Slashdot Mirror
Trent Reznor Challenges Music Norms
alset_tech writes "Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has released the new single from NIN's upcoming album as a GarageBand file for fan remixes. Though by no means the first time a major-label artist has released a track to the public for remix, this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user. The repercussions to 'traditional' IP views in music could be beneficial to all. Note that the license agreement does not allow commercial use of the included sounds. From the download text: 'What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for 'the hand that feeds' in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible.'"
This is truly playing fair!
Maybe they aren't major label, but the artists on ReasonStation are pretty good and have been releasing the actual Reason music files for their tracks since around 2001. I'm sure there are many other semi-pro sites out there where people are doing this.
...open source music? I wonder if it was released with a Creative Commons license.
Does Windows have this kind of software available? I have heard many artists(John Mayer, NIN, etc) use Garage band. Can a windows program make the cut?
Though by no means the first time a major-label artist has released a track to the public for remix It's bad enough not to RTFA, but could you even bother to read the /. post itself?
err... it says 'by no means the first'
I like GarageBand, even though I don't own a Mac (I use them like once a week), and this is a cool idea. What about copyrights though?
Due to the death of Jhonn Balance (Coil), Trent is going to need some new talent for the inevitable re-mix album following "With Teeth"
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
a step in the right direction, although until its possible to make a 'remix' that fully complies with current and/or future drm methods (ie you can remix the track but only with the soundbites we provide, not those of other tracks), i doubt this should be seen as a sign of things to come.
nin_garageband.sit
Another reason for all you Winblows users to switch a different os. If Mr. Reznor himself uses a mac....
On Topic. It would be nice to see more artists pulling "stunts" like this. I call it a stunt, because although I think it's a great idea, you don't see this kind of thing happening often. If you give your audience a chance to become part of your music, you will become all that much closer (no pun intended) with them.
It works particularly well in the case of NIN, simply because their music handles remixes so well. I have trouble seeing anyone other then Ben Folds performing a different rendition of "Tiny Dancer". You never know though, do you. Perhaps there is some music genius out there just waiting for the right opportunity.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand this sig, and those that beat up people who do.
One accordian solo, coming right up!
And now that I think about it... what sort of cowbell samples does GarageBand come with?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Marillion did this more than 3 years ago
Trent Reznor, great musician, got his idea from http://www.davidbowie.com/neverFollow/ David Bowie
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
To which you replied, " This is billed as the first time an artist has released such a track to the public for remixing, but it probably isn't."
Hello?
Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
Best Post Today!
Thank you Trent. This is the kind of ideas I've been waiting for. This is going to open up alot, no matter the non comericaliazion. I've never attempter to sell any of my ACID songs. More artists need to embrace this, it really reminds me of the rap/hip-hop 12" w/ the accapella and instrumential. I would love to see this branch out to non electronic musicians. Thats where the unusual loops live, mostly. Oh and BTW The Windows version is Sony's ACID and Reason, thou reason isn't exactly like it but fun on its own
Back on their Infotainment disc: the last two tracks were all 123 samples used in making the album. Of course this was 1996 so there wasn't ProTools, GarageBand, or Reflex out there in the common market. Still, it was open-hooded music.
I'm happy Trent did this. Too bad the disc is pretty underwhelming.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Yeah...I was never quite clear on why NIN was on the ammo boxes.
and no one cared, if there is a ...
nevermind.
As a person into Industrial music that loves Nine Inch Nails and is big into the Apple platform, let me be the first here to say OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! FUCK YEAH! NINE INCH NAILS FUCKING RULES!
*faints*
Gadzooks man! Have you not heard of "The Fragile"? A two CD set, mixed perfectly from start to finish, that spent a lot of time on the music charts, many singles on the radio stations, really cool music videos, an extensive world tour, and a resulting 2 disc concert DVD which came in Dolby 5.1 and DTS format. The DVD is by far, one of the most amazing music-based DVD's I own -- very good production quality. Even people who don't like Nine Inch Nails appreciate the DVD when I show it to them :)
They were Nine Inch Nails for your Nailgun, remember?
And looks for a new word to go beyone that minor league level of exaggeration.
Because if its done by somebody with a BIG NAME, it is always groundbreaking.
It looks like his site isn't hyping it obscenely beyond reason though. More like:
"Here, have this. 'Been wanting to do this for awhile. Have fun with it".
Oh, wait aminute, now I see it - that ain't hyperbole, its the darned truth:
BREAKING NEWS: MUSICIAN ACTS LIKE NORMAL PERSON!!!
It was ammo for the nailgun. The nailgun fired ... wait for it ... nine inch nails.
*wistful*: Yeah, those are some killer licks.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
To expand on the other comments, it's because Trent Reznor volunteered to do the soundtrack for free (Quake wasn't originally going to have a soundtrack). They decided they'd give him some free publicity in return.
Not only that, Marillion did the album "marillion.com" way before everyone started to think it was cool to ".com " just about everything. They're ahead of the curve. (can't help but mention that Marillion is much better than Trent musically, but that is just opinion)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Since we're on the topic of shameless plugs, I might as well link to DGuitar, a Guitar Pro style program written in Java. I use it on my FreeBSD system to read .gp3,.gp4 files. The project is only a few months old but already has the ability to read the files and play them in MIDI.
The World is Yours.
Are there any F/OSS apps we non-Mac users can use to play with this? I'm a HUGE NIN fan, but I don't use Macs. Nothing wrong with them, I just have tons of legacy hardware. Still, major kudos to Trent for giving us such a gift.
You are not the customer.
Speaking as a lifelong Mac user... I hate the .sit archive format. StuffIt Expander has had it's day, and it ended when OS X came out. The .dmg and .zip formats are built into the OS (both creation and extraction), and they are faster and more reliable (and .zip is cross platform to boot, although the default OS X zip engine doesn't support things like password protection unfortunately.)
