Friday I'm in Love and experiments

Started by Bloodflower, March 22, 2008, 05:07:33

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Bloodflower

So, according to its Wikipedia page, Friday I'm in Love was recorded a half semitone lower than is on Wish.

I've fiddled around a bit in Audacity and changed it back to its recorded state, but there are these horrible crackling sounds throughout the recording, I assume as a result of my use of a source not the master. Has anyone done this semitone-dropping thing and gotten a clean Friday I'm in Love? Is it not my source, but my methods which produce this bad sound?

So, to make this more inclusive, has anyone fiddled about with a Cure track and enjoyed the results? I reversed Bloodflowers once. Sounds really good backwards. Very... desperate?

(Hello, all of you.)
Another Curefan for The Dark Christmas album.

lostflower4

Well, my experience with Audacity has always been bad. Seems to be a low of low-quality effects built in there. You'll very likely have better luck with another program.

But I have done some experimenting with getting "Friday" back to pitch. It's not exactly a semi-tone, it's a bit less than this. I can't remember the exact figure, although I'm pretty sure it's around 60 cents. I feel pretty stupid about this, because I've figured it out on about three separate occasions...  :oops:

However, there's one thing I noticed after getting it back to the original speed â€" that Robert's vocals sound really strange (too low). I'm convinced that only the instrumental part was sped up on the original, and that Robert sang over it this way (and therefore the final version has sped up music + his natural voice).

Assuming this is true, there's really no way to bring everything completely back to its original state, unless you have access to some studio masters. But it's still pretty trippy to hear the music at the original speed...


P.S. The Strangelove Mix has a slightly different speed than the regular version.

japanesebaby

yes, it's audacity that is crap. it often causes errors like this, this sounds very typical to me. :evil:
by the way even if you didn't use any effects, just did some simple editing there - for instance try editing a sound file making it slightly shorter and then re-save: and i bet you get these kind of errors there! there's just something wrong with that program...
= and i seriously don't understand why people all around recommend this program for anything(!). yes it's nice that it's for free but what's the point of having a free program that's crap? huh.
:?

if you need an audio editor for mac, then try to get Peak:
http://www.bias-inc.com/products/peakPro6/
or, if that's out of your reach then i would recommend Amadeus II:
http://www.hairersoft.com/Amadeus.html
you can try it out for free and then buy the license with just $30. i'd also recommend upgrading to Amadeus pro as this can offer multitrack editing possibilities for instance. again, license costs a few bucks but not much.
anyway, audacity

ok sorry for veering off for a second (should post than on technical section i assume).

Quote from: lostflower4 on March 22, 2008, 06:31:29
However, there's one thing I noticed after getting it back to the original speed â€" that Robert's vocals sound really strange (too low). I'm convinced that only the instrumental part was sped up on the original, and that Robert sang over it this way (and therefore the final version has sped up music + his natural voice).

this is true of course: only the instrumental track is off-pitch. besides IF robert's vocals were off-pitch too, i think more people would react to this instantly and notice there's something wrong there. but usually it's that people just read it from somewhere (that it's off-pitch) and never noticed anything themselves before that. that's because if you focus on the vocals there, you don't really notice anything funny - because there isn't anything funny there.
and so like lostflower said, there's no way to put it all back into original - unless you have multitrack tapes for the track at home... ;)


(never checked that strangelove mix by the way...)
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

Erik

Sound experiments:

Ok,  I have no technical background at all

once,  I taped (yes taped) my vinyl Pictures of you single using only the singing bits - skipping all the intros outros etc..  my girlfriend thought I was very odd
the result was quite bad! (I was 15 or so)


Often I have listened to all of Disintegration differently - in the era of walkmans and the portable CD players,  if you pull out the earphone jack out only partially,  you get a very different sound experience - with alot of the background sounds coming louder and clearer,  and the main recorded sounds becoming more cavernous/ like you are listening in a warehouse.

Works really well with Plainsong, and alot of the tracks on Disintegration because of the layered tracks.

This reply reminds me of how obsessed I was with Disintegration when it came out.  Every night for months I'd fall asleep with my earphones on, and the cassette going round and round.  probably three listens every night. I've never replicated the experience of that intensity with music again - which is probably healthier!!!

lostflower4

Quote from: Erik on April 04, 2008, 04:56:44Often I have listened to all of Disintegration differently - in the era of walkmans and the portable CD players,  if you pull out the earphone jack out only partially,  you get a very different sound experience - with alot of the background sounds coming louder and clearer,  and the main recorded sounds becoming more cavernous/ like you are listening in a warehouse.

Works really well with Plainsong, and alot of the tracks on Disintegration because of the layered tracks.

Ah yes, I used to love doing this. You could get all kinds of weird mixes from doing this (although some songs produce a much more dramatic effect than others).

I was  neverquite sure how it worked, but recently I figured out that you can reproduce this effect digitally by using the center channel extractor in Adobe Audition, found under effects > filters.

The "Karaoke" preset seems to replicate the half-unplugged jack effect the best.

Pretty cool stuff.  8)