Did anyone else notice that the awards music at the 81st Annual Academy Awards sounded an awful lot like the opening to “Belle” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast? You know, the part where it goes, “Little town, it’s a quiet village. Every day, like the one before…” Out of curiosity I superimposed audio clips from the two sources, one thing led to another, and I ended up making this video. [download avi]

Some things to note. The awards music at the Oscars is in E flat, while the Broadway recording of Beauty and the Beast’s “Belle” is in D, and the song in the actual movie is in D flat. I used Adobe Audition to transpose the awards audio down a half step so the music is in D flat while keeping the same tempo, since the original tempo matched the tempo in “Belle” pretty well. For the “remix” of the awards music in the second half of the video, the tempo was a bit faster, so I had to slow it down some. In the end, I added some animation from the movie, but remember I was using the Broadway cast recording, so the lip syncing didn’t match up precisely.