This guy was the first big artist to record the soundtrack for a computer game (remember Quake 1?)
Now he's the first one to release a song as a GarageBand file.
He brought industrial music (or something like this) into the main stream.
Be brought forward some new huge bands like Marylin Manson and Filter (I'm not arguing if they're good or bad)
But he is just going to release his fourth album in almost 20 years of career.
There's even a WHOLE movie that's based off the images of the video for "Closer" (Ok, so the movie sucks and the video wasn't Trent's work, but still)
For me, this guy is the most influential musician of the last 15 years.
please excuse my apathy
for apple sales to the college crowd...
when I was in college, it was mostly Macintosh, <disclaimer> it was an art school</disclaimer> though we did have Irix and AIX stations for 3D work (and even an amiga for video.) I understand that things have changed since then ( I haven't really been paying attention,) to be mostly a windows thing. (It is for the college I currently work for, (though I was lucky enough to be given a mac to work on instead.))
do you all think that the mix of iPod, iTunes and now GarageBand are enough to grab a reasonable share of the impressionable, fashion-conscious, future buyer? Or do you think that Apple might cave, and put out GarageBand for windows? (though guessing its dependence on coreAudio might make that port a more significant challenge.)
(iNote with some interest that the spell checker in panther passes iPod and iTunes with out a pause, but fails with GB and iNote. It will be interesting to see the dictionary in Tiger to see what iThings will pass the spellchecker... note that it does not offer iPod as an alternative spelling, it just doesn't mark it as misspelled.)
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Note from Trent in the .sit file:
Hello all-
For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results.
After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you'll enjoy.
What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible.
So...
You need a Macintosh and you need GarageBand 2.0. If you have a newer Mac, you already have the software. The more RAM you have the better. I did this on a PowerBook 1.67 w/ 2G RAM but it has been running on far less powerful systems. Drag the file over to your hard disk and double click it. Hit the space bar. Listen.
Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything you'd like.I gave this to my crew and band to test out and all work effectively stopped for a while - it's fun to mess around with. I've now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation (thanks, Leo).
There are some copyright issues involved, so read the notice that pops up. Giving this away is an experiment. I'm interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are.
Have fun-
Trent Reznor
April 15, 2005
I think it is great that Reznor is doing this and I think it is great that it is getting some visibility. It should be noted that many electronic music artists have provided similar "full access" to their music for remix competitions in the past. BT actually made 4 tracks available for all to tinker with.
What I love about this most is not the remix potential. I teach at an arts high school, and I plan on bringing this in to class.
I loaded the file into GarageBand and gave it a listen. What I love is that you can "solo" any of the tracks (listen to just that track and nothing else). Trent has done a nice job labeling all the tracks (there are 17 of them in all). Some are especially subtle, and it is great to hear just the "Ambience" track, then put the whole mix back on and listen for it.
This gives students a chance to better understand how much creativity it takes to make what basically sounds like a simple rock song.
Remixes are also a great use of this technology, but the ability to break complex media down to their components and discuss how they enhance our experience is really priceless. I'd love to have this with "A Day in the Life" from the Beatles, too (hear all those grand pianos at the end one by one)! Someday...
How does a person I've never heard of, from some group I've never heard of, releasing stuff I don't care about in some mac proprietary format should be a reason to switch to a platform and OS that I've never cared for?
/. Of course any pro-apple post will be modded up, even if it's wrong or just plain stupid.
Oh, wait, this is
People who won't use GarageBand much may not have noticed that by default, new tracks are created with both Echo and Reverb plugins turned on and their values set to 0. If you get errors during playback saying "too many plugins or effects" for your system, go through track by track and turn off Echo and Reverb. Even though their values are set to 0, they seem to still occupy CPU cycles. Made the track playable on my 1 Ghz G4 iMac with 512 MB RAM.
I will get to work on this right away.
Leslie Rankine released a Ruby track in exactly this way and for this reason, and with these results (though substantially less publicized) about 5 years ago.
You might also like Noodle Heaven.
I agree! That direction being following in the footsteps of others.
If anyone remembers Acid prior to Sony's acquisition of SoundForge, they had guest artists all the time who would provide tracks for public remix and then the bands would choose the best one. Not just no-name or rarely heard of groups (NOT saying Nine Inch Nails is either of those) but actual artists. I remember remixing Gravity Kills, Garbage and The Beastie Boys.
The thing that gets me about this article though, is that it says "...this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user." but this is false on two points.
1 - As I just mentioned (and is discussed in a number of other posts) this isn't the first time this has been available.
2 - Since when (and I'm not trolling here) are Mac users "common users?" Forgive me if I am wrong, but Windows has the dominant market share. I would think Windows users would be common users.
All is not lost though, from what I understand, GarageBand is a loop-based system. So apps like Acid should be able to play with these files.
R(k)
How about, gee, releasing the original ProTools session under that EULA for those of us who don't own or use GarageBand but do happen to have a real audio package? What a concept! I guess it wouldn't be all "neato" and stuff if it weren't in an officially Apple-sanctioned format, though.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
What is cool is that he is a major recording artist (whether you like his music or not) and that he has made it trivial (rather than just "possible") for the masses to remix his music.
It's not like it wasn't worth doing if someone had done it before.
Now, if only more artists did this... It would make mash-ups nice and easy if consumers had access to the raw files!
Now we just have to wait and see how the RIAA overlords handle this since major label artists are giving back to their fans. Shame on you artists for being creative without a pricing model! SHAAAMMMEEE!!
Sound waves should be free!
Some fan you are. You spelled their name upside-down.
This is not the first time Trent has done something like this.
Right after The Fragile [amazon.com] was released, Trent and David Bowie both put a song online from their new albums to be remixed by the public but you had to use a proprietary web based application.
it was really fun getting to mess with the tracks, and I applaud Trent for this venture. I 3 NIN.
