This is audio assignment 494, worth 3 stars. It is called “Mainstream Chipmunkd” and the details were:

“The object of this assignment is to take a mainstream artist and chipmunk them. As we reflect on our childhoods we realize that all the chipmunks were an awesome bunch and it is really easy to do this assignment. All you need is any kind of musical editing software like MIXXX and Virtual DJ (which are free). Second either raise the BPM (beats per minute) or edit pitch of the track. If it is a slower track just raise the tempo and try to give the song an upbeat personality. Make sure to tag your assignment and have fun! ”

Over the past few years Justin Bieber has been in the spotlight. Whether someone is worshiping him or putting him down, I hear his name a lot! Justin even has life-size cardboard cutouts of himself. I know this because my little sister has one in her room. It catches me off guard EVERY time, it scares me whenever I walk into her room.

I don’t really listen to much of his music unless I am with my sister, it isn’t really my style. I decided to use his song “Boyfriend” for this assignment because I thought it would be really funny to hear it in a chipmunk voice. It is basically about him wanting to be someone’s boyfriend, and now it’s a chipmunk wanting to be the boyfriend. I like this version SO much better and who wouldn’t want a chipmunk as a boyfriend?

I used Audacity to create this. It was pretty simple, I just speed up the tempo of the song (under effects).

After Alvin and the Chipmunks there became a whole new set of replaying songs at higher speeds which make the vocals seem higher pitched. I use to do this all the time especially on my dads old record player (it was the only thing I could find that would actually play things at different tempos. This was actually quite the task for me even though it shouldn’t have really been that hard, I decided that since I was so fond of Adobe’s Photoshop that I would love Audition, their audio editing software, but it was actually quite a pain to us. Though to be honest photoshop was difficult at first too so I figured I’d play around with it before going back to audacity (which I still had yet to master). One of the things I liked about Audition though was I was able to slightly increase the pitch of the song as well as increasing the BPM so the song sounded chipmunked but not like it was just being played too fast. This was a hard feature to find though, the only way I figured out how to do it was to work in multitrack mode which didn’t occur to me as I only had the one audio track i was working on. Once I figured out the features of the new software it was quite an easy task to do… I still don’t like audio work and can’t wait to go back to photoshop I was having too much fun with that.

Ready for a fun Audio Assignment? Because when I saw this, I knew exactly which artist I wanted to use. The assignment was called “Mainstream Chipmunk’d“, and we were  supposed to take a mainstream song and make it sound like a chipmunk is singing it. If you’ve never heard of Alvin and the Chipmunks…you may want to read up and listen to some of their tunes!

Anyways, I chose to pick a song, that isn’t necessarily mainstream now, but more like 1958! This may seem totally wrong and horrible, but I decided to chipmunk Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me!!

So I created this by using Fastest Youtube Downloader to download the song straight from Youtube and uploaded it to Audacity. From there, it was recommended to just change the Beats Per Minute(BPM). However, I first played with the pitch, which actually sounded good. But when the vocals went away and the instruments came in, they seemed to screech. So then I changed the tempo, which sped up the screeching(which makes it bearable) but also makes the audio seem even more upbeat than it already was!

The end result, I think, makes for a good Chipmunk’s song. I also like that I didn’t make Frank Sinatra have the squeakiest voice in the world, like most people do when the they edit a track…to me, he sounds a little like Simon!

8/10

One audio assignment this week was to make a popular song sound like it is being sung by chipmunks.  As i went through my itunes I contemplated what songs would sound funniest as a chipmunk. First, I chose a song from Mumford and Sun’s newest album, Babel. But, I decided there was too much instrumentals for a chipmunk song. Or maybe it’s just too soon to disrespect any of those songs. haha …So i chose Jack Johnson! First, I downloaded the song to audacity. Then, I used the app to change the tune. I tested a couple of options for chipmunk sounds. At first, I tried to speed up the song. This definitely made a squeaky song, but, you couldn’t understand the words. So,  I made the pitch higher. I then exported the file and uploaded it to sound cloud. WaaahhLAHhh

Chipmunk’d

“The object of this assignment is to take a mainstream artist and chipmunk them.”

My most recent favorite song is Red by Taylor Swift. For this assignment I Chipmunk’d Taylor by uploading the song into Audacity, raising the pitch and speeding up the tempo. These changes make the mood of even a break up song more upbeat. I would say this version of the song is a more amicable break up then the original sad ending.

I have never been a fan of creating audio or even playing with it. For some reason, it just doesn’t click in my head. In our earlier audio experiences it wasn’t that bad. However, when I started to dive into the audio assignment bank I found a few assignments frustrating. I tried a few, and this is the best result. When I first came across the assignment, Chipmunk’d, I thought it looked really cool. I had always liked Alvin and the Chipmunks and thought it would be interesting to channel their voices into a modern day song.

I decided to use Yellow by Coldplay. I wanted to do a slow song to speed it up a bit (just thought it would be an intersting effect). I also already had the song on my computer so that takes out one step. I uploaded the song to audacity and started playing with it. Around 1 1/2 hours later I was still playing with it. I couldn’t get the pitch or the tone right. It just all sounded funny to me. I even tried a few other songs (Wannabe-Spicegirls, and a few Jack Johnson songs) but nothing seemed to work right. I have no idea why. I finally went back to my original song and started playing with it the best I could. I used the change tempo tool to sort of speed it up and then the change pitch tool to try and make the chipmunk sound. I found when I changed hte pitch, the music behind the lyrics changed also. It was just a funny sound for me and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. However, I worked so long on this I had to share what little work I accomplished.