Slashdot Mirror
Mashed-Up Music
An unnamed reader submits: "The New York Times is running this article (also available here) about "mash-ups:" songs created by digitally synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two (or more) existing songs. Often the source songs are wildly disparate, and the result is frequently better sounding than you might first expect. Who knew that Christina Aguilera mixes well with The Strokes or that Nirvana and Destiny's Child make a good combo?" This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
Just because something has artistic merit, doesn't mean that distributing someone else's musical creations (albeit in an altered form) without permission is not theft. It's still theft. It's just artistic theft.
--
RumorsDaily
Somebody please mirror these mp3's, I have one of those icky feelings at the moment that these will be ./ed in no time.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
It's been sufficiently /.ed. D'oh!
This is old. Anyone who used to trade tapes in the early nineties heard the MC Hammer and Motley Crue cross mixes of Dr. Feelgood and U Cant Touch This. It sucked of course, but it got some airplay from time to time by late night DJs. Anyway its mainstream media discussing old news.
Rinse. Repeat.
OMG BIG PENIS ATE MY SOUP
Do the Mash...Do the Mash... Do the Monster Mash.
I am sorry, someone had to do it and it had to be me.
...as if millions of webmasters cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
Who are you kidding? This will increase the number of lawsuits filed, and god help you if you manage to mash a hit.
And for all the good ideas, how many times will I have to sit through "Britney meets GWAR" or something similar? This seems to have much higher usability as an inside-joke generator than an actual musical expression outlet.
Yeah, Christina Aquilera mixes well with my Strokes, if you know what I mean...
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
they're called 'bootlegs' not 'mash-ups'
mash-ups are what i do to whiney journalists that don't know shit.
.cig
How is it theft?
With "traditional" filesharing, you can argue that if you download Christina whats-her-name's latest album then you're not going to buy it and therefore Miss Aguilera is losing out on the 15 cents that the RIAA will begrudgingly pay her.
But the record companies are never going to release Christina Aguilera mixed with The Strokes, so who is losing anything? For there to be a theft, there has to be a loss.
Quickest... /.ing... ever.
'Carribean Blue' and 'Down In It' sound really good together as well. I wish I had a MP3 to offer, but then again, I don't want my server slashdotted either. :-)
HOWTO get better dates on slashdot
If you can find it, get "Uneasy Listening, Vol 1" although I think they only put out 1000 because he didn't license any of the songs he mixed on it. :-)
A good review of the album
Electronic music has used this technique for quite some time. One of my favorite bands, Orbital, used this in their song Halcyon... combining Belinda Carligle and Bon Jovi. They mesh better than you would think. :)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
I saw this article, too, and went looking for mp3's, but they aren't that easy to find..
Linking to mp3's? hellooooo.... /. editors..... anyone thinking today?
Moulin Rouge featured a lot of very interesting repurposes and so called "mish mashes" of music. My favourite was the "Nirvana/Can-Can Techno Remix".
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This could be the RIAA's secret weapon, post mp3 sites on the /. and get them /.'ed. Muhahahaha!
The Q channel (453 on sky digital) has been playing a "Destiny's Child / Nirvana" mix that sounds similar to the one described above for a few weeks now. They've got another mix on now, but I can't remember what went into that one...
Personally, I can't say I like either of them, but it does work better than I would have expected...
There seems to be a large volume of sites getting smashed out of existance by /. today.
I think it's because every high-school kid in America is supposed to be studying for AP exams, and Slashdot is an excellent source for information regarding the Meiji reforms in 19th century Japan and central-asian pastoral migration in the early post-classical era.
search on a p2p for evolution control committee. They put herb alpert and public enemy a few years ago with great results. The "rebel without a pause" still cracks me up.
+++ ATH0 +++
I dunno if the music channel 'Q' is shown in the US or not, but here in the UK the two songs in the article have been 'available for selection' for weeks . They've done a few others as well (Britney & Eminem for example).
Now we're going to have to listen to stuff like that in clubs, as egotistical DJs who think they're musicians try to act creative.
Artist: dj vene ...! :(
Title: Smells Like Teen Booty
ETA: 1:08:00 - What the
John Oswald's entire "Plunderphonics" album, which was as far as I remember is also not able to be legally sold, is available for download in wav and mp3 format here. Fascinating stuff -- also check out Oswald's "Plexure" album on John Zorn's Tzadik label if you're interested in this kind of music.
