eMXR

Black Sweater, White Cat finds cool music

2008-07-24T07:47:00.004Z

I have to admit, that I'm not entirely immune to flattery. So when a rather tongue-in-cheek remix of mine was featured on a blog external to ccMixter, I just had to find out who was crazy enough to do that. It turns out, that I'm now deeply humbled by what I found:

Black Sweater, White Cat by Biotic is "the home of the One-a-Day Project. BSWC puts a focus on Creative Commons or copyleft music from around the internet and the world. Playlists, podcast feed, links, topical posts, random thoughts."

There's a great playlist, which you can also easily incorporate into your own blog and it includes wonderful little blurbs about the various included pieces. While a good portion of the recent music (as of this writing) is from the general electronica neighborhood, it's by no means the only genre represented in the collection. A great place to go hunting for interesting (and imho very good) contemporary music off the beaten RIAA path.

The blog originally started as a companion to a radio program of the same name, and there are quite a number of archived episodes to give you a flavor of what some lucky listeners in the right areas of Massachusetts and Alaska got to experience on those special Saturdays.

While posting this, I've been listening to the program recorded on the 7th of April 2007. If more on air radio was like this, I'd still be listening all the time!

The Perfect Sound

2008-07-17T08:09:00.006Z

Today I realized, that my blog has not had any entries with a tag of "humor" in over a year of blog entries. Shame on me, and the frighteningly brilliant Randall Munroe, the creator of the amazing and creative commons licensed "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" xkcd to the rescue:

p.s. For those not entirely familiar with 1982 popular culture, this may help to explain it.
:-)

Creative Commons License Compatibility

2008-07-13T19:19:00.003Z

I just happened to be exposed to the question of creative commons license compatibility in a couple of different contexts. It isn't entirely trivial, but anyone who has done meaningful research into licensing will know, that overall copyright law and resulting licensing requirements are complex, tedious and mostly still highly jurisdictional (country by country differences), to say the least.

The Creative Commons licensing approach has been of immeasurable help to give non-lawyers a fighting chance to share and license some of their works without having to give up all ownership control over those works. Another huge benefit of standardizing some licenses, is the possibility to create derivative works, remixes and mashups, which would be otherwise entirely impractical, because every derived work author would have to contact and strike individual deals with every individual owner (or license management organization) of a previous generation work, which has been used to create the new work.

However the Creative Commons licensing approach deals (at least so far) only with non commercial licensing. This is still a very big deal, because it allows sharing, dissemination, remixing in non-commercial contexts.

But still, not all creative commons licenses are compatible - simply speaking that is, because the owners of the works using the licenses have different objectives in mind. Wishing that away is in my opinion a bit naive or a bit too militant, so I'm not one to advocate total uniformity in licensing. That would be as bad as total uniformity in languages, dress, operating systems, search engines or blogs :-)

So for those who are remixing, deriving and mashing up like I do, generally with creative commons licensed materials, here is a key page you will want to bookmark: A creativecommons.org blog entry pointing to two CC license compatibility charts. One is an interactive tool from the CC in Taiwan, the other is a text link to a chart in the creative commons FAQ.

David Byrne is Playing The Building

2008-07-11T23:36:00.003Z

New Yorkers have a real treat in their city this summer:

Playing the Building: An Installation by David Byrne

"Playing the building, a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument."

That sure puts my synthesizers to shame! :-) Thanks to essesq for finding this!

International Music Score Library Project back on the air

2008-07-02T16:27:00.003Z

Some wonderful news in the open music world: The International Music Score Library Project, which had been forced shut down under legal threats in October of 2007, has just re-opened.

IMSLP attempts to create a virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge.

Shannon Hurley Interview

2008-06-19T21:14:00.007Z

Recently I've had the pleasure of interviewing Shannon Hurley on behalf of ccMixter. Shannon has been featured on Rolling Stone Magazine's declaration of who they consider to be the 25 best bands on MySpace. Recently she has called for remixes of several songs from her first full length album "Ready to Wake Up" to be used in an album of remixes of her songs and in that context has uploaded a number of remix packs from her first album to ccMixter under the moniker of shannonsongs.

One of her songs is also featured in a remix contest on ACIDplanet. However, it should be noted that there's a significantly different set of terms and conditions on ACIDplanet than on ccMixter around ownership of posted and/or winning remixes. While ACIDplanet offers prizes to the winning remix, it also stipulates transfer of ownership of the winning remix, while remixes on ccMixter remain the co-property of the submitting remixer under creative commons licensing. Personally, I've never felt much like submitting remixes to sites which make me give up all ownership of my remixes, but other remixers may feel differently, and I wholeheartedly respect their choice, if it is made knowingly.

Bottom line: Shannon is a wonderful songwriter and singer, was smart and funny, yet modest during the interview and I really hope she'll have success navigating the largely uncharted waters of the music business as it unfolds in front of our eyes and ears.

Fourstones of Magnatune and ccMixter fame gives rare interview

2008-05-26T05:28:00.018Z

Modern renaissance man Victor Stone, also known as his musical persona "fourstones" has just released the funky, yet warm "Chronic Dreams 2", his fifth album with independent label Magnatune featuring his remixes of works by artists from Magnatune as well as some exciting new talent.

Victor is also the main driving force behind trend setting web destination ccMixter.org, a Creative Commons sponsored project which has become the premier on-line artist's village for music makers from around the world, who sample, cut-up, share and remix each other's music legally, creatively and joyfully.

Recently I've had the privilege to conduct a rare question and answer session with this multi-faceted and fascinating individual. His self-deprecating sense of humor, sharp intellect and wit with the occasional shot of sarcasm is a breath of fresh air on and off the web.

The first part of the interview deals mainly with fourstones the artist / musician / remixer, and the second part of the interview touches on his role as main developer and head admin at ccMixter. org. I hope you will be as fascinated and entertained reading this as I was conversing with Victor.

As a special bonus feature graciously provided by Magnatune, you can optionally listen to the new fourstones album while reading the interview by clicking on the little play button of the music player right below this line.

Chronic Dreams 2 by Four Stones

Part1:

spinmeister: Hi Victor! Let me start by saying thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. It's a real pleasure to talk to you - but it won't be easy to address all of the topics I'd like to cover with you, since there are so many facets to your music and life story. So we better dive right in and see where this conversation leads us.

Victor: Well I'm happy to do it, I'll try my best not to put your readership to sleep.

spin: (laughs) I don't think that will be a problem! First of all, how did you get into making music in the first place?

Victor: I started playing Offenbach cello duets with my Dad and giving recitals in junior high. One day I was air-guitaring Stephen Stills' solo in Bufallo Springfield's "Bluebird" at a friend's house and he said that it looked fairly accurate and that I should be doing it for real. I've always had more passion than talent for music and that dates back to the very beginning.

spin: Do you still play the cello once in a while?

Victor: My cello is at my Dad's. He still breaks it out and drives everybody in earshot crazy playing “Sunrise, Sunset.” I don't think he's tuned it since I left it with him in the '80's.

spin: (laughs). Earlier in your life, you've had a few stops in the formerly thriving recording industry. What got you into that industry at the time, what kind of things did you get involved with and what ended up making you move on from there?

Victor: Well, as a 17 year old drop out my girlfriend got me a house hippie job at ABC Records in Hollywood and while waiting for the big break I stumbled around various publicity and video promotion departments of labels big and small. I left because despite having zero marketable skills I finally couldn't take the over the top institutionalized misogyny, racism, celebrity worship and backstabbing. There's no way to say these things without sounding bitter or like I have a grudge or something, I know that, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be said if it's the truth.

spin: (laughs) I don't think, you're the only one left with a bad taste from their experience with the traditional recording industry - whether artist, insider or customer. -- Ok, so here you were, you've seen the "dark side", decided not to be a part of it, and walked. -- But now what?

Victor: Yeah, great question (laughs) because after I had quit the music industry and finished music conservatory, the only jobs I could get were delivering sandwiches and cleaning toilets. My fianceé, a writer at the time, brought home one of those early cast iron IBM PCs and I lost my mind. I sat there for 6 months, never stood up, never shaved, never got out of my bathrobe - it's possible the smell has never been 100% washed out. The wedding was at the end of that and we broke apart the honeymoon so I could go on my first job interview. I went in my wedding suit, the only suit I've owned before or since, lied my brains out about my vast non-existent experience, faked up some references and started work as a professional programmer.

spin: Quite the turn of events, I'd say. It must have been a rather dramatic shift in environments and daily routine, but it sounds like it was quite a nice step up economically, and thus maybe a nicer ride than you had before, So how did you end up working for a non-profit?

Victor: When my wife and I had kids, I did the absolutely chicken-shit safe (A. K. A. responsible) thing and went to work for big companies for the steady paycheck. All of a sudden after 15 years of doing that, I hit the stock-options-lottery really big. It's kind of a pathetic dumb-luck thing because I had to have the options practically forced on me but again, it's the truth so there's little point in hiding from it. I don't pretend like I deserved it, it was just luck. At that point I was in a position to buy my way off of the corporate plantation and I got involved in the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Creative Commons.

spin: Did you make music during your days in the software industry?

Victor: I was pretty freaked -- ok, maybe a little bitter -- and stopped all playing for 10 years. Then as the first DOS MIDI programs came online, I got a synth and slowly started to get back into it.

spin: How did you first get into into remixing as your form of musical expression?

Victor: It was about 1997 and I was unhappy with synths and MIDI and came across a free pre-release beta of ACID 2.0. Around the same time I was falling deeply in love with Ninjatune artists like DJ Food and DJ Krush and I was completely hooked. By '99 I was co-founder of a virtual online band called The Blotter Brothers and an offshoot called Dip Blotter's Remix Factory on ACID Planet.

spin: You're obviously firmly entrenched with the philosophy / concept of "open music". And this has been for quite a number of years. What events and/or thoughts originally led you there?

Victor: My real devotion is to cultivate an alternate universe to the established music industry -- fine, bitter, there I said it. A very simplified version goes something like this: the Web serves as a replacement for radio and PR, file sharing replaces distribution channels, and commoditized DAWs replace recording studios. You need some licensing scheme to enable all that and standardized, court tested open licenses covers a huge chunk of the lawyering. At first, open music philosophy was just that, an idea, but now, five years later it turns out the most financially successful independent musicians I know are the ones with the absolute loosest licenses so we've moved from the philosophical to the anecdotal which is not a small step. As we speak I'm just getting news that one of the 'Tears for Fears' guys is releasing his solo album under a Creative Commons license. The current rate of major and ex-major label artists doing this is about once a month now and the rate is accelerating fast. It wouldn't surprise me at all if by the end of 2009 it is literally an every day occurrence.

spin: How did you end up connecting with Magnatune as your recording label?

