Take a song and some speech and remix both. Make it meaningful and give it a message.
I think every woman I know has fallen victim to gender inequality, whether that be a cat-call, unequal pay or respect in the work place, or much worse. It is time that everyone comes together to better our world for women and for us all. There is literally no downside when women are equal to men. Now for some personal anecdotes that may allow others who have not experienced these inequalities to see it through my eyes.
Once I was walking through town with my friends on summer vacation. We were on a road trip after we had just graduated high school. While we were crossing the street (it was evening but still light out and there were plenty of other pedestrians) we passed by a U-Haul moving van with two men inside. Their windows were open and as we passed by the driver said to us “Hey, wanna get in the back?” What a disgusting and inappropriate comment to say to anyone, let alone 17 and 18 year old girls. My mom’s boss told her she was overreacting because she used an exclamation point in an urgent email. I have listened to my male friends make jokes about and judge women’s bodies, and then was told to “not be so sensitive” when I told them to stop. I asked my boyfriend the other day if he was ever taught to hold his car keys in his fist, pointing out through his fingers so if anyone were to try and harm him he would be able to defend himself. He looked at me very confused and said no. Of course he wouldn’t have been taught that. Boys aren’t taught things like that. But it was one of the first things I was taught when I got my license.
I chose this 4.5 star assignment because it was similar to the last assignment I had done and I wanted to further my practice with editing audio together. I was hoping that my mistakes in the previous assignment would lend me some guidance in attempting this one. I was Googling around for short speeches, and nothing was really resonating with me. Then I stumbled across Emma Watson’s UN speech. I had seen it when it first came out and while watching it I was quickly reminded how important her speech is for everyone to hear. I knew I would choose this speech, as feminism is something I loudly and proudly support.
Next I had to choose a song. I didn’t want to choose a song without lyrics, because that would 1) make the assignment too easy, and 2) not give as much depth and meaning to the final product. I chose Imagine by John Lennon because it is a slow song with a really similar message to Watson’s speech. I was originally going to cut out the lyrics as Watson was speaking and only play lyrics in pauses, but I liked how the whole song sounded layered underneath her speech. I think it adds hopefulness to her speech. I chose Imagine because to me it has the same message as Watson’s speech: imagine the world as a better place, where everyone lives in harmony and equality.
To create this in Garageband, I first downloaded the songs using a youtube to mp3 site . Just copy and paste the URL of the Youtube video into the website, click start then download. I save the mp3 files to my desktop so they’re easier to import into Garageband later.
Next, open Garageband and choose voice. (I use voice for everything, it is the least cluttered interface and gets the job done)
Click and drag the two audio files from the desktop into Garageband. Then trim the audio to where you want the speech and song to begin and end. To do this, select the file you want to cut by clicking on it. Move the vertical white line to the spot you want to cut, then click edit > split regions at playhead. This will split the audio box that is selected at the line. You can then select the parts of the file you don’t want and just hit delete on the keyboard.
Now we have to adjust the volume. I wanted the background music to be quieter than the speech. To do this click show/hide animation, which are the two connected dots highlighted blue in the picture below.
Once show/hide animation is selected, when you click on a track a yellow line will appear. This represents the level of volume.
Click and drag the line to move it up or down. To fade out the end of the song, scroll over to where the track ends. Then click a few seconds before and right where the track ends (basically where you want the start and end of the fade to be). This will create two little yellow dots. Click and drag the last dot all the way down. This diagonal line represents the volume gradually being turned down.
Then, save by going to file > save as and upload the song to Soundcloud by going to share > song to Soundcloud.
To export the .band file to an mp3, go to share > export song to disk and choose the mp3 option.
