16 March 2008

Editing St. Teresa

Joan Osborne - "St. Teresa"
(Hear it on last.fm, buy it on Amazon or iTunes.)

Rowyn gets the credit for introducing me to this great song, but I'm the one writing about it because I recently used it as practice to learn some basic music editing. (It's 5:20 in the original version, which is a bit much at nearly 170 bpm.)

I'd post my new version here and get feedback on it, but I expect it's not altered enough for someone not to make a copyright fuss about it, so I won't. Talk to me privately if you want to hear it, though. Here's what I did, in case anyone wants some ideas (changes arranged from better to sketchier):

  • Removed one verse (2nd) and chorus (1st). That seemed the most expendable part, musically, and it kept the transitions easier.
  • Removed first part of the intro, so it starts with the mandolin part. As much as I love the solo (oud? steel guitar?) at the beginning, it seemed easier to do this than to break up the long mandolin section.
  • Completely changed the ending. Cut off the last chorus and pasted together a few things after the "tell me" bridge, including the end of the mandolin line and the first few bars that got cut from the beginning. I was trying to get enough stuff there to have a fade out such that you get a little of the falling off a cliff feeling from the dramatic "tell me" line, but not so much that it's an unpleasant end to the dance.
Optional: You could also slow it down about 5% if you want, but I wouldn't do more than that.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

What did you use to edit it? I've edited a couple things with Sony Acid Music Studio. Much cheaper than Studio Pro, and seems to have a lot of capabilities.

Rowyn said...

Graham and I both edit with Audacity, which is free. I'm a novice at editing and mostly do it for fun, so I haven't been able to justify spending money on more sophisticated software (especially given that most of my edits are fairly basic).