Victor: I think it was five years ago now, I was searching the Internet for legal music to remix. I hit on Magnatune and realized their entire catalog was online and legal to remix. I put together a 40 minute mega-mix which became Ridin the Faders 1 and I hand delivered it to John Buckman. He pulled out the contracts right away. Truth is there are hundreds of remixers on ccMixter today that could have done a better job so I think this was just a case of being first.

spin: Switching the topic a little to your your creative process: How do you go about choosing the raw material for your remix albums?

Victor: The first thing is that I have to hear the source material's potential for being remixed. This is a very intangible phase of the process but basically goes something like "how would this vocal sound if backed by the Ohio Players?" I have several other important criteria that have nothing at all to do with music and everything to with exposing singer songwriters that I believe in and have taken the leap of releasing music under an open license.

spin: In your latest Magnatune album "Chronic Dreams 2", did you typically start with full mixes, or with a cappellas and other separate tracks? Did you work with source materials already available for download, or did you get some tracks "exclusively" from the artists you were remixing?

Victor: The process for 2 was quite different from the first Chronic. There I had to scrounge for pells and ended up driving a few hundred miles to record Lisa Debendictis in her living room. This time I got most a cappellas from ccMixter, asked for some others and was off and running. I used several separated tracks from DJ Vadim but otherwise I was just cutting from the Magnatune catalog and recording my own parts.

spin: While Magnatune artists as well as ccMixter artists give remixers the rights to work with their materials, (in most cases) that (Creative Commons) license applies to non-commercial derivative works. Since you are publishing your remixes as commercial releases, how do you go about licensing the needed tracks for your work? In the traditional music industry, that can be a dishearteningly complicated process. How does that work in your world?

Victor: For Magnatune artists it's easy, the label takes care of it all for me. The royalties of every sale or license are deducted from my account and funneled into sampled artists' accounts. For most other cases I'm dealing with individuals so I just pay cash up front, or like with the DJ Vadim tracks make arrangements with the label. If a big license comes through on a track they sang, played on or produced then I manually pay them. But I only work with artists who have put material into the Commons because that, to me, is a green flag that they are willing to be reasonable.

spin: OK, now you know what you're going to use, and the licensing has all been settled. You sit down at your computer, and then what happens?

Victor: I get bored pretty easily, maybe a touch of ADD, I don't know. So I switch up the process almost every song. Some tracks can take up to 6 or 7 weeks, like the "Clever" remix. I'm shaping background parts, harmonization, changing settings on effects and synths, re-re-re-re-re-recording guitar and bass parts. I don't have a lot of precision to my playing and arranging, heck, some might even call my methods sloppy, and by some I mean me, but "Clever" called for a level of precision above my usual bar so it took me an especially long time. On the other hand some tracks like "15 Minutes" are essentially done in half an hour because it's the sloppiness that gives it that, er, charm.

spin: In addition to computer software, what instruments do you play? Any favorites that you reach for more often than others?

Victor: As a gigging musician I made more money as a bass player than anything else and I can stumble why through "'Round Midnight" on the keyboard but if my hands hadn't crapped out on me I would probably be a full time be-bop guitar player right now and the whole sampling thing probably wouldn't have happened at all. (more here) As a result I have to be very careful about my playing time but for me it's always been about being the next Django Reinhart meets Jeff Beck.

spin: Do you do your own mastering?

Victor: Let's put it this way: I run everything through WAVES mastering tools at roughly the default settings. It makes my music sound "better." My son is working on a degree in sound engineering and I'm really counting on him to actually get what the heck is going on there.

spin: After you're done with an album project, do you suffer from post partem depression or more of a sense of relief of a completed project?

Victor: Both. I always have a bipolar period afterward of thinking I'm the hottest thing this side of Mars and a nanosecond later convinced I'm the biggest, undeserving faker ever. My shrink has many happy days sailing around the Bay on a boat paid for by my post-release psychosis.

spin: (laughs) Have you ever met any of the artists you have remixed on your albums in person?

Victor: Oh yea, several and it's always a treat for me. Of course I hesitate to mention names because you never know if feelings are mutual.

spin: (laughs) If they still talk to you it was probably ok!

Victor: (laughs) Come to think of it, not all of them are still talking to me.

spin: What's up next for "Four Stones" in his musical persona?

Victor: Nothing specific. When I started focusing on legal sampling I had to scrape and scrounge for every piece of legal source material I could find. Now, there's a world of CC samples out there and I no longer have to start my next major project by begging singers to give me a cappellas. So recently I bought some hard disks and I've been doing a ground up reorganization of my sample library, something I haven't done in over 10 years and never done with legal samples. I'm not sure where that will lead but I'm assuming at some point I'll be suicidal over the drudgery of organizing folders and cutting a terabyte of samples and at that point I'll start remixing.

Part2:

spin: If I may switch topics a bit to your other persona: Just like you ended up returning to music, you ended up returning to software development, too. -- How did the idea of ccMixter get born? And how did the connection with the Creative Commons come about?

