itâs a Taylor Swift song. It was hard not to talk fast or get in a rhythm because when I was saying the words, I could hear the song it my head at its normal rhythm.