This is billed as the first time an artist has released such a track to the public for remixing, but it probably isn't.
No, its probably not, I'm sure theres a lot of artists out there that allow remixes of their music, even the songs you buy from them.
But, how many major artists have done so, and done so in a format actually suitable for remixing (as opposed to an mp3 or ripping a cd track)?
Agree with both points (although anyone with a little savvy should be able to get this on a PC), but a little addendum.
It's only a couple of generations ago that all music was essentially open to the public, and considerably more open than this! If you heard a good song and you could play an instrument, then you'd probably perform it yourself somewhere. That's how it grew.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Personally, I'll wait for: "Trent Reznor Releases Three Guitar Riffs as Halo 2 Weapons."
Which songs from halo two are you talking about?
Did I understand correctly, that you effectively cannot do anything with those samples besides having fun with them in your bedroom studio? If this is so, this is not that interesting. You can sample any music you like from any source you like and have fun with them with yourself.
Granted, it's nice having having different instruments and sounds as separate files, and for sampling-challenged Apple Garageband users the format is a big plus, but there's nothing genuinely new or innovative here, since you can't even distribute your creation to the public. (Provided that I understood the EULA correctly.)
I wish they he had declared a remix competition open to public for example. The best remixes could have ended on a compilation.
The "Move any mountain" single included all the samples. "Monkeys" was my favorite.
Glad to hear that Brian found Jesus. We let Him out a few months ago to get a bit of air and next thing we know...He's gone, poof, nada....
Could someone please post where Brian put Jesus so that we could come and get Him? Oh, just to make sure, our Jesus weighs 27 pounds and is black and white and likes to play fetch...
thanks.....
_____________
Huh?
>>Since when (and I'm not trolling here) are Mac users "common users?"
I take this as meaning that the work can now be done by non professionals on consmer grade hardware.
Face it, the Mac, for all it's coolness and goodness is a consumer grade platform. Despite the fact that it is used by the pros.
wbs.
Huh?
He's only releasing it like this because he couldn't be arsed mixing it himself.
NIN did the sounds and music for Quake 1. It's in the credits both in-game and in the docs.
The "NIN" on the boxes was a double-credit, for NIN's involvement with the game and the fact that the ammo were nails for both types of nailguns.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
It's not as cool, but it does work in GarageBand 1.0 - Just be advised, you need to click through a seemingly endless string of warning dialogs.
Well, now it's Sony Acid. They have been doing this type of thing for years. They've had Acid Planet remix contests almost as long as Acid has been around with major artists like Garbage and Madonna. So, why is it when something like this happens on the Mac people act like it's groundbreaking?
Maybe they figured out that if they didn't seem to appreciate it you'd make them watch it again until they did ;)
This is billed as the first time an artist has released such a track to the public for remixing, but it probably isn't.
Wow, that's a pretty useless comment even by Slashdot standards. If you can't be bothered to google for a couple of seconds to see if it is, indeed, the first time, why comment on it?
And for the record, the important thing here is that NIN/Trent is a "major" well-known artist. And while major artists (eg Bowie) have been involved in authorized remix situations before, the big deal here is Trent released what is essentially the source code of the song (not Open Source style, more like Shared Source style), making it a LOT easier for Joe Average to try his hand at a remix. Usually the remixers are left to their own devices to cut and make loops of the original track, which requires a lot of skill and, arguably, access to rather high priced audio software.
NIN FUCKING RULES!!!111oneoneone
Now that I've got that out of my system, the hand that feeds was one of the first tracks off the new album leaked / released to the web, and a lot of people are canning it. "It's too poppy! I have bad taste!" etc etc etc. You can read a lot of interviews with angry Trent getting upset about people bagging out the hand that feeds - hate to be cynical, but maybe that has something to do with this release...
Perhaps this is the first time that a major well known artist has released his tracks for remix using Garage Band, but others have done it in the past...
Moby did it on their "Feeling So Real" Remixes Single. At the end of the cd, they included a track titled "remixes parts."
HaXXXor.com - Naked Chicks Teach You How To Ha
http://www.nin.com/visuals/2-23- 05.jpg
The British post rock band Mogwai did this with their 'Happy Songs for Happy People' album. It contained a demo version of Cubase SX and all the parts of the track 'Hunted By A Freak'. Glad to see Reznor is making distributing it for free, though.
I think therefore I am. Therefore, I think, I am.
I grew up near where Trent Reznor did. It's kind of strange seeing a Reznor heater in my grandpa's barn. I guess Trent's dad runs Reznor Heating & Cooling.. and is somewhat well-known in the rural areas up north of Pittsburgh.
:-)
I guess the apple fell really far from the tree.
Wouldn't it be nice if Nine Inch Nails released their webpages in an open format? I am all for creative freedom and letting the artist express his vision in any way he sees fit, but making the blog using a bunch of gifs with intentionally garbled text looks pretty over the top.
The blind fans of NIN will certainly not appreciate empty ALT tags...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
in the press release TR states:
"After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you."
- uh, this just dawned on him?
and "This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into."
- I find the fact he did everything in ProTools and then ported it into gB a rather curious statmement...if gB is so rockin' why didn't he just use gB from the start?
- oh yeah, because gB sucks and he's only doing this for publicity...got it...
From http://www.nineinchnails.net/lyricshalo3-2.html
Sec-ur-it-y HOLE!
Blue scren your soul!
I'd rather crash
then give you control
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
With the likes of Todd Rundgren, Reznor is pushing the digital envelope for the sake of creativity and consumer involvement.
;) ;)
Kudos Trent!!!
BTW, how the F can I get tix in the Bay Area? Who do I have to $%#& up here?
--- Shoo-be-doo-be-do-wop-say-what-yeah!