~jeff
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
They aren't funny, or good. People download them, and they are an amusing idea for exactly 10 seconds. Nobody actually puts these into regular rotation on their music list, because they aren't actually good. Anyone who does have it in their regular rotation clearly does not appreciate music.
This has been going on for quite a while now, especially in London. The boomselection blog probably has the latest bootlegs available, although some of the more recent ones have been rather dodgy
..the file names on p2p right now. Weird. LimeWire hasn't been giving me good results lately.
Last time I was listening to radio it was playing pop variant of "Pink Floyd - On the wall" which you can buy on CD legally. Sounded bad and band was one of the worst kind of human degradation. But band being from my country I know they haven't really purchase license to make a song killer.
That's illegal, they almost killed my favorite band and extending that to the legal matters where does that end?
Copy protection and patent on two consequtive notes? Three notes? Extend that on Internet asnd what do you get? Few companys bitchin' just because they aren't the ones that would make money out of it.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
DJs from the 60s and 70s did something like this all the time.
They'd take the hooks from 4 to 8 dozen songs and string them together to do imitate all sorts of crazy things. One of the funniest was a Chicago DJ who redid one of Gerald Ford's State of the Union speeches.
I don't know if Christina would love to mix :)
with the Strokes, but I guess the guys
from the Strokes would really like to
mix themselves in a kinky way with Christina
There IS a difference. One deprives the owner of their property, the other doesn't.
> from the when-is-a-derivative-work dept.
I am a derivative work, therefore I...am?
Is there good Free software to do this kind of syncing ?
He mashed together various American folk tunes, marching, music, the works. Did this in the analog era, which involved writing sheet music late into the evening. Eventually suffered a breakdown from overwork (had a day job as an insurance company executive and I guess caffeine had not yet been invented). His spirit must be pleased. Best thing to happen to him since Frank Zappa paid tribute to his influence.
We've been to see the DJ's who put those songs together (Osymyso and Freelance Hellraiser) at the King of the Boots club night at The Asylum in London (near oxford street). Most of the stuff is preformed from a pre-recorded track but some DJ's do perform live (there are some ace Star Wars mixes!), smells like teens spirit Vs saturday night fever is a particular favourite.. Think there going to move it to a bigger venue soon as that club is way too small for the amount of people that turn up (and it's currently free to get in..).
Go get Sonic Foundry's "ACID". (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DI D=307)
Doing this stuff is a piece of cake. I really can't believe all the attention this gets, especially given how simple it is.
It's a lot of fun, but does a better job of showing how much all pop music is the same than allowing one to devise exciting "new" compositions.
Leave aside wether it is theft or not, let me indicate why this activity is illegal.
Copyright. Copyright is a right given to the author to allow them to control how thier work is used, with the intention that (but not restricted to) the rights granted to them will promote production of further works.
There means that, if you wish to use an authors work , then you have to get thier permission. They can say no. It's that simple. Consider the GPL, which relies on copyright. It is not acceptable for a company to take GPL code, add a few bits, and then sell it on. The same applies to musical works.
Granted, there is the clause of fair use. However, fair use is inherently limited, either in scope (to a few friends prehaps), or in extent (a 5 second sample, or a shot quote from a book). With my understanding, fair use doesn _not_ extend to the works outlined above.
(Consider also, that there is more than just the perfromer, there is also the writer to be considered, in terms of claims to copyright).
boom selection
BSX
The phenomenon has been around here in the UK for 6 months to a year now and is huge on the London DJ scene, with The Sugababes getting a chart #1 recently with Adina Howard's 'Freak' and Gary Human's 'Are Friends Electric?' (Although the NYT article probably mentions this).
For all you UK readers, the Grange Hill Theme & Eminem track is quite surreal. :o)
It is funny that software used to do this (Acid) can also be downloaded from Kazaa/Grokster.
Personally, I think they suck.
Who knew that Christina Aguilera mixes well with The Strokes or that Nirvana and Destiny's Child make a good combo?
Well, two multiplied negatives make a positive, don't they?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
No really, the soulwax trax is. Well, if you have the Synaesthesia installed as you listen to it. Most stuff should spread nicely around the screen, but this comes up with a phalic lightsaber in the centre of the screen, with pink around it. Most odd...
