80's Music Mashup

I can still recall the first music I ever bought. It was a cassette tape (you youngins can Wiki that right here) of The California Raisins (huh?). I think I may have been around six or seven at the time. My babysitter took me to a music store and I remember coming home with that tape. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was, I'm sure, played over and over in my house for the next several months. Good times.

I had an assignment for school this week to create music; a daunting task that gave me a new appreciation for the skill involved in song making. I decided to do a mashup because I figured I could get into that better than starting a song from scratch. So I went back to the 80's with this and (after many many scrapped ideas) went with mashing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" with "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" by Culture Club after a tutorial suggested a website that listed song's beats per minute (BPM). I found two songs I liked that had similar BPMs. It is (noticeably, I'm sure!) my first time ever doing anything like this and I had quit a bit of difficulty.

I tried several free programs but finally settled on Sony Acid Xpress. The program was helpful in that it was supposed to keep everything at the same tempo. I don't know much about tempos so I will just figure it did that since I heard a difference in some songs I tried. I made use of the program's splitting feature and cut up "Man in the Mirror" where it felt right (during breaks in the music) and then tried to find places to put it into the other song.

The chorus was an "easy" (nothing about this was easy. LOL) first choice and is the only part of the mashup that I am really happy about. I wanted to use more of the song so I tried to find parts that went together but some of it sounds like it is competing instead of harmonizing. Overall, not my favorite assignment but I think I did OK with my first time foray into music making.

Keep singing.