>this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user.
AcidPlanet.com has had remix contests of famous bands for the last 6-7 years! Including groups like Depeche Mode, Baldwin Brothers, Al Jarreau. I still have many of the sample sets they put up for download. They also have a free version of Acid for mixing them.
They used to put up a different artist's samples about once a month.
this isn't the first time i've seen something akin to this. haujobb released a 2-disc album (on the metropolis label, not "major," but bigger than nothing records). the first album contained remixes of the songs on haujobb's "solutions for a small planet," while the second disc contained all of the audio samples and loops that went into making the music. you could use them to make remixes of haujobb's music, and also to make original music of your own, using their samples with others to make your own stuff. this was waaay back, maybe in 1996-8 IIRC. badass.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I'm an avid Mac fan and also and avid listener of industrial music, but I hate NIN.
What annoys me more is people who know I love Macs and Industial music automatically assume I MUST be a NIN fan.
It will take more than a free song and a reminder that he uses Macs to change me into a NINny.
"I want to wok you with some vegetables
I want to taste you in a stir fry...
I want to wok you with some vegetables
With tofu, mushrooms, and rice!"
I'm gonna have to disagree with you about Closer. Forget the "fuck" in the chorus, it's about the instrumentals at the end. The polyphonies he creates still blow my mind 10 years later. The song writing may not be as good as some of the others, but for musical sophistication that's easily the best 2 minutes on the album, if not the decade.
As for the fragile, it's not as tightly produced as TDS, but that would be difficult for for a double album. He still manages to pack the album with complex textures and many excellent songs. The only bum track is Starfuckers. It's not as edgy as his previous stuff, but it's still more sophisticated and intelligent than anything else that came out in the pop/electronic/industrial genres at the same time.
I haven't heard the new album yet, but I suspect it'll grow on you. It's always taken me a few listens to get what Trent was going for. Great music gets better the more you listen to it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One thing a lot of people forget is that FLA(Front Line Assembly) is roughly only 1/3rd of a band-that band being Rhys Fulber and Bill Leeb(although Fulber did leave FLA for a little while)-the other two thirds of the band being Delerium and Synaethesia/Intermix(Conjure One plays a minor part, too). Between the two of them, they have produced an insane amount of music, but if you're trying to track the evolution in their style, you've got to listen to it all. Together, they make for an excellent study in just how blurred the lines between trance, ambient, and industrial music can be, and you also get to listen to a large collection of simply amazing music. If you really like FLA, and you want more stuff exactly like it, pick up Delerium albums from before Semantic Spaces(the stuff after that is not industrial at all-still really nice stuff, but much more ethereal, melodic and involving many more female vocals)...For example, you'll get the original track The Bonening(by FLA, off Complete Total Terror Disc 2) is based off of-Bleeding, by Delerium. It's a really nice way to see how the same basic melody can be interpreted two different ways by the same people(although Rhys didn't have much input into the contents of Complete Total Terror, as it's mostly unearthed stuff Bill did by himself).
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
I've been convinced to move to Apple for quite some time now.
This is "Yet Another Reason To Move To Apple (YARTMTA)".
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
The Ninety-Nine remix album contain a whole second disk with hundreds of clips, loops, beats etc. It's kind of amazing how a musician can take a bunch of usually non-musical sounds and arrange them into flowing beats and rythms. If I had a little more creativity I'd be all over this kinda stuff.
First, you need to extract the .sit file: I got the demo of stuffit expander
.dmg file, or something to convert it to an .iso: I used dmg2iso (the perl script seems to work better).
.iso, but it's a mac file system, so you need something that can read mac filesystems. I grabbed the demo of macdrive.
.aif files from the "The Hand That Feeds 1.0.band\Media" directory and import them into my audio program of choice! I couldn't find anything to convert the garageband "projectData" file into another format (it's xml, but with a weird encoded data block), but the .aif files are a good enough place to start playing with the sounds.
Then you need something that can burn the
Then I burned the
With that I can grab all the
I'm sure there's equivalent utilities for linux, as well, but I don't know about them.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
See my post right below yours -- you can get the audio data for use on a windows machine.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
that's why no one knows about them.
NIN at least is fun to listen to.
What a change... usually the Slashdot community comes down hard on someone doing things in a proprietary, non-standard format, that isn't useable by 99% of the community. Now, they're cheering it....
That's the sound of Weird Al shitting a gold brick.
That's almost never a good sign. There are the elite few that are strong enough to keep it together while being on major labels. But most tend to fall apart and sell out.
like 5 years ago. Reznor has never done anything original in his life.
is no one mentions that a short while ago (ok, not so short, but at the height of napster) trent was very against p2p and sharing of music. obviously i don't have the quote, but he was only slightly less against it than metallica.
/. interview with trent, one of industrial music's pioneering kings? i'd love to ask him that question myself.
i still love the music (since hearing "down in it" and "head like a hole" in a club and had no idea what i was listening to, but had to have it) and think trent has a great talent, but his napster views have always been in the back of my mind when i go buy his material, or look for concert tickets (as of yet i have not seen nin live).
has he genuinely changed his views on the technology or is he just being hypocritical?
how about a
anyone else remember downloading XM and IT files, and loading them in and looking at the samples and the song structure...? ah.. those were the days. Learned so much about music that way.
Yeah, you are definitely right. The instrumentals in the end are fucking amazing. I'm just so tired of people idolizing Closer and ignoring the rest of the album.
Actually, Trent isn't the first to do this. Beck released the isolated vocal track for his song 'Mixed Bizness' back in 2000 for a remix contest sponsored by Launch.com and Sonic Foundry.
Marillion did something very similiar to this with an entire albums worth of tracks a few years back and actually took the best remixes from the pool of selections and placed it as a "b-side" to one of their legitimate single releases.
hello, /I'm/ reading this thread, inconsiderate clod(s).
Is it because Acid Pro has such an impressively busy interface and Garageband doesn't?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
We need more cowbell!
It's the battle of the minds, and everyone's unarmed.
If Trent is only going to support his Mac fans, then he can go FUQ himself.
"This guy was the first big artist to record the soundtrack for a computer game (remember Quake 1?)"
Xenon II - Megablast had a soundtrack by Bomb the Bass, that was in 1989.
The Shamen did this in 1990 on their Move Any Mountain single... I think the key difference here being that the previously mentioned "been there done that posts" show just releasing raw material. Any remixer or DJ would grab these themselves anyway, it just made mixing in the artist's music more appealing - got them more play, etc. This is all publicity too (what isn't?) the new bit is that it was done with GarageBand, a novice-friendly app, and by a very well known artist -- For Free and prior to the official release of the album. It's buzz generator, but very cool at that.
also: if you can't open these files in *nix and claim to be a slashdot geek, perhaps you should just give up and go back to CNET.
Probably not, but I threw this togeather in about twenty minutes (using the premade GarageBand loops) as a joke to horrify my hardcore NIN-fan buddies.
:(
My sincerest apologies to Trent Reznor for distroying his song.
Well, there's always the free Acid Xpress to which Apple has no compliment.
I am not arguing GarageBand isn't a good tool at a great price. I use GarageBand (and ProTools, and Cubase SX) all the time for home recording on my Powerbook and I love it. I am just pointing out the Windows equivalent.
I don't suppose it occured to anyone that the whole thing is just a publicity stunt cooked up by Apple and Nine Inch Nails (which, last I checked, was popular about 10 years ago when I was in high school).
Please help metamoderate.
moogerfooger Analog Delay
JOEMEEK SC2 Compressor
JOEMEEK VC5 Meequalizer
Cosmonaut Voice
Maxim
Pre-authorized iLok Smart Key
the main mixing software that was included i believe as called ProTools. i might be wrong, but i've only seen it once. for those who have actually used an MBox, you might be able to tell me which software it is from the Bundled Software list.
Anyway, from what I recall seeing, the layout was quite similar to other software available on windows such as ProTools, Cakewalk, Fruityloops, etc. I'm just wondering if there's any easy way to convert or import to something a windows program can understand.
HD Trailers
Now, as most music-software-inclined people know, ACID is basically Garageband, except it came out many many years earlier (and has at this point evolved far past where Garageband is today). ACID, of course, has also been available on the platform that the overwhelming majority of computer users use (Windows), whereas Garageband has and is not. So really, what's with the straight-from-the-marketing-department talk?
Personally I wouldn't use either piece of software unless held at jagged-broken-PCB-point-- but, hey, as a musician I'm happy that more people are getting into actually producing music, whatever tools they use. Still, I just wish the Applerati would be a little more modest about where music-tool history begins. The way some people talk about Apple's software, they sound like, to put it gently, discreetly and subtly, brainwashed zealots.
> Why does "the Windows equivalent of Garageband" cost frickin' $300?
Because Acid Pro is aimed at the (semi) pro market, like Logic (Express), Cubase SX, Cakewalk Sonar, etc. For home-user music software like Garageband you can try Acid Music Studio/Express, Cakewalk Music Creator/Home Studio, Cubase SE, Fruity Loops.
why as garageband file? That's what I have to ask. Why make something that can be easily accessible to everyone NOT?
oh well..
------
insert sig here,here, and here
Transmac can be used to open and burn .dmg images. You can download a non-crippled 30 day evaluation version from their site.
The major difference being GarageBand is on nearly every mac out there today. What percentage of PCs come with Acid installed?
And really I find this method far more interesting. Contests are great, but that's all acid had. Here's an artist without going through a 3rd party just saying "here's my track, go have fun with it." It seems far more liberating to me than "remix and win!"
I find happiness in slavery...
Johnny Hawk of Global Goon has been doing this for years with his internet remix contests; Beck, David Bowie, and other more well-known artists have also tabbled cautiously in this concept as well. But Trent is not "breaking new ground" with this.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Hopefully Trent puts out a DVD of his tracks in garageband format.
Can someone convert this to Acid or Fruity Loops format? I am certainly not going to buy a mac just so I can use Garageband.
Ogg pukes in your general direction
SonicFoundry Acid's community site back around 2000-2001 had contests where artists like Beck would post samples from the studio for incorporation into the "best" community compositions. Granted, the name recognition of Trent and NiN is a bit greater than Beck. Also, you could do this for free (not Free) using the community version of Acid.
Excellent that Trent is dishing out to the Garageband fans, though, and I hope to see more musicians doing the same.
one word simultaneously shoots down your submission, and asks for more information:
who?
Acid Xpress looks like crippleware, but thanks for pointing it out!
:)
I use GarageBand too.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
...and the error message was "Warning! This Song Was Created By A Newer Defender Version". Curious. I guess the Apple internal name for GarageBand was Defender.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
For Logic Pro 7 users ...
Just open the garageband file as if it were a Logic Project. Logic imports it fine, extracts all the audio files into an "Audio Files" directory, and does its pretty overviews.
It seemed to open up in a default 64 audio / 64 instrument environment for me, with all the channels set up as drum presets, so I had to remove most of the channels, and then remove gates, chaneqs and compressors for what remained. CPU much happier following the tidy up.
He's been on a major label for at least 12 years. I wouldn't worry too much.
Yeah, alright. What a bad flame.
Anyone care to convert this back over to a format usable by the rest of the world?
There's a plethora of Linux multitracking software (along with a healthy dose of it for every other platform), but it doesn't sound like anyone can get within 10 feet of this file without owning a Mac (including myself).
Who wants to be the first person to hammer out the Ardour-compatible "remix" of this thing?
Kid-proof tablet..
Trent Reznor released something to the public. Now quit looking for counter arguments and think about it for once: NiN is rather large and influential, a household name. They have the clout to make their own decisions with little regard to what the Big Five would want to shove down our throats. Just like Apple makes a fashion statement of going against the grain, so does NiN with this move. Yes it's a bit of a publicity stunt, but how many basement DJ's haven't dreamed of getting their hands on unmixed multitracks ? This enables much greater flexibility and creativity for samplers and remixers, without sucking off some nasty record exec for the "privilege".
This is a GOOD thing, so quit complaining. Think of it as open-source music!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's ironic that one major artist is releasing a single in remixable form when the music industry is shutting down ALL the MIDI file sites in the world.
.68 seconds. These files are usually played through the wavetable synth in the sound card or audio chip. They sound somewhat ridiculous and are often laughed at. They do, however, have one very interesting and special property.
... be... gone. Almost all of the music that your grandparents listened to is gone.
MIDI files are lists of instructions for playing a piece of music. For example, an instruction that says play G# on the trumpet for
With a notation program that recreates the sheet music from a MIDI file, they allow a music student to learn a song or piece or music. You have to learn how to read music to use it, but that is not very hard. MIDI files show you the chord patterns that beginner and intermediate players would not be able to derive from simply listening to a song over and over.
It is the sheet music book publishers that are shutting down all the MIDI files on the web. They are doing this because they believe that ten thousand downloads of a Classic Rock song's MIDI file is the loss of ten thousand sales of the printed sheet music for that song at $5 for maybe five sheets of paper. So, a major music instructional resource is being destroyed to preserve an imaginary market. (Would you buy sheet music of a classic rock song? Would you even know where to get sheet music in your city?)
This happens at the same time that every school in the country is ending or cutting back on music education in the classroom.
The whole music industry is insane and out of control. These guys are going to end up destroying their entire industry and destroying a significant percentage of the 20th century's music recordings in the process. First by stealing the public domain by legally extending the copyright period indefinitely. Then by enacting extraordinarily brutal jail penalities for downloading and sharing music recordings, even music that is supposed to be out of the copyright period that was in effect when the records were originally made. Then by putting unbreakable encryption on recordings and passing laws preventing the sale of any music playback device that can play recordings without this encryption. Then raising the price on recordings to pay for all this beyond its value to listeners and collectors. And finally, removing the recordings from the market because "they don't sell".
In this scenario, all the music recordings that are endlessly pumped into our heads in 2005 will be simply gone by 2055 (most of you reading this will still be alive then). All the music that you grew up will just
This is why downloading, sharing, and 'pirating' music is critically important to do. You simply can not trust the fools who run the music industry to protect and preserve a society's culture.
Kraftwerk (and most 80's new wave) was only really responsible for the EBM branch of industrial music anyway. the rest took what they liked, and moved on to a harder sound.
Hardly. Almost all industrial bands, when asked their influences, have one band that is almost always listed: Kraftwerk. There are other bands that are frequently named, but none that receives more note than Kraftwerk. I don't even like Kraftwerk all that much, but *that* is the definition of influential. And let's not forget Skinny Puppy, Throbbing Gristle, and others...*they* were influential.
the rest took what they liked, and moved on to a harder sound.
Again...the *definition* of influential...
yeah, because we're all hearing a lot from Godhead these days. for every Eminem or Marilyn Manson, there are first bands that blow real hard.
You take something I said, and twist it into something I didn't. Did I *say* all first signed bands?? Nope!
And, as for MM, it was just the right place and time for TR to start a label. *That* is half the story of MM's success.
this brings up the next point: Marilyn Manson only gained his initial exposure due to Reznor. if what you said was true, then Manson would have stopped selling records after Antichrist Superstar (which was the last record Reznor had anything to do with).
Again, you put words in my mouth I didn't say. Did I say TR's involvment with the band while recording was the secret of MM's success?? Again, nope! What I *did* say, is they were there at just the right time to receive a massive media blitz propelling them further than, well, they ever should've. And as for how they've managed to continue to sell albums...
the fact that Marilyn Manson is still able to pump out a multi-platinum record pretty much negates your theory.
Again, hardly. The music industry is all about business, and next to nothing about quality or creativity. It is planned, constructed, and created to craft what will sell and win it will sell. You throw enough marketing dollars behind even the worse band ever made, and they *will* sell millions upon millions of records. Why? Because you pay radio stations, CD stores, etc. to play their albums, and *whichever* album is being played is garaunteed to sell copies, regardless of what it is. (don't even get me started on payola)
Additionally, another marketing masterpiece is that such bands can collect a "momentum"...once you get them going, if you do it the right way at the right time, they can keep afloat on their own...on their *past* success and their convinced "fans".
The other half of MM's success is the same as why you know Dennis Rodman's name over most other basketball players of the same skill...
apparently, your idea of influence and importance is the ability to create and move product as fast as possible. lemme know how your collection of "influential" backstreet boys albums are doing.
LOL! You are even hypocritical as well. First you say seem to point out some quality of MM's record sales, then you turn around and accuse me of doing just that! It's one or the other..
Best part is, yet again, I didn't say that..you continue to put words in my mouth, so I won't bother with the rest...
All the info can pretty much be found on this thread about it, including some people hosting sites of the remixes, etc.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
either my sarcasim meter is broken or... shouldnt you be comparing movie maker to imovie?
Trent is a genius, its that simple. Every once in a while a particular artist is recognized as being beyond trends. Trent is one of those people.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Some youngsters may not recall how things were when NIN released Pretty Hate Machine. industrial music wasn't popular. Glam rock was dying, and so was the 80's synth pop, and the only thing going was Hip Hop. Every junior high and high school probably had a couple Ministry fans but there wasn't much. Pretty Hate Machine was a breakthrough album for that generation, like Nirvana's first one, Bleach. It didn't sell like a pop album, but definately introduced a generation to a new style of music, with dubbed copies getting passes around alot. (NIN becoming mainstream and selling like a pop album didn't come until Closer came out on the radio, which was kinda like Nirvana's Nevermind)
It was a very big change at the time in the direction of music.
