I liked the idea of playing around with recognizable songs, altering their structure to create a totally new tone or atmosphere. Sometimes the best way to understand a concept or medium is to simply work with it. So I decided to try my hand at the Make it 800% Slower assignment. I will say that the process was much more difficult than I anticipated. I had previously used MPEG Streamclip to capture songs from YouTube videos, and originally thought I’d try to grab Mind Heist. However, it appears that something has changed over the last few years… as almost all the files I tried to open were the “wrong file type”. Google searching solutions yielded nothing. I almost decided to give up the assignment completely, until I remembered that YouTube has a free video library where you can download MP3 files. I then found a free copy of the very dramatic 1812 overture. Perfect. Mellowing this classic dramatic piece was definitely a fun exercise. However, my first attempts at slowing the piece down were not particularly successful. I attempted to slow it down (with an effect that altered audio speed) by 99%, but this merely resulted in Audacity crashing twice. I then decided to simply slow it down 50%, and then adjust it again to 75%. I attempted to play around with the pitch some, but I’m not sure I was entirely successful in creating a normal-sounding song. However, the result is a somewhat eerie techno-sounding piece that is almost unrecognizable from the original (which was ultimately the goal).
