Project #1 -
Inside-Out Song Experiment
For
the first project, I had kind of a hard time figuring out what I wanted
to do. I've never taken an ACTLab class before and I'm not used to the
free reign given by the class over the projects. It makes it tough to
pin down something to do. To be honest, I hadn't figured it out by the
class before presentation day when everyone had to share their ideas. I
had sort of a concept in my head to take a song and record it in a way
that the guitar and bass parts become vocal and the main vocal part is
guitar-ized. I shared this idea that day, and no one acted like it was
completely stupid, so I went with it.
The song I used was called, "This Charming Man" by The Smiths.
I used this song because the instrumentation is simple (guitar, bass,
drums, and vocals) and all of the parts are monophonic (so I didn't
have to try and duplicate the sound of chords with my voice). My
process was to record the guitar, bass, and vocal parts separately and
recombine them with software later. I sang the guitar and bass parts
and I got my friend Billy Canino to transcribe the vocal part with his
guitar. We listened to the song on headphones and tried to follow along
as we recorded so that it would sync up correctly when recombined.
I gotta say, I wasn't completely sure how this would sound when it was
finished. I'm no singer, so I knew it wouldn't sound pretty or nice
(and it doesn't) but it's coherent and I think it sounds pretty cool.