Victor: CC knew me as the Magnatune remixer guy and a winner of one of their mini-remix contests so they brought me in to get my opinions on a prototype they had been working on. It was for a remix site for the WIRED CD that tracked attribution and it was clear how brilliant this concept was. They had no idea that I was a programmer - so after a little awkward begging and resume slinging Neeru Paharia sat me down and standing at a white board drew out the whole site, including database schemas, user interface - the whole thing. She really had the whole vision thing nailed and I was psyched, went off and built the site.

spin: When did you put up the first public version of ccMixter for others to join?

Victor: The site went live November 2005 in conjunction with the WIRED edition dedicated to Creative Commons music.

spin: How did you meet some of the inner circle and now fellow administrators of ccMixter?

Victor: Through the site, people just started showing up, some, like yourself decided they wanted to get more involved. Don't take this the wrong way but it's hardly an exclusive club (laughs).

spin: (laughs) If you're considering me part of it, it's definitely NOT exclusive! -- You wrote most of the software powering ccMixter, didn't you? Is it also published under an open license?

Victor: Lucas Gonze wrote the first take based on an established content management system and I worked with that for the first public release but then CC let me write it from scratch and that became ccHost. There have been two major upgrades in the last 3 years, all released under GPL.

spin: The GPL being an "open" license for software -- and arguably the inspiration for the creative commons licenses. -- What has the sponsorship of the Creative Commons organization meant to ccMixter, ccHost and yourself?

Victor: It's been everything. Running a music community website is hardly their expertise but despite that, I can't imagine a more supportive, encouraging organization for this kind of thing. It's a dream gig.

spin: Are any other sites using the ccHost software to power their sites?

Victor: There's been over 1,000 downloads of the software package and I know of several sites but I really suck at keep track of that kind of thing.

spin: There are some more commercially motivated remixing sites working with creative commons licensed music. What is your reaction to those?

Victor: That was the point. ccMixter was never meant as an end, it was supposed to be an example leading the way to what's possible.

spin: Have you ever been approached by a company who has seen your ccMixter/ccHost software to do some of that funky ajax programming for them?

Victor: I don't see myself as all that hot in programming and I'm constantly seeing things in ccHost that I could have done better. There's a lot of amazing, slick kids doing this stuff a whole lot better than me - my son is constantly getting work on websites nowadays, he wrote the Flash MP3 player we use on ccMixter. There's a lot of interesting projects out there and some have been in touch with me, I listen to every pitch but, for now, I always come back to ccMixter.

spin: As someone who does both in considerable depth: In which way to you see making music and writing software as similar and in which way do they really differ?

Victor: Well, for better or worse, I treat them exactly the same. The same mix of art and science goes into both and there's the same mix of precision and sloppiness in both, it's just harder to rationalize the sloppiness in the coding. And music has a more blatant emotional component but then if frustration is an emotion then software is an emotion factory.

spin: (laughs) That could be a title for a country song about software! -- Most people struggle to do either one well - you do both - is there much time left for a so called "life" outside of software development and making music? Do family and friends ever get to see you?

Victor: I do both? Or I do both well? (laughs) OK, well I struggle a lot with both and the jury's out on how well I do either. I go through dark periods where for months I'm doing one thing primarily, like the website upgrade or an album, very OCD. My cell phone goes off for a week at a time, my inbox fills up. But I'm also extremely good and practiced at doing absolutely nothing. In fact, I love doing nothing, I need nothing apparently more than most folks. I always make time for nothing and value nothing very, very highly.

spin: But maybe above all, ccMixter/ccHost is not really just a piece of funky software, but ccMixter is a thriving artistic community. What do you as it's founder and most influential force like most about that community?

Victor: What do I like most? That they tolerate me and put up with my neurosis (evil grin) - (spin laughs). Somehow, in 33 years of being in the workforce, this is the first retail gig I've ever had, so dealing with the public is all new to me. I'm used to people around knowing me and getting me which seems to make things go smoother. Nobody told me people had these things called "feelings" that I had to worry about. At the times I see myself as most hilarious is when I get into serious trouble.

spin: (laughs) smileys matter!

Victor: (laughs) Now they tell me! -- For real what blows me away is the quality of the music. This isn't just a community showing stuff off or a fan community talking about the inner meaning of episode #340 of Star Trek, we're all fans of each other and together we are making this music conversation happen. Lucas called it mixversation which is very different from collaboration. We take something someone has said before and incorporate it into something new and again, the consistent quality of the result is just amazing to me.

spin: Which way would you like to see the ccMixter community evolve next?

Victor: Not that I don't have ambitious fantasies but I'm pretty happy with things right now. We've added a lot of features this year geared toward consumers of music, like video makers and podcasters and I plan to make that even more of a priority but overall I think the basic formula of the site is working just fine.

spin: Have you noticed any differences in the remixes from the early days of ccMixter compared to now?

Victor: Musically there seems to have been a shift this year to more one-man-band produced re-interpretation and less sample-based remixes. The previous remixes seemed edgier, more modern and subjectively speaking, more interesting. Here's an example: Trifonic puts out an album of the kind of really edgy, cool, modern eclectic pop they became famous for on ccMixter. Last month they posted the studio tracks and a cappellas from their new album "Emergence" back into the Commons but the community remixes that come from their material are straight ahead, mainstream style. This is a weird 180 from how things used to work. until now we would get straight pop, R&B and rap vocals and then take them to this strange remix place, but with Trifonic we have a case where the original samples are coming from this outside, edgy place and the community pulls it back into a more mainstream style. I don't know what to make of that.

spin: Maybe it's a little like symphony orchestras having "Beatles Night", or jazz players doing Radiohead? Do you mind that happening?

