For this Audio Assignment, you were supposed to take a song, convert it to midi, upload it to a different program, and film the piano analysis of the midi. Sadly, the program is windows only, and I’m a mac user, so I went a little more in depth on the midi conversion. Instead of just converting all of the audio to a harmony, I converted to harmony, melody, and drums. Here’s my final result of a strange midi cover of Sugar We’re Going Down:
The first assignment I tackled this week was a meaty five-star dealing with converting audio files. I had to create an auditory illusion; this is where a song with heavy vocals is taken and converted into a midi file, then played as a piano track on computer. To be frank, the most difficult part of this assignment was finding a decent free song to use. I spent at least three hours perusing Free Music Archive for a song that was both vocal heavy and not new-age indie. Perhaps I was being too picky or was not looking in the right places, but I found the process of song hunting tedious and frustrating.
In the end I settled for a nice British folk tune, Sober Taxi, by Greg Atkinson. The story for this assignment continues following failing Detroit from my question of the week topic.
One thing was for sure, Joe was going to make a killing tonight. The foggier Detroit became, the more folks stopped driving, and the more folks did not drive, the more folks needed rides home from the tap-houses.
The air of Detroit was being poisoned by the brumulo-whatever fog, so people smoked more cigarettes. The water was disappearing into the air, so people just drank more liquor. People had an interesting way of dealing with the growing problems in Detroit; fight poison with poison.
Many of the other cab drivers had left, citing the drop in Detroit’s population as their reason for moving. The taxi services had downsized when half of Detroit vacated after hearing about the environmental study on the fog and the lake. But, as Joe had figured, when three quarters of the cab drivers left town, and only one half of Detroit’s general population had left, he was making a pretty penny on the remaining business.
Sure, watching the city’s spirit break was disheartening, but he didn’t mind the fog or the extra cash. He was just helping the poor working people get back and forth, right? He was making their lives better, right? Granted, the places they were going were not going to serve their health any better than the fog, but hey, booze made the people happy, and that meant something.
I prepared a video tutorial on YouTube on how to create this sound/video. The video can also be watched on my tutorial post embedded below.
Playing Something on the Piano is not Always Better (Tutorial)
Auditory Illusions is when you hear the lyrics where there are none because there is only piano. Create your own auditory illusion by downloading a song with heavy vocals and convert it to a MIDI file. Then put the MIDI file into MIDI Trails and adjust some of the settings. Use a screencasting software to record your video and audio. Upload your final product to YouTube. Here is an example.
