For my first audio assignment, I chose to do the “Instrumental VS Vocals” prompt.  Now that I finished it, it was a bit difficult for my first assignment… Perhaps I should have picked a simple one first. Nonetheless, here it is!

There was a time at school, where I would pick a handful of songs and I would listen to them, every day, on repeat.  I listened to them to the point where I almost disliked them. If I were to listen to those songs today, I would just get a flashback of me overplaying it. Now I know not to do that!

While working on this assignment, it reminded me of that story. I was working on figuring things out and how to work the audio software for a while. It almost made me get tired of the songs. But I am super glad that it didn’t take so long that I hated the songs, phew!

For the instrumental, I picked The Weekend, by SZA.

For the vocals, I used Daniel Ceasar’s A Cappella.

The Process:

First I converted the songs I found on YouTube to audio files using this website.

To start, I used the Audacity app.

I added the two audio files by importing them.

The audio file for the instrumental was much longer than the file for the vocals. So I had to edit and cut the end portion of the file, which I was not using.

To make the mashup sound more pleasant, I made the instrumental a lot quieter. To do this, I clicked Effect – Amplify, to adjust the volume.

Unfortunately, I could not get LAME mp3 Encoder, because my computer for some reason would not download it. I had to export the edited file, normally, as a WAV file instead of MP3. Then, I had to download another program, called WavePad.

In Wave, I opened my WAV audio file into the programmed, made no changes, then saved it as an MP3 format.

All done!

I loved this assignment. First off I do not think that I am a great singer but I found it so enjoyable to try. I didn’t even realize this was a potential for an assignment but when I saw it I knew I had to hop on the opportunity. When trying to select the song I wanted to sing I figured let’s make it as simple as I can. I decided on the Happy Birthday song and decided to go through it twice.

I didn’t realize how hard it is to sing with the instrumental. Usually I can sing pretty well with the lyrics going and I’m not the sole voice. However when I did it just myself I really struggled trying to stay along beat. I now have a new found appreciation for singers. I really hope no one goes to hard on me! Try it out sometimes!

Instead of combining an instrumental and acapella track, I combined a recording of me playing the kazoo and a karaoke track of How Far I’ll Go from Moana. I had a lot of fun with this one. I looked through my computer and found a track from last summer. I recored a lot of videos for YouTube but never posted them. Then I found a karaoke track with similar timing and used audacity to finish it. I think that this is more me. As I’m sure you have gathered from all my previous posts, I LOVE the kazoo.