Instead of opting to write a paper, I decided to take Stephen up on his challenge to create an audio project for my final. Being short on musical talent, I didn't choose to compose an original work. Instead, I picked the third idea that popped into my head. The gist is this. Take a popular song and replace the human vocals with an animal accompaniment. In effect, make animals, wild and domestic, sign a song.
Choosing the Song
What song should I use. I evaluated many options including some of my favorites like: Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody; Queen / David Bowie, Under Pressure (I was really feeling it); LFMAO, Party Rock Anthem; to name a few. None of those seemed right. Then I decided that using a song that had an animal seemed more appropriate.
Googling "song animal", I found several at the top of the list including Pearl Jam, Ke$ha and then Neon Trees. After watching the video for Neon Tree's, Animal, I knew I had my song. The video depicts the band breaking into a fine arts museum, defacing the artwork and decorating the patrons as animals. This was the perfect piece of work for my final project to parody.
Obtaining the Audio, Round One
Using Audacity, a free software DAW, I started out by grabbing the audio for the song from youtube.com. I accomplished this by attaching a male/male 1/8" TRS connector from my laptop's line-out jack to the microphone jack. This works great and easily records the audio. I recommend using a TRS over a TS connector as your quality will be better. Also the shorter the cord the better. Once the line is connected, simply:
In Audacity, create a new track.
Hit the record button.
Then on youtube.com start playing the video.
When the video completes, return to Audacity and hit the stop button.
One thing to note is that you'll want to make sure that no other browser windows or applications are playing sounds because every sound from your computer will be recorded using this method.
Adding the Animal Vocals, Round One
My thought was to separate the vocal tracks out of the composite sound. I learned very quickly that this is a pretty complicated task using the basic features that come with Audacity and I gave up in short order. I later learned that this can be more easily done with filters designed specifically for the task, but is still not the optimal approach because you can often hear "ghost" echoes in the sound.
Obtaining the Audio, Round Two
After doning some reading I decided that a better bet would be to see if I could obtain a multi-track version of the song. A search revealed Karaoke-Version.com, a cool site that sells popular songs in multi track format for relatively cheap. I paid $2.99, for a 14 track version of Animal in mp3 format. Included in those tracks were one lead vocal track and three backup vocal tracks that I could manipulate as I pleased.
Finding Animal Sound Samples
Google to the rescue again! I was able to find quite a few free animal sound samples. A few of the sites I borrowed heavily from are:
One thing to note about free audio samples is that you often get what you pay for. A lot of the samples I found had white noise or background noise that made tem hard to use. Finding high quality samples of the specific sounds I wanted was more of an effort than I had previously expected.
Adding the Animal Vocals, Round One
Once I had animal sounds I started by methodically adding sound snippets to new tracks in audacity. I paralleled the human vocals and used pitch bending and cross-fades to try to get something that sounded remotely like singing. This is not easy and I probably spent about ten hours hacking at it. In that time I completely started over twice in frustration. To add to that, the number of sounds and tracks I was copying in made Audacity run slower and slower. On several occasions the program just up and crashed.
In the end what I had was a pretty sorry excused for "animal singing".
Adding the Animal Vocals, Round Two
Not satisfied with that, I decided there has to be a better way. Thinking back to class and doing some more googling, I realized that there were programs that would allow you to map a sound sample to a midi keyboard. Then, for each key pressed, the sound sample would play in the proper note. Hey! That sounds like exactly what I need.
Using a demo version of Kontakt 5 Player by Native Instruments you can instantly map a sample, such as a dog bark or cat's meow to a software MIDI keyboard with one action. That's really neat, considering the ten hours I had just spent.
So now I have a keyboard that I can play music with animal sounds, but that's only half the solution. Remember, that I am not musically inclined and cannot play a piano to save my life. So I really needed a MIDI track of the song to take care of that part for me. I found what I needed at MIDI-Hits.com. For another $9.99, I was able to get the MIDI version of my song separated into 14 different MIDI channels.
From there, I used GarageBand by Apple, as a sequencer for the MIDI in combination with the Kontakt Player to play the sample across the MIDI track. There's a great tutorial for connecting these two at http://www.vir2.com/support/knowledgebase/36-using-vir2-instruments-in-my-sequencer/79-using-kontakt-in-garageband. I did have one small problem with this, because the vocal tracks I wanted to play through the MIDI keyboard were not set on the default channel. This was fixed by changing the MIDI channel in Kontakt to be "omni" instead of a specific channel.
Wrapping Up
After adding a lead vocal track with a dog singing and another backup vocal of sheep, baaawing, I decided that, for better or worse I was done. The extra ten hours I used to brute force sounds into the song with pitch-bending was not a total loss, because I used some of those tracks for accents in the song. I also decided that the human vocals combined together with the animal accompaniment sounded better. So that's what you'll hear should you choose to listen (I recommend saving yourself).
As excruciating as this process was, I appreciated the assignment and feel I have learned a lot. Thanks Stephen!
If you've read this far, make sure to give yourself 42 extra credit points!
Final Assignment for Body Strength & Tone ( Course Id HLAC-1013-001 )
Having started my journey to wellness
several semesters prior to this class, I have already come a long way toward
becoming healthy myself. I’ve had many
positive role models in my life that have not only set an example for me, but
also pushed and pulled me along, when I found my resolve lagging. Watching
Kerri, this semester, as she’s interacted with the class and lead us all toward
a healthier lifestyle, I’ve learned that it’s important to share “wellness”
with others. Each of us has a great
amount of power in the way we affect those around us. Take the opportunity to
be an example of physical wellbeing. Encourage others in a positive manner to
make healthy choices in food, exercise and attitude. On your journey to
wellness take those you care about with you. Because what good is living
forever, if you cannot enjoy it with those you love.
Also, make every day count. Each day you make
the right choices is one step closer to the wellness you wish to achieve. Some
days you’ll slip up. The binges happen. But you’ve just got to put that behind
you the next day and reset your resolve. Every day is new.
I intend to share the healthy life style with
everyone around me. During this semester, I have accepted an invitation to
participate as a member of the wellness committee for my employer, USANA Health
Sciences. Thus far, we’ve coordinated a healthy recipe contest, a volleyball
tournament and come up with company sponsored incentives to encourage biometric
/ wellness screenings. By example and
active solicitation, I will encourage my friends, family and even strangers.
I will continue to exercise on a daily basis.
Weight training 5 days a week is a major part of my lifestyle now and I don’t
see that changing. On the weekends I put on my cardio shoes and run between 12
to 15 miles. The why of it, is simple. It makes me feel great afterwards.
People look at you differently when you’re fit. Life is better.
I appreciated this course very much and
thought that it was extremely well done.
The only suggestion I can think of would be to add a homework assignment
for weekly progress tracking, including weight and key body measurements such
as waist, hips, chest, biceps and thighs. I did this myself and it allowed me
to see progress throughout the semester. Oh! Another idea might be to require
students to keep a diet log using a tool like http://www.myfitnesspal.com. This free
site/app is a simple way to track what you eat and the exercise you participate
in. There was an extra credit assignment to perform a diet log for 3 days, but
I think that assignment would be an excellent semester-long effort that would
generate huge results, including the development of a good habit. Generally
habits require at least 2 months to form (see http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/10/07/need-to-form-a-new-habit-66-days/)
To sum up, do something to improve your health every day. Drink less. Eat better. Exercise smart. Be consistent. Just do it.
