The “dramatic reading remix” assignment (3.5 pts) was interesting because I had to think hard about the lyrics to some of my favorite songs. I always thought dramatic readings of song lyrics was cheesy, but adding instrumental music underneath the reading made it sound natural and powerful. I decided to read the lyrics to Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” because I love that song, and I think it has an important message. It was harder to come up with a song to go underneath the reading, though. Try as I might, I could not make the lyrics seem happy by putting an upbeat song underneath. It sounded wrong because the music didn’t line up with the pace of my speaking. Instead of forcing a good mood on the reading, I chose Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” to accompany my reading. I love classical music, so it was easy for me to browse my iPod for a slow song like this one. The Moonlight Sonata worked perfectly with the pace of my reading, and added a melancholy touch to it. Here is the result:

I used Audacity to record my voice and mix the sounds together, then faded out the sonata at the end. While “Under Pressure” is an upbeat song, this makes it seem depressing, like the world has ended due to the lack of love. While this is what the lyrics say, the mood in the original song was hopeful. Adding the sonata drew attention to the darker motif of the lyrics in a very compelling and powerful way. While recording myself, I found it difficult to read a repeated line dramatically because it seemed silly to repeat myself over and over. However, it works well with the other song because it seems like it was repeated for dramatic effect. Additionally, I had to do my dramatic reading when my roommate was out of the room because I felt weird having her there listening to my dramatic reading. I ended up recording myself at around one in the morning after she left for the weekend. While I still love both of these songs, I think they work wonderfully together! Perhaps 1801 and 1981 are not such different time periods after all.

Never ever thought I’d be able to craft such utter beauty.

I can’t even think of anything else to say other than this class is bringing out the wonderfulness in me and I never expected this in a million years.

I did not really think I would do well with the Dramatic Reading Remix Assignment worth 3.5 stars, but needless to say I’ve really surprised myself. I am getting better at thinking outside of the box bit by bit, and so I thought of what songs would go together, and how to make these two distinct songs form a story for my listeners that somehow told the story of me.

I have a long, long list of favorite songs I have always thought of songs themselves as little story-telling secret agents, so I was excited to piece two specific ones together to paint a gorgeous picture, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to pick just two!  It wasn’t until I did some serious Spotify listening that I was able to immediately jump to two of my favorites; one brand new, and one long-time favorite.

I had just listened to Jason Mraz most recent album for the first time, and he opened it with this amazing instrumental of an intro called “Rise”. I copied and pasted the YouTube URL into the “Youtube to MP3 Converter”, which automatically downloaded and transported into my iTunes account. I dragged and dropped the track into Garage Band (which I’m much more familiar with than Audacity, so I’m going to stick to that program, at least for this week). I then picked out some of the most poetic and picturesque lyrics of a special favorite called “Ames” and recorded my vocals, then added an “Ambience Effect” to the track so that it meshed with the instrumental even more.

I then used the “Studio” app on my iPod Touch to create some album artwork out of an already-taken picture.

It was so amazing to see how the music, dialogue, and extra little bit of design really came together to create something beyond beautiful. This one’s definitely going in the DS106 Portfolio, that’s for sure :).

Victoire Absinthe closed her eyes as the rocking of the train and the gentle, familiar pulse of the engines pushed her further away from her past. In the background she heard Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra… Once upon a time she had loved that song. She and Phillip had listened to it over the radio set in the car as they drove though town, wedding bells chiming in the background, their eyes and lips full of hope and smiles. That was 2 years ago. It feels like a lifetime. Now the song plays, and it’s a rude, unwelcome reminder of the life she had lost. A crude, cold reminder.

Once, this song was as is it was supposed to be. A hopeful, almost joyful romantic song that inspired love.

Now, Veronique can’t help but be cynical as she listens to it. As the train continues to some new God forsaken city with endless suckers pining to be in love, Veronique smiles a little to herself, and mutters the words under her breath.

NOTE: Remix made with Le Moulin from the Amelie movie soundtrack.