Victor: Er, now you're describing me (laughs).

spin: Maybe this evolution marks that more traditional musicians are discovering the joys of remixing. while it had its origins in the DJ community? So it is a new crowd joining ccMixter and remixing at large? An early stage of a new evolution?Is it just a matter of time?

Victor: That's right, I agree, for old school musicians, pre-DJ era, like myself, weened on The Beatles, Archie Bell and Marvin Gaye that is totally correct, we are, individually in a state of evolution, but I was whining about the site as a whole (laughs). Listen to Trifonic, hisboyelroy, cdk, teru, shaggruge who represent the type of producer that dominated the site's ratings charts for the first three years – as you imply, these guys are applying a completely different discipline from a different rule book and doing natively what the rest of us have to learn. We are Wendy Carlos, they are Kraftwerk. I'm not saying there's anything inappropriate going on at the site, far from it. But if musically, the end result of all this new technology turns out to be just a better way to make the same sounds you get by hiring 5 studio cats in an LA recording studio then that's a personal, artistic disappointment to me. The new stuff is amazing, truly, it's just a different kind of buzz that I was getting used to. I'll get over it (laughs).

spin: So what does qualify as inappropriate at ccMixter?

Victor: The one thing that I will actively push back against is any form of genre or process specific musical snobbery. I started in the classical world and especially in the 60's and 70's their noses were in the clouds. Imagine having Harold Budd on your teaching staff and forcing him to teach 17th century harmony which is the class I took with him. I then moved through the rock celebrity world, the hard core jazz world and the LA studio scene. Each had their own brand of we're playing real music, every one else is beneath us mentality. And sampling and remixing seems to bring this out like I've never seen before. I've had people show up at the site and say things to the effect of you're all just copying and reworking other people's stuff and all of a sudden I get hyper protective and defensive and the site becomes my house that needs protection. Of course most musicians are open minded and are willing to have their attitudes adjusted, I'm just extra sensitive to that special mix of ignorance, arrogance and alcohol where it doesn't matter if they've mastered the art of improvising over variations of the "Sweet Georgia Brown" changes or memorized every Paganini etude, if they don't recognize that turntablism and sampling is exactly the same level of composing, arranging, performance and artistry as anything that's ever come before in music then I suggest they move on.

spin: (laughs) - Now tell me what you really think? -- More seriously, I think your work with and around ccMixter is contributing a lot to changing attitudes on that front. -- Can others, who share those goals get involved in a helpful way?

Victor: Well, we have specific needs on ccHost, like CSS gurus and skin developers. At the site we are always, always, always looking for singers to put their a cappellas into the Commons. For musicians the most important thing is to care about the quality of their work and be willing and open to share because I'm big believer in a rising tide. There is no evidence that music appreciation, including the commercial kind where people pay for music, is a zero sum game. Your career is helped when those around you are making better music, not worse. You don't want to be the best track in a podcast if the rest of the music in that podcast sucks. You can afford to be the 3rd best track in a podcast where every track is a home run. And of course, every musician improves by sharing skills and samples with other musicians.

spin: Thank you so very much, Victor, for taking the time to share a bit about yourself, your art and your thoughts. It has been a delight to have this conversation! May you have lots of success with your new album and may ccMixter continue to thrive as the trend setting web destination for open music makers.

Calendar Girl Interview

2008-05-12T19:49:00.003Z

Here's the link and teaser to another interview I've conducted on behalf of ccMixter - this time with the talented, intelligent, gracious and funny Calendar Girl:

"In October 2006, singer song-writer Tamara Barnett-Herrin from London in the UK published a one sentence challenge to herself and to remixers around the World Wide Web: “I write one song a month. You remix and feedback. We make a record.” This experiment in songwriting and remix culture unlike any other yielded over 300 remixes, setting a new record at ccMixter. Twelve of them have been chosen to be published in an album titled Calendar Songs Volume I due out May 26 (check calendarsongs.com). Known to the ccMixter community as Calendar Girl, she has graciously agreed to an interview with ccMixter."

RealWorldRemixed Servers Stolen

2008-05-05T17:34:00.006Z

This is one of the stranger things I've seen in a while. When going to realworldremixed.com, it displays on the front page this message: "Real World, Peter Gabriel and WOMAD web services are currently off-line. Our servers were stolen from our ISP's data centre on Sunday night - Monday morning. We are working on restoring normal service as soon as possible. ...".

This points out another flaw in their model. By not allowing remixers to publish their remixes even non-commercially anywhere else than on the realworldremixed.com site, they have just taken a couple thousand remixes off the internet. Those remixers who have published there, find at least some of their artistic catalog suddenly off the air. Websites, which point to the remixes of that site, now have broken links.

While that site has fond memories for me, because it introduced me to remixing (and several of my remixes have now - at least temporarily - become "unpublished" as well), I had moved on from there about a year ago to find a better remixing home at ccMixter.org.

Thanks to fellow remixer "Doghouse Riley" for the tip.

UPDATE 2008-05-06: Looks like the site is back now. Good to see, because it does have some stellar remixes on it. Including around 900 Shock The Monkey's.

