Need to find melody, harmony, and rhythm, and sing over

[charm]

Hi everyone,

My teacher gave us the following link:

http://ricci.glendon.yorku.ca/~demo/265 ... ve_mp4.mp4

He wants us to find the melody, harmony, and rhythm. I am not sure how. I have been looking at this youtube page to compare it with the above link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BakWVXHSug

As well, he wants us to take the first 50 seconds of the first link and sing over it using audacity. However, I am having trouble knowing where to stand singing.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

[kozikowski]

However, I am having trouble knowing where to stand singing.

So you got all the rest of the overdubbing setup to work? Since nobody is expecting Warner Brothers Records to call, stand pretty much in front of the microphone. I'm guessing you don't have to worry about room echoes and other sound problems. All you have to do is hit the notes. I know people whose rooms are terrible, yet they still crank out enjoyable singing by being on pitch and tempo.

"Any opera you can walk away from is a good opera."
I forget who said that.

He wants us to find the melody, harmony, and rhythm. I am not sure how.

You missed that day in class? I can do the rhythm with the stopwatch app on my phone and a minute of time. Count the downbeats.

Since this appears to be the Karaoke version of the song, you should be able to work backwards from knowing the whole song. We assume the Simon and Garfunkle version... or are you assuming that? I'm pretty sure it's an old country folk song originally. They may have taken liberties with it. If it turns out to be the Gaelic version, you may have more digging to do.

Koz

[Robert J. H.]

To me, it sounds pretty "Rubato" in certain areas. The first link you've provided has too versions, one without and one with the melody.
You can align them such that you can switch in between during playback. To do this:
- import the file into Audacity.
- Delete the first 19 s (should be silence) by selecting it and hitting the delete key.
- select from 3:12 to the rest of the track (the melody part should start there)
- Move the selection to a new track (Ctrl-Alt-I, or Shift-Ctrl-d for a duplicate)
- Align this new track with 0 (in the track menu)
- Delete the first ~290 ms from the first track.
They should now play almost in sync, you can use the time-shift tool to align them more precisely.

You can further make those tracks mono (track menu) and rearrange them in a single stereo track (track drop down menu on the first track --> make Stereo)
The melody is now residing in the right channel.
The rhythm should be 3/4 (the accompainement is 6/8, where it is steady).
The original key is Am, but here we have Em.
That's the chord the melody starts with and always returns to.
The beginning would be:
(Em) Are you going to (D) Scar-(Dsus4 D) -borough (Em) Fair.
(Em G)Parsley, (Em or G6) sage, (A) rosemary and (Em) thyme.

That's the way I'd play it on the guitar, I don't know how accurate you need the harmonic structure to be.