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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
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
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.
'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
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!
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 +++
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.
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
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
this "mashed-up" music style is calles "bastard pop".
see more at http://fm4.orf.at/connected/81238/main (sorry only german).
-pommes
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).
Personally, I think they suck.
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!
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.
Here is a great bootleg, although you may be violating the dmca if you do download it ;)
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
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.
All in all, this is about the artistic equivalent of writing fanfiction where He-Man meets the Transformers...not too high by my measure. A silly novelty at best.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
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.
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
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?
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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?)
... 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.
Go here
You can see their cheesy video for "Smells Like Teen Booty" while you listen to the cool song.