Metropolitan Youth Orchestra Scrollwerks Remix contest

2008-04-22T15:33:00.004Z

Just got a note from Jeane Goforth from Scrollworks (a non-profit organization aiming to offer quality music education for children in the local community regardless of their ability to pay, with a focus on minorities and the under-served areas of Greater Birmingham, Alabama), They are holding a remix contest featuring a recording of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra in concert performing Paganini’s “Moses Variations”.

"We've finally got it up. I know it's short notice, but, having worked now 17 (or 18) days straight and with a to-do list covering multiple tablets, it's the best we could do. The growing pains of a new organization! (0 to 135 students in 2 months!!) Info here: http://metroyo.blogspot.com/2008/04/250-prize-for-remix-contest.html
or under 'What's New' at scrollworks.org "

Very cool, Jean - and may the contest be a big success!

Free Music Making Software Resources

2008-04-11T20:00:00.000Z

FreeMusicSoftware.org - A blog by Crispin with the tag line: A collection of the best Free Audio and Music floating around in Cyberspace.

gersic.com - the giant free audio plugin database

KVRaudio.com - The premier news site for everything related to audio plugins. Fabulous search engine for plugins and host software, which makes it easy to find only free plugins or also commercial one's.

Trifonic remix packs, interview at ccMixter

2008-04-10T05:28:00.003Z

From ccMixter: "Trifonic have just put the solo studio tracks from their debut album Emergence, into the Commons. Including a cappellas by Amelia June, Christina Courtin and David Forest.

Trifonic are brothers Brian and Laurence Trifon. Their music blends manipulated ambient sounds and synths with live guitars, strings and other instruments to create an alternative electronica sound distinctly their own. After working as a guitarist and programmer for electronic artist BT, Brian teamed up with Laurence in 2007 and composed several contest winning, standout remixes for ccMixter and licensed music to TV shows including CSI."

This one has a bit of a personal connection, since I've had the pleasure of doing a bit of a virtual interview with LT and Brian on behalf of ccMixter in connection with this release of their tracks.

more free sounds: soundsnap.com

2008-04-09T17:41:00.005Z

From the sound of shoveling sand to the sound of pigeons eating, there are a myriad of free sound files available at soundsnap.com, another resource and community for free sound files.

Other free sound/sample sites we have mentioned before can be found here.

Reeemix.com tracks remix contests

2008-04-07T04:22:00.004Z

Here's a site specializing in listing remix contests. "Reeemix.com provides you with a continuously updated link list to remix contests worldwide." Looks like an excellent resource.

Thanks to Laurent for this tip. He also says: "I'm looking for fellow producers to work with."

If you are looking for other producers, many of whom have been known to collaborate with others, I can highly recommend ccmixter.org. Or if you want to get in touch with Laurent directly, you can do so via his myspace space referenced in the link above.

ccMixter - She's Got the Look

2008-04-06T05:27:00.001Z

Good friend of the site and remixer extraordinaire Loveshadow just posted a note at ccMixter: "This is just a little announcement that a remix i did of Calendar Girl has been used commercially for a fashion house in Vienna.

The site looks great as does their current 2008 collection. Its very cool to be selected and proves that the world is watching and listening to sites like CC Mixter and rethinking their commercial approach.

It also shows that collorabation thru CC Mixter can lead to greater things and Calendar Girl & myself would like to thank the Kalchmann group for supporting our online efforts.

Go take a look if you get a chance: Kalchmann"

eMXR's hearfelt congratulations to Loveshadow, CalendarGirl and Kalchman!

Glen Phillips / Kompoz Remix Contest

2008-04-03T18:20:00.004Z

just got this note from Raf Fiol over at Kompoz.com:

Glen Phillips / Kompoz Remix Contest!

http://www.kompoz.com/glenphillips

Tune your guitar. Adjust your drum kit. Fire up your mixer. Today we are thrilled to announce our second Kompoz celebrity remix contest, this one featuring Glen Phillips, singer, songwriter, and the voice of Toad The Wet Sprocket!

From April 1st through May 30th, Kompoz members can download the original studio tracks for the song "The Spirit of Shackleton" from Glen's new solo album titled "Secrets of the New Explorers". Rock it up, funk it up, jazz it up. Add a solo, sing with Glen, bang your drums. Post your entry before May 30th for your chance to win a Fender Squire Stratocaster autographed by Glen Phillips!

Prizes

Five winners will be selected. The best new individual track or original remix will win a Fender Squire Stratocaster autographed by Glen Phillips. The second-place winner will receive a one-year premium membership to TrueFire.com. The third-place winner will receive a StealthPlug USB audio interface from IK Multimedia. The top five winners will all receive a "Secrets of the New Explorers" CD autographed by Glen Phillips, and a cool t-shirt from INDISTR.COM.

Judging

Finalists will be selected during the last week of May by Glen Phillips and Kompoz staff members. Those tracks will then be posted on a special Kompoz channel on OurStage.com, where during the month of June, the fans will decide the winners, using OurStage's unique "battle of the bands" voting format. Kompoz members that register on OurStage will of course be able to vote, and will receive 12 free MP3s!

Did I mention that we're giving away a Fender guitar autographed by Glen Phillips? We're giving away a Fender guitar autographed by Glen Phillips!

For official rules and details, visit the contest landing page at http://www.kompoz.com/glenphillips. To get started now, visit the contest project page.

Radiohead disappoints remixers

2008-04-03T17:26:00.005Z

I just received the following email from fellow remixer DJ_Rkod:

Radiohead have invited fans to remix their recent single, "Nude," and have created a site to host said creations. It is easily navigable, the remixes are easy to listen to and many of them are pretty good.

It's also one of the worst deals I've ever seen when it comes to remixing.

The first problem is immediately apparent on the front page of the site, which states:

"Nude by Radiohead is out now. You can buy bits of it here and upload your remix here."

Buy? Really? On further investigation, I found that yes, the British band expects you to shell out your funds in order to have the privilege of mixing them. It's what I like to call a Very Bad Thing. But it gets better! A look at the terms and conditions reveals that this is in fact even worse than it appears to be. I'd like to deconstruct some of the terms below.

"...

1. all rights in and to any remixed versions ("Remixes") of the song "Nude" ("the Song") created by the Entrant shall be owned by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd ("WCM") and to the extent necessary the Entrant hereby assigns all rights in the Remixes of the Song to WCM throughout the World for the full life of copyright and any and all extensions and renewals thereof. If requested by WCM, the Entrant shall complete and sign a formal assignment of copyright to give effect to the foregoing;

2. all rights in and to any Remixes of the original sound recording of the Song ("the Master") created by the Entrant shall be owned by _Xurbia _Xendless Ltd ("Xurbia") and to the extent necessary the Entrant hereby assigns all rights in the Remixes of the Master to Xurbia throughout the World for the full life of copyright and any and all extensions and renewals there. If requested by Xurbia, the Entrant shall complete and sign a formal assignment of copyright to give effect to the foregoing;

..."

This essentially removes all of your rights to anything you do with the song. You do not control what Warner or Xurbia do with whatever you create. You do not own any part of it. You are essentially paying them so you can work for them, a complete and utter reversal of the way things should be.

"...

3. Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway will be registered and credited as the sole writers and WCM the publishers of the Remixes of the Song created by the Entrant;

4. the Entrant will not acquire a copyright interest in the Song by virtue of creating Remixes of the Song;

..."

4 is essentially a restatement of the above. But 3 is something else entirely. When combined with the rest of the contract, it means that, with or without your permission, Warner or Xurbia can sell your mix, without paying you a cent and without even giving you credit for it.

"Xurbia shall not commercially exploit the Remixes of the Song created by the Entrant without consulting with the Entrant prior to such commercial exploitation."

This is a laughable assurance, because the remixer owns no part of his own work, and can do absolutely nothing to prevent such commercial exploitation. A consultation of this type would only serve to fulfill the terms of the contract.

I do not recommend using this site (obviously) and hope that in the future remixing is thought of in terms other than monetary ones.

--DJ

editor's notes:
* The above obviously isn't intended as legal advice, but an opinion of the author.
* While I may be able to tolerate somebody charging for their remixing stems (although in this case it appears to be strangely inconsistent with the "pay what you like" approach previously taken by Radiohead), I am as deeply disappointed as DJ_Rkod about what to me appears to be an plain and simple grab of IP (intellectual property) rights. I do support the notion that the original artist and their publisher shouldn't loose the rights to their work because of remixing activities. However as remixes add new IP, just grabbing that new IP without compensation seems very unfair to me. I agree with DJ Rkod that "consultation" would appear to be a bit of a weak (if any) protection for the IP of the remixer. I Count me amongst those, that refuse to remix under such terms and conditions.

I think Radiohead could learn a thing or two about creating friendly remixer relations from Nine Inch Nails.

Remix Fight!

2008-03-08T21:38:00.001Z

Here's a fun place for remix contests: Remix Fight!: "Remix Fight! is a remixing community open to everyone. We get people to send us source files for their songs and then make that source available for download. People download that source, make a remix, and then e-mail an mp3 of their mix to us. Then, we post all the mp3s we’ve received and set up a poll so that visitors to the site can listen to the mixes and vote on which one they like the best. After a couple weeks, we close the poll and announce a winner."

Fourstones, who is the mastermind behind ccMixter.org has often said, that Remix Fight has been his inspiration for ccMixter.

Songpull

2008-03-08T21:25:00.002Z

Here's a nice concept for songwriters suffering from difficulties with finishing a song: Songpulls offer songwriters a place to gather and try new songs in an encouraging environment. Inspired by the classic 'guitar pull' of the past, the Songpull community gives genuine feedback and recognition on every performance. Finish your songs by joining a Songpull today".

Free sources for cover art

2008-01-18T18:20:00.000Z

Whether publishing music on the web or via CD, it's always nice to have a bit of a visual imagery accompany a song. That goes for remixes as well as for fully original work. Just like recorded music, more and more good stock photography is becoming available for free. This can be a nice resource, unless of course you are a visual artist yourself. Here are a some sites, which host free stock photography:

MorgueFile doesn't even require you to log in to download images.
SXC.hu is one of the largest and best quality sources for stock photography on the web.
PixelPerfectDigital has over 5000 free images.
Flickr's Library of Congress image collection has some great historical images. (HINT: follow the persistent URL at the bottom of the description of a particular image for high resolution versions of the images)

Some music makers have used pictures as inspiration for their music. And some others have sort of remixed that. :-)

Note: Pictures with individually identifiable people on them can be a bit of a tricky issue. To be on the safe side, a "model release" may be a good thing to have when publishing a picture of a person.