WWJD? JWRTFM.
When I'm writing music, I don't want to have to worry about keeping the platform going, just like your fedEx guy doesn't want to worry about his truck.
:)
I'm sorry, but did you just pull that out of your ass, or is it some social meme or inside joke I'm not aware of? It just sounded extremely random
Joseph?
Here's a torrent of all the .aiff audio files extracted out of the .sit, for non-Mac users to remix with.
http://www.echoingthesound.org/greg/thtfgbmedia.zi p.torrent
By entering your Remix in the Contest, you acknowledge and agree that: (a) Astralwerks will maintain ownership of the Master and the Loops, and will own all Remixes entered by you in the Contest or otherwise uploaded to the Website (the Master, the Loops and the Remixes being collectively referred to herein as the "Materials"), and (b) as between you and 2004 Virgin Records, 2004 Virgin Records will own all publishing rights in and to the Materials. Each entrant into the Contest hereby grants, sells, transfers, assigns and conveys to Astralwerks, its successors and assigns, all present and future right, title and interest of every kind and nature whatsoever, including, without limitation, all copyrights, all music and music publishing rights, and all rights incidental, subsidiary, ancillary or allied thereto (including, without limitation, all derivative rights) in and to the Remix(es) for exploitation throughout the universe, in perpetuity, by means of any and all media and devices whether now known or hereafter devised (the "Rights"). Sponsors shall have the right, in their sole discretion, to edit, composite, morph, scan, duplicate, or alter, the Remix(es) for any purpose which Sponsors deems necessary or desirable, and each entrant irrevocably waives any and all so-called moral rights they may have in the Remix(es) submitted by him or her. Each entrant hereby acknowledges that such entrant does not reserve any rights in and to the Remixes. Notwithstanding the forgoing, an entrant will retain whatever rights such entrant had in and to any Additional Elements that may be incorporated into a particular Remix, subject to an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license to use such Additional Elements throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now known or hereafter devised.
Essentially they let you borrow the loop, and if you enter the contest, whatever you create is theirs. So Sony owns anything you come up with and can do whatever they want with it, forever and ever, throughout the universe. The creative effort you put into transforming the loop is owned by Sony. You can't distribute it - in fact, you even waive all "so called moral rights." If that's not covering your legal bases, I don't know what is.
Interscope's agreement on the Reznor download is much more agreeable. They basically tell you that you can't make money by selling any alterations you make to the loop.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I bought my Mac last September and it has GB 1.1. This requires 2.0. It errors out on my system. I am not going to upgrade for $79 just to hear his song.
qz
"Garage Band 2 comes free with every Macintosh. Damn near every OS X user also owns a copy of Garage Band, even if they are not musicians, DJ's, or recording enthusiasts."
It's on Mac. So maybe 4% of home computer owners will be able to do something with these files. Of that 4%, what percentage will actually know about, or care to even download the files?
FEH
Or do you think that Apple might cave, and put out GarageBand for windows?
No.
Why on Earth would they do that?
On top of that, I wouldn't say NIN is that mainstrem now either. Admittedly, I havn't listened to too much rock radio, but when I do, I NEVER hear NIN songs. The only NIN song I ever hear on the radio is "Closer," which is from 1994.
. htm
I usually define "mainstream" as "what you hear on the pop radio stations." Look at what plays on most of these stations: 50 cent, Nickelback, 3 doors down, Britney Spears, etc. How many people that listen to these stations know any NIN song other than "Closer"? How many people do you know own "Still" or "The Fragile"? Have you ever heard "Something I can never have" on the FM radio?
NIN has a decent fanbase, but it is anything but "mainstream." "The Downward Spiral" was the ONLY NIN release to hit "mainstream."
Interesting read on Trent and NIN:
http://empirezine.com/spotlight/trent/trent
Why does "the Windows equivalent of Garageband" cost frickin' $300?
Because it's soo much better than garageband. You can keyframe audio effects. You can have more than 8 tracks.
Acid5 is more equivilent to garageband (although it can still do more) and it's only $70.
How many "average computer users" popped $150 for ACID (and that's the educational price) to play around with those samples from Beck? Whereas every Mac released within the last year or two has come with Garageband.
So it would seem "this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user" would not be an unreasonable statment to make.
Why not the entire Pro Tools session?
Why limit it to Mac?
For real remix let's have the entire PT session...
Hey... how do I extract the AIFF/WAV files from this thing? I have a PC as well..
Thanks!
Libertas in infinitum
Hmmm. GarageBand can record up to 9 tracks (8 real instruments and 1 software instrument) at once, according to its help. It can, I think, have as many tracks as your system can handle.
Only $70 is better than $300, though. Thanks.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Gadzooks man! How about "And All That Could Have Been," it's a concert DVD from NIN that was shot entirely in DV and edited with Final Cut Pro. Professional quality through and trough. I haven't seen The Fragile yet, but will check it out now. You should check out AATCHB when you et a chance. He's amazing live.
You mean like Garageband is a crippled Logic Express which is a crippled Logic Pro?
... not v2 as the web page says. You get a notice saying "please update", but it works fine.
Why should the /. visitors bother to read the posts when even the /. editors don't bother to read the posts?
Jello would be mighty pissed if he heard you say "New Wave" and "Dead Kennedys" in the same sentance.
That was the whole point of "Pull My Strings"
I'm not a huge fan of Reznor's work but I admire him giving users control over his music. That's the paradigm shift here: a notorious studio wiz inviting budding wizards into his tower.