Still, the tracks are pretty good if you can get hold of them!
I have a couple of these remixes, and it's interesting because it serves as a sort of proof-by-example of one of the central theses of The KLF's The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way, namely, that all pop music is essentially "the same old plate of meat and two veg". Eminem and Britney Spears are at virtually opposite ends of the spectrum from a market appeal standpoint, yet their songs are so similar, down to details such as tempo and chord changes in the right places, that the vocals of one can be overlaid on top of the instrumentals of the other, and the result sound arguably better than the original tracks did. (Look for an em pee three of "The Real Slim Shady" superimposed on "Oops, I Did It Again". The result of this DJ's experiment is quite surprising.)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Why is this -1. He is right, this isn't parody at all.
Besides mixing Public Enemy songs with Herb Alpert songs they've also been on the wrong side of some lawsuits from CBS regarding 5 minutes of remixing of Dan Rather's broadcast.
Say, this reminds me of one of my favorite artists, WEIRD AL YANKOVIC!!!!!!!!
Polka Power! from Running With Scissors[Parody of: various artists mix] Lyrics
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
Didn't you say that about the post announcing Vanilla Coke?
--Blair
Of course, I have to agree that it really is copyright infringement to do this with existing music, as long as you do anything with the result other than listening to it and playing it for your friends (i.e. fair use).
So what's needed is some progressive (in the open-minded not musical genre sense) artists out there willing to create groovy songs and/or snippets and release them under GPL-like terms. A whole scene could grow up around people endlessly mixing and remixing them together to create totally new tunes (which would of course then also have to be released under the same 'viral' terms of this license).
Of course this is not going to have the same popularity as remixing well known bands, but if enough of a scene were to grow up around this concept, there would be another great argument against these nasty "manditory digital-rights hardware" proposals the RIAA seems to love so much, as in "I only listen to 'free' music so there's no reason to taint my hard drive with your evil schemes."
Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of Project Gutenburg and a short Perl script I just threw together, I give you the first paragraph from my latest novel:
A Moby Tale of Two Dick Cities
It call was me the Ishmael. Best some of years times, ago -- it never was mind the how worst long of precisely -- times, having it little was or the no age money of in wisdom, my it purse, was and the nothing age particular of to foolishness, interest it me was on the shore, epoch I of thought belief, I it would was sail the about epoch a of little incredulity, and it see was the the watery season part of of Light, the it world. Was it the is season a of way Darkness, I it have was of the driving spring off of the hope, spleen it and was regulating the the winter circulation. of whenever despair, I we find had myself everything growing before grim us, about we the had mouth; nothing whenever before it us, is we a were damp, all drizzly going November direct in to my Heaven, soul; we whenever were I all find going myself direct involuntarily the pausing other before way -- coffin in warehouses, short, and the bringing period up was the so rear far of like every the funeral present I period, meet; that and some especially of whenever its my noisiest hypos authorities get insisted such on an its upper being hand received, of for me, good that or it for requires evil, a in strong the moral superlative principle degree to of prevent comparison me only.
You can in fact take GPL'd, add a few bits, and sell it. The requirement is that you give your source code to anyone who buys what you are selling. You don't have to give anything away for free, but you do have to make the source available to anyone you sold (or gave) the binary.
Try reading next time.
U R BAD RITER K?
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
my local radio station has been doing this for awhile now.
Mashes are using tracks as if they were "object trouvés" (found objects) and blending them in an audio collage.
:-)
This is an accepted technique in the visual arts. It does not produce great art. Its not meant to. It borrows from others to juxtrapose and blend and possibly morph in order to communicate something beyond the original pieces.
Its should and most likely will be granted the same acceptance in audio art. The concept is identical. Its an audio collage, a reassemblage of sound tracks with tempo and/or frequency shifting to create a new wortk of art.
The "Art of Noise" originally used audio samples of any machinery whatsoever and frequency shifted them to achieve different notes, assigned them to a MIDI keyboard and "played" an electric drill or a dripping faucett (evident in some versions of "Paraniomia".) Nobody sued them then.
I know that the "RIAA Bitch" is probably livid about somebody daring to use any tracks without shelling out money to the RIAA but she'll just have to get over it, make deals with the minor artists who are doing it and try to co-opt them into the xxAA's system by finding somebody who is willing to put out CDs of the stuff.
Just wait until the technology advances enough and some kid using a Mac does the same thing with a couple of movie classics (peeling the set from one and the action from another and the characters from a third. Imagine Jet Li as Audrey Hepburn in the "Philadelphia Story" re-enacting the "Tombstone" shoot-out scene set in turn of the century Vienna in Freud's office.)
Jack Valenti or his xxAA successor should go absolutely ballistic.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
any song off of Play by Moby, mixed with any speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (eg "I have a dream..."). The connection sounds perfect, as if it was meant to go together!
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
You mean like Scarborough Fair crossed with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Or for that matter, 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night? Now, admittedly, Simon and Garfunkel were excellent musicians, but this stuff is from the 60's! Just because people are doing it now with computers, and illegally, doesn't make it all of a sudden new and cool. I haven't heard any of these new ones, but I'm guessing aside from the novelty, they probably sound like ass.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You HAVE been listening to stuff like this in clubs, for many years. THis is nothing new - it is exactly the same as white label vinyl. This is essentially remixing. DJ's love to remix, to personalise, to experiment, and unfortuantely, oftentimes they can't get clearance for the samples they want to use - for example, when you want to remix a Michael Jackson song with a much lesser known artist, or do heavy remixes of pop songs. So, they do the mixes anyways, but release them anonymously - on "white label" records, with no info on the track other than the name. Frequently, this is done and released digitally, so I don't see what everyone is so excited aobut/
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
We don't yet live under a system of intellectual property feudalism, so your use of the word theft is misguided and poorly applied. The fact that your post got modded up as insightfull just goes to show that the technique of perverting the true meaning of words, is a very effective way to manipulate the course of a debate among laymen and the unweary.
Here's Eminem vs. Enya - The Real Slim Shady.ogg. It's based on the concept of an earlier MP3 called "eminenya" but done in a more professional style that preserves the verse/chorus structure.
It's an Ogg file, so you'll need an Ogg player to hear it. Winamp 2.80 and later come with Ogg Vorbis support built in.
Will I retire or break 10K?
they can rip it out of my brain. You'd think that the fact that people can get tunes stuck in their heads would be a greater challenge to IP than it is. Tbe concept of property is based on ability to control. If people can't control intellectual objects at even this most fundamental level, how can it be considered property?
So, is the article wrong, is this CD available here in the UK? or has it climbed to #4 solely as an import CD? Does anyone know?
If it's available off-the-shelf here in the UK, I might very well go and get myself a copy!
This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
Well yeah, it's interesting. In the sense that the complaint about music sharing is copyright violation and this apparent answer is... more copyright violation. See right of distribution for the prior and right to modification/ creation of derivitave works for the latter. That is of course assuming that the tracks being 'mashed' aren't being licensed.
Personally, I think a better answer would be to share what's legal if you want to give file sharing a better name. Why hand the music industry more ammunition?
Prodigy - Smack my b!tch up and Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams sounds....sweeeet..
hip hop dj's have been doing this since the begining of time, they are called blends
behind copyright is that if the makers of originals aren't allowed to control derivitives, the originals wont be around to create derivitives in the first place. Thus , under that theory, allowing unautthorized derivitives impedes progress.
I believe every geek in the world has mixed "Christina" with some "strokes" atleast once.
The best of these mash-ups (or whatever you want to call them) has to be Smaxxlaws: Prodigy - Smack my Bitch Up vs Beck - Sex laws, do an Audiogalaxy search on "prodigy vs beck" to find it....
The track is a mix of Come On Eileen and Bring Tha Noize - there's a crap mp3 of it hanging around on Audiogalaxy.
There's some interesting stuff here too.
For a long time, I've been in the habit of listening to the radio while watching TV. Every so often, the audio & the video intersect in a way that is highly entertaining.
It's called mixing or re-mixing. The fact that it's being done on digital is nothing new. Although most would agree, vinyl is the medium of choice.
Frank Zappa used to combine instrumental tracks from different shows, different songs, played at different speeds and time signatures. According to the liner notes to one of his albums, his engineer called this "the Fostex guitar", because instead of playing a guitar solo, Zappa would just press Play on the Fostex tape, and sit back.
...that this or that article isn't "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." I would encourage the editors to keep their eyes, hearts and minds open. Oh, and I used a Perl script to generate this post.
I wonder why the RIAA isn't sending street teams out to every bar in the country ... with bands
RIAA doesn't license public performance of the underlying musical work. ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI do. (The law makes a distinction between a musical work and a recording based on that work.)
or a stack of CDs.
Again, RIAA doesn't control this; the performers' rights organizations do. The only time an RIAA label has any control over a public performance of its copyrighted sound recordings is when it involves a digital transmission (17 USC 106). Once it leaves the loudspeakers, it's analog, and only the music publisher can stop it.
All those street musicians (licensed even, say in the subways of NYC) who aren't paying royalties.
How do you know that the standard street musician license doesn't include royalty payments to ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI?
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
Why, yes, I'm sure I could splice together pieces of a Stephen King novel along with pieces of a Dean Koontz novel, just like they're doing with pop music, using nothing but both author's original words, and come up with something that in my mind is better than either of the original works, and I could print out tons of copies of my cut-and-paste novel and give them to Borders and Barnes and Noble to distribute.
Is it theft? No.
Is it a blatant copyright violation, and will I get a hefty fine at the very least? You bet your ass it is.
People need to realize that being online has nothing to do with whether an action is legal or illegal, and no amount of self-justification over "how I'm doing something to improve on it" will let you use someone else's work for free. If that were true, I could just draw up a new book cover to replace some of those fugly cover illustrations in the sci-fi/fantasy genre to give myself free license to do whatever I want.
Here's a better idea: instead of using and abusing the work of pop music to "create" their "own" songs (and I use those terms very loosely), why don't they write and perform their own music, which can't be worse than the latest Britney Spears or 'N Sync album?
Oh, wait, that requires actual creative work...emphasis on the work.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Nine Inch Nails meets the Spice Girls - Closer To Spice
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
This whole concept of something ephemeral like an image or a sound being intellectual property is a manufactured concept. Consider that if somebody snaps your picture on the street and uses it in a jeans ad, you can sue them because you didn't sign a modelling release form. However, a news reporter can publish your picture or broadcast a recording of your voice free and clear. You don't inherently own your own image or the sounds you make, you only control them in certain contexts which are defined by laws. The laws aren't fundamental principles of the universe, they are rules we made up and they can be changed.
The recording industry only exists because complex, expensive recording and transmission technology was invented before today's cheap and simple technology that does the same things. If Edison had somehow invented computers and the Internet before the phonograph, there would never have been a reason for a recording industry. We would be accustomed to making and trading recordings of performances since the beginning of the 20th century. It would be completely ridiculous for somebody to jump up and say that this is suddenly evil, and there is going to be a new industry that acquires proprietary rights to performances and sells copies on proprietary media. But it will be a great boon to musicians because they will get 5 or 10 cents for each copy that sells for $20. Huh?? Are you nuts??
Until recording technology, musicians and other performance artists got paid only to perform. They have been able to make more money for a while, and a huge industry has been able to evolve that has made 100 times more money than they have. Well that's all fine, but musicians got along for centuries without any of it. Things have changed and we no longer need the temporary technology or the rules, so let's evolve and move on, and stop moralizing endlessly about it.
Many content holders do this...for instance, you ever wondr why there are always TVs in bars, but they NEVER have the sound on?
Actually, it's OK to turn the TV's audio on in a small restaurant. A rider to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act amended 17 USC 110 to specifically permit public performance of a nondramatic musical work on a small screen in a restaurant or bar of less than 3750 sq ft or any other establishment of less than 2000 sq ft.
Will I retire or break 10K?
DJ's have made tracks using music from two different artists for a long time, and nothing has changed except the way it is mixed
The difference is that 1. DJs pay royalties to BMI and ASCAP, and 2. DJs do not infringe on RIAA's work because the labels don't control public performance rights (BMI and ASCAP do), and "derivative works" rights apply only to works that are fixed in some tangible medium.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A compilation of bootlegs was released, naturally a-la bootleg, on a collection called "The Best Bootlegs in the World, Ever." Here's a tracklist.
Radio 1 recently did a special on the whole bootleg scene (also called "mash-ups", "cut-ups" and "remixes"). You can listen to it in MP3 format here.
The best sites I've seen are:
Dsico
Boom Selection
Evolution Control Commitee
Due to a recent New York Times article, and because of these site's recent popularity among other online media sources, you may have to wait a couple of days to get to the MP3's on these sites.
A incompletely informal introduction to good mash-ups:
Hope this helps...
There's a particularly heinous author named Kathy Acker who "writes" books that have *huge* chunks that are minimally changed from other authors (she rips off Neuromancer, for instance). The plots are ripped off entirely, lots of phrases, sentences, references.
She's regarded as "a proto-feminist icon who disrupts traditional male patriachial ownership of art" (seriously, that's what my lit professor in college told me... and my grade suffered for disagreeing).
Acker's never been sued or prosecuted.
not to troll, but hip hop dj's have been doing this for years.
albeit, w/ the vocals from one hip hop track and the beat from another instead of two opposing styles, but still...
Oh yeah, like nobody has been doing this for ages. Take The Evolution Control Committee and their 1994 mixtape Gunderphonic for example. You'll find Public Enemy mixes really well on top of Herb Alpert. Also: DJ Z-Trip.
I dislike Puff Daddy, but he PAYS for the rights to sample.
The article says at least one duo of mashers did the same thing, that is, got permission to use the material though it took them months.
It may not be parody, but watch who you're calling a thief.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
http://www.base58.com/bslaunch/
Here can you download bootleg mp3s from Freelance Hellraiser discussed in the article.
Over here in Blighty (London England) there is a weekly radio show called SoulWax which does exactly this.... play mashed up tunes for a few hours on Friday night.. iot only started about a month ago and is proving to be a big winner.. i dont know what the legal implications of this are but if they play it on London radio then hey go figure...
Tis, brakes that allow cars go fast!
Isn't it true that Rap artists are allowed to sample a certain amount of music per song? This was settled with the Ton Loc / Van Halen legal thinger wasn't it? I believe the total sample time was something like 50 seconds or so.
If that's true than why couldn't an artist do a 4 minute mash-up, split the song into separate tracks with no spaces, and have one big long song play through? I'd love to see this tested in court. Of course the cover would have to list these tracks as 50 second separate songs but...
And another thing - the record industry has only itself to blame. They promoted Rap artists that "steal" music - what we they expecting? They are treating this art form like they did Rap years ago.
Bands like "Soulwax" are true musicians who just happen to do this on the side as "fun" projects. It is my opinion that well done mash-ups require true musical talent as most of this isn't simple beat matching. Some of this stuff is truly brilliant.
Just my 2 Kopecs.
Chuck H
How dare they mix some start up talentless pop group like destinies child with one of the greatest rock groups of our time, Nirvana. whoever is responsible for this monstrosity should be shot
'nuff said
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
One of the funniest thigs I have ever heard is a mash of Eminem's vocal track of "The Real Slim Shady" into the music of Brittney Spears "Oops I did it again"...I damn near pi$$ed myself when I heard it the first time.
'Scuse me...I'm in need of a good laugh...headed to the MP3 library.
where is the "I feel for ya, but that's some funny ass shit" moderation?
One of my favourite Orbital tracks is one called "Tootled", it's a remix of seven Tool songs with wonderful results. Fascinating to listen to, esp if you know the original tracks.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
it is umm.. NIN? I think it's called "Rape Me". then I know for sure what the other is- it's Donut Plains from Mario World. Funny stuff.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
i've had that 7" of the "whipped cream mixes" for a long time. i don't know if i think "rebel without a pause" or "by the time i get to arizona" is funnier.
evolution control committee made waves more recently by mixing clips from tom brokaw's newscasts, "back in black" by ac/dc, and some general ecc fun. you can check it out on their website here. they explain the trouble (threats) from cbs and offer mp3s at the bottom of the page. browse around for plenty of entertainment.
the all your base... karaoke songs are funny if you think all your base jokes are still funny.
ecc has been "culture jamming" for some time by mixing stuff up. and they (he) are from my town here, columbus, oh. strange are things that happen on a campus of 70,000 students.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
The local dance station here in Austin is playing a recording of Kylie Minogue in concert singing to the music of Bizzarre Love Triangle.
