Editing sound practical

Manipulating sound

I am going to look at the effect of changing the effects on a short piece of piano music. By changing the effect it may change the entire feel of the piece so we may be able to apply it to our piece.

Original

For this experiment, I used a one minute section of ‘More beautiful/sad piano songs by Brian Craine’ which I found on YouTube. I converted it to an mp3 file and used audacity to cut it down. I then saved this as an audacity file called original so that I could change it and save it as something else and I do not have to keep cutting it. This is what the cut version of the original was like:

Change speed

By changing the speed it also changes the pitch so when I is slowed down the pitch is lower and when it is sped up the pitch is higher. This means that when the sound is slowed down it has a sad and lonely feel to it which is ideal for our film opening. However, if it is sped up then the music sounds happy which is the opposite of what we want our storyline to convey emotionally.

Change tempo

Similar to changing the speed except the tempo doesn’t affect the pitch of the piano so if still has the same effect where the slower is sadder and the fast is happier but the faster one is easier to listen to as the pitch is lower so it still has a sad note behind it. In addition they sound like they have been edited rather than composed that way as changing the speed does.

Change pitch

The high pitch of the two conveyed a more joyful, playful atmosphere that would not lend itself to supporting our character whereas the lower tempo did suggest the idea of loneliness but it is not as long and slow moving as the slower speed and slower tempo which is better as it will not bore people as easily.

Reverse

Finally, I tried reversing the sound which gave a slightly creepy sound as the fade that normally comes after a note has been played on a piano came before the strong sound of the note being played. This means it stops very abruptly at the end which could build suspense if you match it correctly with the right video.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think a slower song would be better for the mood of our coursework and if we used a faster song then it would look strange and not go with what we are going to film for our film opening. Here are all the edited sounds: