Monday, May 30, 2011

I Feel Awesome

If any of you know me or have been following this blog for pretty much any amount of time, you would know that I am technologically inept. I don't know how to use most devices invented in my lifetime, or before it for that matter, and the one's I do know how to use I have a tendency to break. This facet of my life (the facet where I break things and don't know how to use the one's I don't break) recently came into a conflict with my dance life (the life where I dance for P.E. credits because running scares me). For our dance final, we were basically told to get into groups and choreograph a dance using one of the styles we had studied this year. My group is thankfully comprised entirely of people I'm friends with, and being the huge Disney nerds that we are we chose to do a jazz dance to a medley of songs from the movie Hercules.

However, being the huge Disney nerds we are does not mean any of us know how to cut music, and considering we wanted to squish the three most dance-able song from Hercules into approximately two minutes, music cutting was necessary. But being the person that I am, I stepped up and said that I would take it upon myself to cut the music.

This is the part where you should all be going *headdesk headdesk headdesk.* Why didn't my friends try to stop me? Well, voice inside my head, I don't know either. But my friends fell for me fake confidence and told me that cutting the music was a responsibility I was perfectly capable of taking on. Are you shaking your head in despair yet?

The music for the dance is due tomorrow, and this afternoon I sat down at my computer and decided I should probably make that happen. And by that I mean I sat down at my computer having absolutely no idea what to do. Please try not to laugh at me as I explain the various methods and attempts I used.

PLAN A

The first thought that came into my head was that I would video tape the YouTube videos of the songs I wanted, upload those videos to Windows Movie Maker, and smash them all together and make a video montage, except that the video part wouldn't be important. However, when you video tape a video, the sound quality gets really, really bad. Also, I couldn't figure out how to get all three files into one place, because I would upload one video to movie maker, and then when I uploaded the second video the first one would disappear. So that plan went out the window.

PLAN B

I miraculously found an option on Windows LIVE Movie Maker (keyword: live, previously I had been using plan old Movie Maker) to upload audio only. At this point, I decided to stop being cheap, get onto my desktop (where I have iTunes installed) and actually pay for the music I wanted. So, after going through all the annoying processes that iTunes makes you go through before you buy one simple .99 cent song, I was kind of stuck. I started by trying to upload the iTunes audio files to movie maker, which took way longer then it should have. Before I could even figure out how to cut the music, I was told that the music cannot be played until I have enough images to take up the time of the song. I went to Windows Help, because I had no idea what they meant, and there I found a sneaky way to get around this little rule, which is that you fix the image to stay on the screen the entire time the music played. I was excited at this prospect, but it didn't work. Don't ask me what went wrong, I have no freaking clue.

PLAN C

I was getting pretty desperate at this point. I tried calling a couple friends who I was aware were more technologically savvy then I am (i.e. everybody), and I was eventually able to reach Jack (a.k.a Shaq). Shaq and I were able to use our combined knowledge of iTunes to figure out how to cut the music to the desired length (while still retaining the original file and not loosing forever the parts of the song that are not in our dance) and make these songs into a seamless CD. And here's the kicker:

IT WORKED. Everything worked! I was able to cut the music, which took a while because I was being so OCD and anal retentive about the transitions, and download the whole thing on a CD, and then play the CD with no problems!

I have to say, my self-esteem went through the roof. For the first time in my life I have been able to do something mildly technologically advanced with a minimal amount of help and no face-to-face human interaction. Future possibilities are endless- who knows what weird tech savvy stuff I'll be doing next.

Now I'm debating whether or not I will tell the girls in my dance class about my minor fails. Do the ends justify the means? In this case, I definitely think so. Needless to say, I've been listening to me CD pretty much non-stop since I realized it worked perfectly. Hercules is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Happy birthday to Mel Blanc, Wynonna Judd, and Cee-Lo Green. I love birthdays.

I think now I'm going to call Sydney and relay this information to her. Partially just because I need to stop listening to my CD over and over again.

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