I’m having fun listening to a batch of found sounds. The PC that Dirge loaned us to play EQ on had two folders of MP3s on the desktop, one labeled “For Mix CD” the other “Techno Covers Mix.” In some ways, listening to music like this is a borderline invasion of privacy. It’s the audio equivalent of going to someone’s house and peeking in the medicine cabinet when you use their bathroom. Only instead of passing judgment on their Smurf® dixie cup full of q-tips and the store brand deodorant, you can criticize their musical tastes.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the folders and I’ve already found a couple of real gems. The Techno Covers collection has a couple of high energy renditions of classical tunes that I really like. The remix versions of Edvard Grieg’s “Anitra’s Song” and the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” are beautifully done. And there’s a fantastic version of “I want to hold your hand” by Herbert Weixelbaum done with a synthesized voice and instrumentals that sound like they were sampled from an early 1980’s video arcade.
There are a couple of clunkers, of course. I’ve moved a few songs by a couple of people into the “Kinda Lame” folder. For most of them, the music is well done, but the vocalists are absolutely painful to listen to. Rarely, it goes the other direction.
The temptation is definitely there for me to do more fiddling about with GarageBand and the instruments we’ve got around the house… I don’t know if it’s an “I can do better than that” type of feeling or if it’s just a generic desire to show off, but if I come up with anything new and interesting I’ll probably post it here.
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