(Wendy used Google Docs to track when words were written, and where, for the poem. I did a slight remix on the image she shared, giving lateral movement to the tracking lines.)
When the audio quilt of our DS106 Collaborative Poem was released, Wendy and Sarah suggested that people consider a remix of the file. That’s like music to my ears. But what to do?
I decided to pull the audio file into a site called The Wub Machine, which is limited but does interesting things with audio files, in different musical genres. Sometimes, the original gets completely lost.
I tried it out, just out of curiosity, and then I worked through a few different genres — Trap, Dubstep, Country, Bass/Drums … hearing pieces of each track that sounded good as parts, but never great as a whole. What the heck — I opened up Audacity and began to remix the remix, weaving a few pieces and beats from different Wub-ed version tracks together, and that’s when it began to come together in an interesting way.
Weird, but interesting.
What holds it together is the voice at the start, and then its repeating refrain as well as the very last words one hears in the track. The shifts in beat to pull back at times, and leave some musical space for the chopped up but rhythmic vocals of the narration track to come to the surface became another kind of woven thread. I’m sure not every voice got into the mix, but it found its groove.
Be cool if this dub got transformed into a video remix … just saying: you’re invited.
Peace (tapping toes to it),
Kevin