A Bag of Gold

I really liked Gardner Campbell’s “No More Digital Facelifts” talk that was recommended watching for #ds106 (embedded below).

I like it enough that I decided to remix it. I don’t claim to have captured all, or perhaps any, of the spirit/content of Gardner’s talk but it was an interesting experiment and hopefully one that entertains a few people. If anything it should encourage you to listen to the actual talk. It really is good and I don’t like talks.

bag of gold

Limitations

I limited myself to the length of the instrumental (Nas – If I Ruled the World)
I limited myself to under an hour of editing.

Some Notes on Process

I chose the Nas song after browsing around looking for instrumentals that were titled something to do with gold and being unhappy with what I found. One easy way I use to get a feel for a good song is to set the audio of the speech playing and then browse for music. That way, when I preview various songs, I’m hearing the voice over the music like I would in the final product.

I did all the editing in GarageBand. I tend to cut up the speech as I listen and pull clips that I especially like into a different track. Once I’ve got them there I drag them over the music and start to shuffle things around. It’d be nice if I could separately label the diced up pieces but if you can do that in GB, I don’t know how.

Yes, that is Jim Groom laughing hysterically in the audience.

38 thoughts on “A Bag of Gold

  1. I love the chorus,
    “This is a bag of gold, what part of that do you not understand?”

    So brilliant, and now you have Grant Potter mixing it all up—how awesome is this. You’re out of your mind right now Tom, ride that wave. The art is a flowing.

    1. Gardner has just the right level of anger in his voice when he says that. Clearly, I love that line.

      Grant’s remix is perfect. You’ve gathered some really cool people together for this. Hats off to you for that. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

      As a side note, I stole that “Digital Facelift” assignment for my instructional tech class. They will be responding via blog and letting me know how that idea impacts what they plan to teach in k12. It’ll be interesting to see what non-ed tech people think of that.

  2. I can nenver get enough of this talk by Gardner, and setting it to music suggests what a song writer Gardner really is when it comes to presentations. And this is the favorite I have heard from him, and there is an edge to the presentation that makes it that much more powerful, and like you note, it is all in the tone of his voice.

    As for Grant Potter, he is totally awesome, and he will be at NV (at least I think he will) and he jams even harder in person.

    Looking forward to your students reactions, are you gonna feed there work in ds106? Or at least select parts of it?

    1. NV is a siren song. I have wanted to go for some time. If I can get funded I’m there.

      We’ll see what the students say. It’s a little far out for them based on what I know of the rest of the program. I’ll likely invite comment from the #ds106 field.

  3. Oh man, the cut of of old beat days remastered and placed in a more shareable space without the press or ink or tree
    not better in construction, just different and viewable readable sharable too and mashable

    beautiful
    Ginsberg would smile and the pranksters would giggle and grin
    perhaps begin to speak
    and we could capture the minutes moments and splash them on an audio canvas
    and spit them out to the You
    Tube if television or iPod

    beautiful.

    1. Appreciate that Todd. We’re going to have to start setting your comments to music if you maintain that level of poetry. πŸ™‚

    1. Now that is a true compliment . . . and it makes me feel better about what may or may not be own decision to do the same.

  4. Tom – your work has motivated me to take things up a notch – really looking forward to the coming weeks.

    I can confirm that by hook or by crook I will be throwing down for NV2011 – wouldn’t miss it for anything.

    1. Why do all cool conferences and people tend to be in Canada or Australia? I’m going to have to pitch the idea to the powers that be, despite their mandates forbidding out of state (no mention of out of country though . . . ) travel.

  5. This is really good. This sound can be a pluging for everything no matter the situation.

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