A great simple to use free Photo manipulation image editing program for Windows users is paint.net. Almost as easy as MS Paint, but way more features. Mac users have been spoilt for years with iPhoto which ships with iLife as part of a standard Mac OS/X system.

And for the really ambitious, who have the appetite, but not the budget for Photoshop, GIMP is an amazingly feature rich image manipulation program to be run on one's desktop.

Mashable.com has a great compilation of more than 90 Online Photography Tools and Resources including many online tools for image manipulation.

This is an update of an entry originally posted in July 2007.

Uploading remix packs to ccMixter.org

2008-01-12T21:56:00.000Z

I've gotten this question a few times, so I'll just post my answer here for reference:

There's a 10 MB per file limit on uploads at ccMixter. So there is a very good chance, you'll have to split your sample pack into smaller chunks of less then 10 MB each. In addition, I would recommend using FLAC as a compression tool for the whole bunch before submitting them. Explanation of FLAC here: http://blog.emxr.com/2007/07/flac-file-format-for-audio.html

The exact sequence of steps would be like this:

Use the FLAC compression tool to create .FLAC versions of all your WAV files
Group the FLAC files into groups of less than 10MB each and create a ZIP file for each group
Upload the first ZIP file, creating the ccMixter page with all of the info for the song (name, description, bpm, tags, etc.) in the description also put a link to your original version of the whole song, so people can get an idea what is in your sample pack before downloading the whole thing.
After the first ZIP file is on ccMixter, open the page for that one, and click on the link called "Manage Files" on the right hand side of the page.
On the resulting page start uploading the remaining ZIP files (containing the FLAC files) of your song one by one. Don't worry about the textual description about the Manage Files being intended for different formats - many people are using the multiple file upload for the purpose of having a complete song sample pack.

If you're curious what such a page with multiple uploads looks like, have a peek at one of the a minor theory remix packs: Dream In Blue remix pack;

on the right hand side of the page, you will notice the multiple files to download
at the bottom of the page, you will notice the detailed breakdown of the contents of each ZIP file (ccMixter does that automatically)..

NOTE: You don't have to do the thing with the FLAC compression - you could really do the same thing with groups of ZIPd WAV files, but FLAC is a lossless (no quality loss) compression. But WAV files themselves can get rather large (over 10MB, sou you would possibly have to split some WAV files at a bar boundary somewhere to make them under 10MB each even when ZIPd.

Alternative: make ZIPd groups groups of a very high quality MP3 (320kbps) format - that one is technically still a lossy compression, but it sounds very good.

Sources For Creative Commons Content

2007-10-29T00:04:00.000Z

Mashable.com, the impressive and wildly successful blog about social networking has a useful list of Sources For Creative Commons Content. Remixers working in the creative commons realm, will find a number of useful audio resources listed there.

CalendarGirl does CalendarSongs

2007-10-28T09:38:00.000Z

CalendarSongs is a great idea of a talented songwriter and singer from London. Appropriately calling herself CalendarGirl, she wrote and recorded 12 songs, one per month over a year and made the a capella tracks available on her CalendarSongs website as well as at ccMixter.org. The year is now up, but the remixes are still pouring in.

Her invitation is "I write one song a month. You remix and feedback. We make a record." While I have no idea what making a record really means in this age of iPods and mp3 files, that isn't the point. Her song writing is great, her voice is really nice to work with and in the end there are only winners: people who love music.

This is a wonderful idea, well executed and drawing remixers like moths to a flame, including this one:

Radiohead's grand experiment

2007-10-03T18:49:00.000Z

Usually I don't post about stuff that has plenty of coverage all over the media or in plenty of blogs already. But this one is just to interesting to not mention: Radiohead will be distributing their upcoming album online and are allowing their fans/customers to set the price for the download of the album. And they sell two versions: downloadable music only (with variable pricing) and a fixed price box set including a variety of Radiohead swag.

This is remarkable, not because it's totally unique (it is not), but because Radiohead is a band arguably still in it's commercial and artistic prime (although the forthcoming album may prove or disprove that).

If this grand experiment proves to be successful (however they define that), it could have a dramatic ripple effect in the recording industry. It will be very interesting to observe and hopefully they will share their experiences.

Nine Inch Nails Open Source Remixes at Painful Convictions

2007-10-01T23:56:00.000Z

Nice to see that there's a place to listen to the best remixes from the NIN remix site. From the site Nine Inch Nails Open Source Remixes at Painful Convictions: "After months of deliberation of nearly 200 fan submitted remixes, 'The Limitless Potential' open source remix collection is finally available. This 21 track collection of the very best Nine Inch Nails remixes can be downloaded absolutely free from Painful Convictions. Thanks to Trent Reznor for providing the Multitrack files to the public to do with as they will, and the many talented artists who remixed the tracks."

In an open source environment, music gets to be made primarily for the joy of it, rather than just being enslaved to money. I'm very much in favor of artists being able to make money, but not all art should be locked up. So I would generally recommend that artists license their art liberally for non-commercial exploitation, but maintain commercial rights for their work. You can always give specific commercial rights away for free to someone you like. :-)

Creative Commons licensing facilitates that approach very nicely, one of my favorites being the
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.