Mashup Mon... no wait...Tuesday

Once again, Adam over on The Daily Twitch has reviewed one of my mashups - I'll say no more here except I'm not paying him ;-) and he's pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to my approach to these mashups.

Invisible Gurls - Part II

So here it is, my latest video mashup which features the first audio mashup I ever did.  Not much more to say on this one other than...enjoy! Download the mp3

Be Good On A Dream

This one might have a bit more of a UK bias - I'm not really sure how well known Beats International is outside of the UK (despite their name!!) For those of you who have never heard of them I'm sure you will have heard of one of their founder members, Norman Cook A.K.A. Fatboy Slim. They themselves created the track "dub be good to me" as a bit of a mashup in itself, sampling The Clash and Ennio Morricone (yeah I know) and getting their vocalist to re-create "just be good to me" from the SOS Band.

Empire Of The Sun are an Aussie Duo that that are certainly known in the UK, but I'm not sure of their following internationally. By sheer coincidence, Toyota have just started running a TV Ad in the UK at the moment featuring "Walking On A Dream" as the music.

From a mashup point of view, there were a lot of challenges to be overcome with this one that I think are simply not evident in the finished version. There was a lot of frequency domain editing in several places to both extract sounds and remove sounds for the more exposed parts. Speeding the vocal up so much also resulted in A LOT of careful editing of the timing of words with time stretching of individual syllables to get it to work. As with all my work I've added a little of me in there too, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, but just enough to "glue" the whole thing together.

This is a mashup many layers deep. Download the mp3

Never Gonna Stay The Night

I can't decide if this is a serious mashup or not. On the one hand, it's Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up which has been the target of ridicule and the internet prank of getting Rick Rolled. But you can't deny it's a catchy song, as is Stay The Night by James Blunt.

I have to admit it was a bit of a push getting these two to sit together - wildly different bpm and the melody in the verse is a little uncomfortable in places, but it made me smile and got my foot tapping.

So, make of it what you will...
Download the mp3

Rolling In The Third Bar

OK, so I'm not exactly doing this in the correct chronological order, but here goes with my latest audio and video mashup. This is only my second attempt at a video mashup and I have to say I'm getting just as much of a buzz from doing the video as the audio. I did make a rod for my own back a bit with this video as I decided to go for that true cinema feel with 2.39:1 format; all well and good, but I ended up having to reframe most shots. Still, helps to get in a bit more practice with the video editing I suppose.

So what do you get if you cross Snow Patrol ft Martha Wainwright with Adele...
Download the mp3

The Daily Twitch: Mash Up Monday

Adam Hall over at The Daily Twitch has very kindly posted one of my mashups along with a nice little review - Thanks Adam!

The Daily Twitch: Mash Up Monday: "After a brief hiatus, we're back with a mashup from a new DJ that I, for one, am unfamiliar with. This week's mix comes from SpareElbowSkin..."

And here's the video in question, which also happens to be my first attempt at a video mashup...
Download the mp3

Honey, I'm home...

So I guess it's time I sorted myself out a blog as some kind of central repository for the stuff I'm doing at the moment.

I've got Dan "Chambaland" Chamberlain (AMFMPM.org) to thank for getting me into mashups.  It was hearing his mashup of Genesis' Invisible Touch with Katy Perry's California Gurls that really opened my eyes and ears to the mashup scene. Being new to this technique, I decided I would initially have a go at doing the same mashup - having an achievable goal when starting something new is always a good idea.

My resulting effort was in essence pretty similar although I added a few embellishments myself, and changed some of the phrasing around. I'm working on a proper video mashup of this at the moment, but in the meantime you can hear my first mashup right here:



Download the mp3

I have some other stuff on my YouTube Channel and also some newer things on Vimeo, but I'll always post anything new here and shout about it on twitter as well (see the link in the sidebar or just follow @spareelbowskin)