The song actually sounds good and I prefer it to the original (Can't get you out of my head?)
Maybe this will make some of this shit they call music listenable...
What about these? Anyone ever see Fatboy Slim and Evangelion??? Good stuff.
They smoked the hash! (they smoked the monster hash!)
They smoked the hash! (and they all got smashed!)
Who the fuck called these mashups, these songs have been around for ages, and are actually known as "synergy" mixes. But yes, they do usually work out better than the originals.
... Rocked by Rape, which plays cut ups of Dan Rather reading the news over a sample of AC/DC. In my opinion, it's as important a record as "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols. Be sure to download the Mp3 radio shows which go all over the place and sometimes showcase other interesting expirments, such as cut-ups of "I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair", played at 16 rpm. I've got them all and there's something on each of them that blew my mind.
Stephen and David Dewaele, a.k.a. The F##king Dewaele Brothers are the guys who made the Nirvana vs. Destiny's Child mix. (FYI, the soulwax.com site seems to be down at the moment of posting...) But they couldn't publish it on their great mix album 2 Many DJ's, because of copyright issues concerning the Nirvana track. Instead, they put a mix of Independent Women by Destiny's Child vs. Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc on the cd.
Stephen and David are the founders of Soulwax, a Belgian rock band (more info can be found in the Belgian Pop & Rock Archives).
Soulwax.co.uk is an English fan site. Some of the mixes were published there, but they seem to be removed due to bandwith problems.
Stephen and David started their DJ project some years ago. Back then, they called themselves The Flying Dewaele Brothers. They can be heard regulary on the Belgian national alternative radio station, Studio Brussel.
You can listen to a lot of full-length radio broadcasts by clicking on the links on this page. Recent ones are in Windows media format, older ones are Real Media.
Go here
You can see their cheesy video for "Smells Like Teen Booty" while you listen to the cool song.
-Somebody discovered what a dj does for a living
-You can actually design cpu cores/hardware yourself using FPGAs
-Stuff gets messed up when you ship it
-Dorks nitpick a movie
-Preprocessor directives are really keen
Ever since George Harrison got in trouble I hum to myself My Sweet Lord and He's so Fine
My Sweet Lord, du lang, du lang, du lang. . .
Did they mash those together and present them as a trial exhibit?
Their they're doing there hair.
Last summer, over the radio, I heard one track where a DJ had taken the musical background to Britney Spears' "Crazy" and laid over Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady".
And the really scary part was that they fit together SO WELL. O_o
--M.
Sure, maybe it is theft from a certain perspective. But from another perspective, that's how art has been propagated for centuries, and it's not about to change. Anybody who listens to John Williams film scores and has half a clue about classical ought to realize that nearly everything he's composed is just a pastiche of other works by various dead white fellas.
Art should never be a question of whether something is legal or illegal. Laws and art should have as little to do with one another as possible. Art's value is weighed subjectively; art is about whether you like it or not, no matter where it came from, why or how.
sig-free as of 28 July 02!
Ignorant society. Laws only cover the real isssues and that is cooperation within society. People just don't care. It's a me me me society. No one can own ideas or land or anything for that matter. Everything is everyones and until a working society is established within cooperation rather than individual survivial then there will be a power structure which is unfair.
hmm sooner
I found a mix like that before, using Ghostbusters and Bad. It sounded really neato actually, the GB music with the Bad voicals. Highly amusing, to say the least. It's available on Audiogalaxy, I know.
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
. . . then you'll love this. It basically takes a few weblogs (aka blogs, journals, diaries, etc) and blends them together, albeit a little less randomly. Enjoy.
Nathan's blog
You tell `em, Hammer. Ba-da-da-dum, da-dum, can't touch this.
Hear that? That's the sound of people caring...
"Mashing" is a different form of sampling, but it's the same concept: take a portion of one person's song and use it in another person's song. Legal precedent is volumes thick to prove that this is illegal; anyone who has watched Behind The Music featuring Vanilla Ice knows that he had to cough up millions to the band Queen for "mashing" the song Under Pressure with his "lyrics."
