Olympic Dressage: Music Mixup Magic

8 August 2012

World Cup champion Parzival and his rider, Adelinde Cornelissen of The Netherlands, probably never heard the strains of Bollywood theme songs in their heads while they were practicing for Aachen last year. No, their freestyle was really ridden to the dreamy ballet strains of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. But if they had had Mumbai on their minds, it might have looked something like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpx3aVEcAU “Mixed music freestyle” took off after a priate remixed the video of the famous freestyle by 2006 WEG superstar Blue Hors Matine. Who knew a Danish mare could be so hip? Someone dabbled in YouTube and deleted the classical soundtrack to her freestyle. Soon she was piaffing to a hip-hop beat, thanks to the pirate’s overlaid music track. And it’s a hit: it’s collected more than one million views. Now the latest “dubstep” phenomenon in music editing has Blue Horse Matine updating her routine, even though she has sadly been dead for years now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UEM1xcsHEs&feature=related “Hack” doesn’t just mean a civilized trail ride anymore. Creative freestyle hacking has become a form of free expression on YouTube. Using video pirated from the source of choice, users experiment and share their results. Have you seen Laura Bechtolsheimer and Mistral Hojris’s hip-hop track? How about Totilas and Edward Gal stepping out to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”? It’s not just the horse that can do it freestyle; pirate-minded music editors take a freestyle approach to genres of music, as well. And they soon find an appreciative audience on YouTube, although videos with music that is in copyright violation are often deleted. So if you’re planning to do it, play by the copyright rules.

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That guy next to you at Starbucks might be composing a dressage freestyle score.?

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Dig around YouTube and you’ll be amazed what you find. Tech-savvy freestylistas find music from all cultures to fit their favorite dressage horses, and the software to make it work is built into most computers and even a lot of smart phones and iPads. Somewhere out there, the next Cees Slings is editing up an MP3 track that will be the perfect fit for a breakthrough YouTube dressage video, and budding composers with horse sense might even even find a new career in a studio working with riders and trainers and owners to perfect a personalized soundscape for a top-level horse. If the after-effect of the London 2012 Olympics dressage is what it should be, there will be plenty of people waiting to watch their videos and their talents will not go unappreciated. Laptop user:?D. Sinclair Terrasidius image (Thanks!)

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