In the age of the remix and the mash-up, no work of music is ever finished. Think of it. If Reznor's daring move became popular, we'd never have to put up with Britney Spears again: you'd just overlay some loops, remove the cliched beat, bend that nasty little corporate whine of a voice into something interesting, and voila, Nine Inch Britney. ;-)
In 1993, Todd Rungren released "No World Order," which was billed as the first interactive music CD. (Link: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may04/articles/tod drundgren.htm) Using the CD-I format, it provided an interface that allowed users to modify the tracks in a variety of way (changing tempos, removing vocals, etc.). But you were limited to the information on the CD and you could not save the results of your changes. This is not to take away from Reznor. What he has has done is both cool and groundbreaking. But it is interesting to think about the changes in technology that have allowed him to take this step.
Should have clicked past the warning. It loads successfully and you can play with it.
While 1.07 million Macs sounds like a lot at first, it pales in comparison to the amount of PC's that were shipped, especially when you consider that Apple is the only company that sells Macs (obvously).
For reference, IBM shipped 2.9 million PC's in the quarter, and they're a relatively minor player. HP shipped 8.2 million, and Dell shipped 8.8 million.
That accounts for almost 20 million PC's, and that's only from the top 3 vendors. There are hundreds, if not thousands of smaller companies who make PCs.
Even considering the stellar year Apple had, it still only accounted for 3.7% of the computer market, meaning that 96.3% of computers were PC's, and not Macs.
Here's the torrent to the individual extracted .aiff.
Save you all the trouble from having to do it manually.
The music is good but I can't stand the singer's voice. Luckily, their songs tend to be long instrumentals followed by a couple of verses, then 10 more minuts of instrumentals to let every member in the band show you how incredibly skilled they're at their instrument and how well they can play together these really hard parts using odd tempos and stuff. Then you listen to the guy wailing a little more and 10 more minutes until you realize it's the next song already and they're all mixed because it's a concept album...
Go hug some trees.
Long time pianist and electronic music tinkerer/enthusiastic here... I just downloaded the NIN file and gave it a listen. I honestly have to say that the experience of messing with Trents tracks (!!!) was on par with my first hearing of Tomita's interpretation of "The Planets" or Wendy/Walter Carlos "Switched on Bach". It was like a whole new expanse of music was openned up to me... Wow! It's one thing to kind of know that, in principle, you have the tools to produce something on par with "The Hand that Feeds" (i.e. a computer, a program like Garageband), but being presented with a finished product like this song to mess with is amazing. (I certainly don't claim to have anything even slightly on par with the talent of Trent Reznor or other pro musicians; I am just excited by the democratization of the whole process and the creative opportunities of it all).
My favorite Reznor/Mac story was how he went out and bought a Blue-and-white G3, and two months later the first G4s with their graphite-and-white color scheme was released. Not only was he kicking himself because he had missed out on Altivec, but he also thought the grey/white G4s were more aesthetically pleasing. The Blueberry color was too cheery, to his viewpoint.
;-) MacOS 8.5.1 was one of the flakiest MacOS releases ever, and that's what was installed on it when I got it. So, he was named after an animated flaky musician dude.
And my Blue-and-white? It's netname is Trent. Named not after Reznor but his animated namesake from "Daria."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Hi, who are you? Why is my AIM name in your profile?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Anyone needs some ftp space:
ftp.antennaaudio.com
login: audio
pwd: temp
Fuck you and your stupid pyramid scheme you piece of human waste. I hate you with a passion.
Alright.. Thanks for replying.
Back to the topic of my original post..
Why is that guy using my AIM name in his profile?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
the vocals make me want to PUKE puke MY my FUCKING fucking GUTS guts OUT out ON on THE the FLOOR floor AND and THEN then DROWN drown MYSELF myself IN in IT it
Because I can, moron. Why should I change it?
Because I would like you to?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Go rot in hell.
Some other words on the influence of TR:
The live show for the Fragility tour five years ago was profoundly revolutionary in its use of LCD screens. While they've been around a long time and used for video, Trent took it in an unprecedented direction by using them for lighting effects as well. The DVD captures part of this, but if you were at one of the shows, you know what a stunning visual experience it was.
Furthermore, TR has always been at the cutting edge of technology, and so far as I know has always been a devoted Mac user. If memory serves, I believe he made his first album, Pretty Hate Machine, mostly or entirely on an old Mac Classic using whatever primitive music editing suite existed at the time. Remarkable.
And while NIN is credited with but a handful of albums (officially only three full-length studio EPs until the new album comes out next month), Broken (as mentioned elsewhere) is practically a full-length album on its own (and is stand alone, as opposed to takeoffs of another album). And the litany of singles and remix albums are not of the garden variety singles. When Trent remixes a track, it comes out completely new, not just adding a bass line or funky beat, or with a guest vocalist. The multiple mixes of Eraser on Further Down the Spiral being an excellent case in point. Even the live album was spectacular, not just for capturing the concert sound, but for the second disc that consisted of a few remixes and new tracks that would've been worth $15 on their own.
Finally, to measure the influence or greatness of NIN solely based on the number of full-length studio albums is to miss the point. Listen to a NIN studio album and try to fathom producing the whole thing in just a year or two. Or better yet, start mixing the new track in GarageBand and see for yourself. Then bear in mind that TR basically does it all himself, and also produces countless remix albums, and has other projects like Quake and producing soundtracks for movies like Natural Born Killers, and even manages to find the time to tour on occasion, and you begin to grasp the extent of his influence.
Sounds fair.
I feel special that I've got my own personal troll. ^_^
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Ah my man the number one selling single 1991 was not Ministry..N o._1_Hits_of _1991_%28USA%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_100_
sorry to say but Everything I Do (I Do It For You) Bryan Adams was damn were you off...