Still, in mashing, the artist that would be breaking copyright would be the remixer, since I would imagine neither of the two "mashed" artists gave permission to be part of this new remix. Remixes require the same clearance that other songs do, thanks to protection from ASCAP, BMI, or another songwriting association that the original writer/performer may be a member of. It's an unconfirmed misrepresentation of the writer/performer's artistic creation, and is thus protected in the same manner as sampling has been in court for decades.
This sort of thing can also approach the question: at what point does a dead cat on the road stop being a dead cat and start being an oil spot? About 99% of the mashup tracks I've heard [and I'm into this sort of music, idm etc.] do just that - they mash the original up. Lets say Aphex Twin samples 2pac and throws it through thirteen ring mods and a high pass filter, and then resequences every third beat. Is that still 2pac? What if he drops the ring mods and sequences every second beat? Or even an unaltered sample that loops for a few seconds? The truth is, most of the music remixed is often so altered that it'd be downright stupid to try and chase these bedroom bandits down. And if they aren't the bedroom bandits, then chances are they'll secure the samples legally ala Puff Daddy [puffy, p-diddy, puff-puff-bo-buff-ban...]. The bottom line is this: these people are doing this for fun, not money. If someone wants to capitalize on the bootlegs, so be it. Maybe the RIAA can count that as three drops in the river they've been crying over the past God knows how many years. As far as the (personally) less appealing, and perhaps more popular, "straight mixes" the NYT writes about, I can see their point about fair use and taking advantage of the original work, in THEORY. It just seems to me that when the original tracks are floating around the net unprotected and readily available, it would be a waste of their [RIAA] resources to try and wrap their mouth around this perpetually minor problem. I mean really, is this amateur, bedroom tomfoolery going to affect anything? Honestly?
By the way, there is a guy called "bit meddler" on planet mu records, www.planet-mu.com, who is at the top of his game when it comes to this sort of thing. His shitmix2000 track is jaw-dropping. On the cover of one of the mashup style comp. records he appears on, "Criminal", are written the words "copyright protection is a joke". Indeed, they'll need to write another library of copyright law to deal with the amount of dsp these original tracks are run through.
If anybody is interested in this sort of thing, he is the man to start with.
CD tracks you buy are equivalent to executable binaries. I want the source code!
Seriously though, how do you get all those separate audio tracks for any particular pop song? Do you haveta pay big buck$$ to the music label?
Your argument holds no water and I'm surprised to see so-called intelligent people posting such rubbish. I'm not going to go into how sampling revolutionised music in the 1980s because I would hope most of the people posting here are old enough to know this already. Most people accept that most really exciting music we hear today has its roots in sampling, whether the sample is a synth, a piece of another song, a vocal or a spoon hitting a biscuit tin.
Bootlegging (or 'mash-ups' if you prefer to use the media-coined phrase) is the sampling and mixing of music taken to its logical end. These people (usually) don't mix on turntables, they use digital sound editing.... mp3s are widespread, free and easy to chop up and re-arrange - glorified samples. Whether you want to call the bootleggers artists, theives or DJs, they ARE creating something new from dead material. I seem to remember a huge debate about whether sampling was real talent or just riding off the back of someone else's achievement too... fortunately it died down when music fans realised sampling was responsible for sounds and ideas never heard before. We're barely over the mp3 debate either - please note that the most sensible, forward-looking and ultimately successful artists have embraced mp3s and the internet to "market" their "product"... Metallica will ALWAYS be known as the band who tried to kill one of the great innovations of the past 5 years.
It's the 21st century now... you can stick a little C in a circle on your record but if someone buys it and wants to mix it, scratch it, play it backwards, throw it away etc there's NOTHING you can do about it. I'm an artist myself and it's something I am not scared of. My friends bootlegged a track without telling me which ended up being released.
I'll close by reminding you that Kylie Minogue's recent number 1 hit was bootlegged with New Order - she performed the result live at the Brit awards. The Sugababes have basically revived their careers with a bootleg, reaching #1 in the UK charts (the song was originally a limited edition bootleg 7", was re-mixed by the original bootlegger with the Sugababes vocal track, and resulted in a brand new piece of music that Gary Numan claims is better than his original).
Some bootlegs are embarassingly badly done, some are novel and quickly become tired (such as the much hyped Destiny's Child/ Nirvana thing)... but there is genuine GENIUS out there if you can consider actually checking the material out before universally condemning it.