Windows media player has the ability to change the speed that songs are played back at ('Play Speed Settings'), which is accessed by a convenient slider in a panel to the side of the play list meaning you can mess around with it as much as you want while the track plays. A friend* of mine discovered this after listening to 'Stereophonics - Superman' which he described as "comically slow". However, he found that when cranked up to 1.4 speed it produced a good, easy to listen to beat.
This inspired him to go through his music collection finding tracks for an album that he labeled "Better Faster". Here's a track listing!
01 - Stereophonics - Superman
02 - And you will know us by the trail of dead - Naked Sun
03 - Pluto - Moja Rijeka
04 - Chris Isaak - Somebody's Crying
05 - Aberfeldy - A Friend Like You
06 - Fur Patrol - Into the Sun
07 - Stereophonics - Pedalpusher
08 - Coldplay - Talk
09 - Evermore - Inside Of Me
10 - Fat Freddy's Drop - Ernie
11 - The Black Seeds - Cool Me Down (at x2)
12 - Fat Freddy's Drop - Roady (at x2)
13 - Sola Rosa - The C'mon (at x2)
14 - Minuit - Boy With The Aubergine Hair
15 - Breaks Co-Op - The Sound Inside
16 - Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeats
He put this description on the album
"Even as fast as x2 speed they still sound alright, some of them even seem to change genre. I've tried to include those that are 'different' when playedThere are some issues to take into consideration if you're going to start speeding tracks up. Obviously it works better for slower tracks (so any Magnetic Fields song will do). And speeding up an already fast track made me feel a bit like I was having a panic attack, it just seems a little intense. There is also the potential for making the lyrics so distorted that you can't understand them - it's always going to be tempting to put the speed up to 8x, but so far it hasn't been a very satisfying experience.
faster as opposed to just sounding 'faster' - or just cause they sound cool sped up."
Now I suppose I should put together an album called 'Better Slower'. Yes, I'm looking at you Punk genre.
* Full credit to Dean for inventing the Better Faster presentation method.
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3 comments:
Another smashing post from Mishta.
Lemme tell ya, there are DJs whose 'bit' was playing 45s at 33, and vice versa. Similar idea. Dunno who I'm referring to but I read it somewhere.
I guess from your 'I'm a DJ' point of view it's not much different from speeding something up (or slowing it down) to beat match it to another track.
A bit of the old pitch alteration.
It's given me hours of entertainment though.
I'm somewhat easily amused.
Something a friend and I were obsessed with for a while was 'watching' music on the Windows Media Player 'Scope' visualization. We lucked out by first trying it with Fischerspooner, which was wicked, then tried hundreds of other songs for a few weeks before we got bored. Aphex Twin - 'Windowlicker' is even more amazing this way.
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