“Make your own song using other lyrics. Complete this assignment by combining the lyrics from at least 5 different songs in order to make a song with flowing lyrics. This song should be at least 2 minutes long.”

Making a Song

I know, I know, this isn’t two minutes long. It’s about half that, but I have a good reason. This assignment says at least five songs, and I used clips from nearly fifteen different songs, which is an equitable amount of work I’d say.

So I started with the poem, obviously. This is actually a poem that I wrote years ago in high school as a mash-up of a bunch of different songs. I immediately thought of it when I saw this assignment and thought that using it was very much in the vein of remixes and mash-ups. Something old and something borrowed made into something new.

I recorded all of the bits of the songs and put them in iMove, cutting them all down to just the relevant line.

I used google docs to make the visuals, just changing the color of the text line by line. The assignment didn’t mention visuals, however, the poem is a little more abstract, the songs do not mesh super well and the words can be difficult to pick out, and I thought having the visual of the poem would help bring it all together. And I think it did just that.

This was by far my favorite assignment yet, no matter how long it takes to complete and use audacity I am really enjoying playing around with song editing. This assignment was to make my own song using other lyrics and I kept a country rock theme mixed with the 80’s for 4.5 stars. I was able to use a bunch of songs I knew and mashed them together to create a new song with an 80’s to today twist which was fun. I kept a love theme going in my songs overall and the love of people through out their life. I first uploaded it to soundcloud and a segment was taken down so I went back in and edited the segment to sound different and sped it up a little while changing the pitch far but still able to understand the original. The second time I uploaded it, it went up without a problem which was a relief. I downloaded all the songs from youtube then listened to them editing the segments I wanted while thinking where each song would fit the best in the new song I was creating.

The songs I used are listed in the order they appear in the song:

1. Song of the South by Alabama (1989)
2. The Ones that Like Me by Brantley Gilbert (2017)
3. You Give Love a Bad Name by Bon Jovi (1986)
4. Forever and Ever, Amen by Randy Travis (1987)
5. Check Yes or No by George Straight (1995)
6. I Got a Car by George Straight (2013)
7. Tried to Tell You by Brantley Gilbert (2017)
8. Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi (1986)
9. Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen (1984)

I tried to incorporate the theme into the music release years and mix them with newer music that I still like. I think I did a really good job on this and it turned out exactly how I wanted it to. The only thing I would change is the amount of time I could devote to it because I used about 3 hours but if I had more time it could sound even better than it does.