Dramatic Reading Remix: 3.5

If you’re interested in trying this assignment for yourself, click this Link

Dramatic Reading Remix  (3 1/2 Stars)

Original music for Blank Space by Taylor Swift

I chose this assignment because I thoroughly enjoy dramatic readings and I could not pass up a chance to get to do one to Taylor Swift’s Blank Space. However, I didn’t realize just how fitting A Whole New World would be until I put them together. One is Aladdin showing Jasmine the world and Blank Space is all about Taylor Swift getting angry about men. They flow together easily. I had some trouble getting the two audios to run together, but other than that this assignment was really fun and didn’t stress me out. A great way to spend my Friday.

Well. Audio week has proven to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

We need a total of 8 stars this week, so I did the Dramatic Reading Remix which is worth 3.5 stars. What you had to do was do a dramatic reading of one of your favorite songs, then pair it with some instrumental music (that wasn’t what it originally came with). Sounds pretty easy right? WRONG. IT WAS NOT EASY. I used audacity which is a free music editor to help me create this work of art.

The first thing I did was pick a song to read dramatically. Let me just say that I did this assignment 3 times before it turned out the way I wanted it to. The first song I attempted was Monsters by Timeflies. The second was I Choose U by Timeflies. The third (and the one I stuck with) on I did was Ride by Timeflies (I have an obsession). These are my three favorite songs on their After Hours Album, which is why I chose them. They were also my first concert, at 5 am, last June, and I saw them two more times last year. So my first three (and only three) concerts were them. #diehardfan #timeflyer?

The first thing I did was record myself dramatically reading the song. My first dramatic reading was awful. It was basically me annunciating the words very carfully…which doesn’t make for an interesting listen. As I did it over and over, I started becoming more fluid and more dramatic. The hardest part of the reading was trying to say the words without singing it to the tune. There are parts where I did still do that for emphasis, though. After I finally liked my reading, I decided to go on youtube and find some background music

I ended up choosing Blank Space by Taylor Swift, but I used THIS karaoke version. I left everything the same with this version, I just downloaded it to my computer and imported it to audacity. The next part was the trickiest. I kept cutting my recording of my reading and moving the pieces around to fit into the Blank Space music. It got very tedious, but I have become a pro at splitting songs/recordings/audio. I really like how everything turned out, so yay! 3.5 stars down 4.5 to go.

Here is my final creation.

and here is the original song

For this assignment we were suppose to do a dramatic reading of a song of our choice and then put it against a beat. Our version of the song was suppose to be completely different from the original in its sound and beat. I chose White by Frank Ocean. It is one of my favorite songs by that particular artist and it was not terribly long which was also a bonus for me because I had to read his work aloud. I first recorded myself using my iPhone. I then emailed it to myself and uploaded into audacity. I just searched instrumental beats on youtube and chose my favorite one. With both of the songs in audacity I then changed the volume to make my voice louder and the beat a little lower to make a good combination. I cut the remaining parts of the song that were not needed based on the short time span and exported my work as a wave file. Which I then in turn posted onto sound cloud. Below I have my version of White and Frank Oceans, along with the link to the assignment.

Assignment(link)

Lauren Brumfield and I are in the same ds106 project group and were working on the project tonight. We decided it would be fun and different to do an assignment together and the Dramatic Reading Remix assignment was perfect because we could do a song with two sides. We chose “Space Oddity” because David Bowie is awesome and we could each read a side. Lauren was Ground Control and I was Major Tom. It was really cool to see how our version worked together. David Bowie sings so calmly, despite the fact that Major Tom is about to die, so we tried to make it very formal and detached on each side as well. We put our reading over top of the song “Mood Indigo” by Duke Ellington because it was very calm in the background, which again gave it that sort of detachment we wanted for our reading.

We recorded our voices to Garage Band and uploaded the music file to go in the background of our voices. Then we uploaded to each of our SoundClouds and found an awesome photo of Bowie.

3.5*