One of the values of blogging
peeps in after pipedreams dissipate,
like the fortunate fate of a fantasy:
(fill in your name) crowned Poet Laureate!
That might mean traveling to Abilene
like an evangelist, after all, for poem books,
trying to sell under florescent lights
what’s glimpsed only in candles.
Or like making Researcher of the Year!
with its deadly covariant
of shrinking the unique inner artist
further into the pleasing-papa parade.
So instead of sitting down to compose poetic-ish lines in the harmony of somebody’s notion of National Poetry Month, I tracked my notion of Blake’s golden thread. A question has long murked about: how can I, given my non-musical genes, make background soundtrack that I can claim as my own that will complement my digital media?
My morning news often comes in Kevin AKA #Dogtrax’s twitter paper: #NWP Daily (http://paper.li/dogtrax/nwp ) and today it included a retweet from a music teacher buddy, #MsEstep, that led me to one by #LarryFerlazzo: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/01/the-best-online-sites-for-creating-music/. Skimming the menu of music-making recommendations, I was drawn to Ujam with this summary: “All you do is hum, whistle, or sing, and Ujam can turn your voice into nearly any instrument and fix it so that it is in tune. . . The Ujam music editor lets you change the instruments, tempo, pitch, and mix between vocals and music to create your own composition. Once you are done, you can save your songs and download them as MP3s for sharing.”
So I tried it. Using my Facebook ID, I was able to quickly play around in Ujam and within a few minutes I had downloaded something I could call my own. Afraid even my humming/singing might shatter the keyboard, I chose to try out our front porch chimes. I started with the chimes and then adapted this with the piano & classical style settings.
After downloading the results, I used this as a sample soundtrack in iMovie. The original chimes play for the first 15 seconds and then the Ujam version comes in for the next 20 or so. The visuals show where that wind comes from, the original source of it all.
