I learned to do something amazing and remarkable last weekend.
I figured out how to use Audacity to create OOPS music tracks.
OOPS? you say. What’s that? you ask.
OOPS stands for “Out of Phase Stereo.” It’s a way of flipping one channel of a stereo music track, to create a new, third stereo music track.
Beatlesologists have been using OOPS to find new and unusual things in Beatles songs for forty years.
I’d never really considered messing about with OOPS stereo myself, but when reading an article online I decided, “Hey, I can try that for myself.”
It’s like a ten-second process in Audacity.
1) Drag your mp3 file into Audacity’s editing window.
2) Split the stereo track.
3) Highlight one of the two stereo channels.
4) Invert that stereo channel (Effect -> Invert)
5) Turn both stereo channel into mono.
Done.
At first I tried a couple of Beatles songs. Sometimes vocals drop out. Sometimes the backing instrumentation takes on a strange, almost drug-like effect. Often, vocals are pushed far back into the mix, but sometimes the vocals are brought to the fore and the instrumentation drops away.
Coldplay’s “Reign of Love” turns into a kind of piano-dirge, with an occasional whispering by Chris Martin. Elbow’s “The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver” sounds unearthly, like something that belongs in 2001. Idlewild’s “Love Steals Us From Loneliness” leaves mainly only the rhythm guitar.
It’s a time waster. It’s so easy to drag an mp3 file into Audacity, do the jiggery pokery, and listen to what comes out.
Ooh, I know! Let me try some Bob Dylan! Oh, wow, that’s just… wow. It’s even more incoherent than Bob Dylan usually is.
Seriously, don’t try this at home kids. You won’t know when you’ll stop! 😆