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FIT A PITCH
Next, you’ll need to change your
second song’s pitch to fit with the
first’s. Audacity’s Change Pitch pro-
cessor lets you transpose a song’s pitch/key
without affecting its tempo. So how do you
determine how much pitch shifting is neces-
sary? If you’re musically inclined, determine
each key by jamming along on your guitar
or synth. You can also try searching for sheet
music for your songs (try http://www.musicnotes.
com) to find the key. Or figure it out by trial
and error. Click the left panel of track 4
(your secondary song) to select the entire
track and choose Effect > Pitch and Tempo
> Change Pitch. If you know what keys your
songs are in, choose the appropriate ones
from the From and To pop-up menus, select
which direction to transpose the pitch—Up
or Down—and click OK. If you’re winging
it, focus on the Semitones (half-steps) field.
Enter a positive (transpose up) or negative
(transpose down) whole number and click
OK; 12 semitones equals one octave, so
try numbers from ±1 to ±11 (the larger the
number, the bigger the pitch change—if
your songs have too much pitch disparity,
the vocal could sound bad). Press Play or the
space bar to check your work; if you need to
try again, press Control-Z to undo and then
repeat this step.CONVERT YOUR FILES
While Audacity plays nice with
WAV, AIFF, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis
files, it doesn’t do WMA (Win-
dows Media Audio), AAC (iTunes), or
copy-protected audio file formats, so you
may need to convert files before you start
mashing (if not, skip to step 2). If your
song resides on a CD, copy it to your com-
puter as a WAV or AIFF file, using iTunes
or any other CD-ripping software. If you
have nonprotected WMA files, NCH Soft-
ware’s Switch is a free utility that’ll con-
vert them into WAV or AIFF. Likewise, you
can use iTunes to convert nonprotected
or CD-ripped AAC files (M4A) into WAV
or AIFF files. However, if you purchased
your song through the iTunes Store, you
can’t convert copy-protected AAC files
(M4P)—sure, it’s easy to burn protected
songs to a CD and then reimport them, but
you’re not going to read about how to do
that here. Nope. No-sir-ee Bob....
PUT TOGETHER A PROJECT
Launch Audacity, choose File >
Import > Audio, select your main
song file (the one that’ll serve as
the crux of your composition; for us, it’s
the 4 Non Blondes tune), and click Open.
Your song will appear as two (stereo)
audio waveforms in track 1. Next, choose
Tracks > Add New > Stereo Track twice
to add two blank stereo tracks (tracks 2
and 3); these will serve as your composi-
tion palettes as you piece together your
mashup. Finally, choose File > Import >
Audio, select your secondary song (our
McFerrin tune), and click Open to add
it to track 4. Then choose File > Save
Project. If you press Play (the green arrow
button at the top of the window), you’ll
basically hear a raw mashup (or more like
a munch up) of your music. This probably
ain’t gonna sound good; the songs may be
in different keys, the tempos won’t match,
and the parts you want to align are not
going to line up from the get-go. Time to
do some fixin’....1 2
3
BEST OF THE BESTLearn from the Mashup Masters
The best mashups feature contrasting genres, a few surprises, and fl awless song
weaving. For inspiration, take a listen to mixes from these mashup masters.
Party Ben’s (www.partyben.com) “Boulevard of Broken Songs v2” (Green Day
meets Oasis, Travis, and Aerosmith) is one of our favorites, but “Single Ladies (In
Mayberry),” which pits Beyonce against the Andy Griffi th theme, makes us smile.
Mark Vidler (www.gohomeproductions.co.uk) is best known for his “Rapture
Riders” mashup (Blondie vs. the Doors); we also like “Paranoid Rock” (Queen vs.
Black Sabbath).
DJ Zebra (www.dj-zebra.com) is French, as is the copy on his website, but click
Productions and you can check out his work, including “Suck My Kelis” (RHCP vs.
Kelis) and “Come Closer” (the Beatles vs. NIN).