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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.'"
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.
Not it's not OSS.
.dmg.
Here's the EULA when you try tomount the
End User License
Please read the terms of the following software License Agreement before downloading this product. By clicking on the link below and downloading this product, you agree to become bound by the terms of the License Agreement. If you do not agree with the terms of the License Agreement, do not click the I AGREE button below. Interscope Records ("Licensor") guarantees that the downloaded product has been created and recorded specially for this project and any similarity to any other recording is unintentional.
1. The sound samples recorded on these CDs remain the property of Licensor and are licensed, not sold, to you for use on your sampling software or equipment.
2. A right to use the enclosed sounds is granted to the original end-user of the product (Licensee) and is NOT transferable.
3. The Licensee may modify the sounds but MAY NOT USE THE SOUNDS, MODIFIED OR UNMODIFIED, FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WITHIN MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS. Licensee must obtain a separate license from Licensor in respect of any intended commercial uses.
4. This license expressly forbids resale, relicensing or other distribution of any of these sounds, either as they exist upon downloading, or any modification thereof. You cannot sell, loan, rent, lease, assign or transfer all or any of the enclosed sounds to another user, or for use in any competitive product.
5. Licensor will not be responsible if the contents of these discs does not fit the particular purpose of the Licensee.
6. Use of the included sound sample in isolation such as, but not limited to, video game soundtracks (where they appear in isolation or as sound effects) is not permitted without first obtaining a separate License from Licensor.
7. Use of the included sound samples in 'library music' (also known as 'production music') intended for commercial exploitation, is not permitted without first obtaining a separate License from Licensor.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © 2005 Interscope Records.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
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
Uh, you don't even have to RTFA to find out that Reznor didn't use GarageBand to create the track. It says right in the blurb that the garageband tracks were exported from the ProTools project they used to create the track. GarageBand is a lot less powerful, but a lot more accessible to the common user, so thus GarageBand it is.
Monstar L
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
Hm, I guess I must have imagined working on a Protools III workstation in 1996 then. Strange.
Just because it wasn't cheap enough for joe sickpack to have laying about his hard drive, doesn't mean it does not exist.
Shawn's Tech Articles
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
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.
Hi there, just thought I'd comment on this, I run a big fat nine inch nails website... We were concerned at first about the license, especially the bit about "other distribution of any of these sounds, either as they exist upon downloading, or any modification thereof." This amounts to a cover-your-ass clause... the band and Interscope are encouraging people to remix or whatever with this file. Interscope suggested to the band that they hook up with MySpace for fan distribution of the glut of remixes that will come out, but for one reason or another, that (and the notion of doing this as a contest) didn't happen. So if you do soemthing with these files, you are welcome to host them without fear of the record label coming at you -- otherwise what would the purpose be of doing this in the first place? That being said, I have a PC, and I just extracted the AIFF files... never saw the license ;)
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
I prefer this method only for the reason that unless you own every plug-in for pro tools that NIN used, the tracks would be a mess. This way he can created loops out of each track that are there own entity. If you have access to a Mac, you can just get the aiff files from the GB package and add them to the DAW of your choice.
Sound waves should be free!
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.
I don't see garageband ever coming out for windows. It's cool, fun software, and it's another reason for someone to buy a mac. But that's pretty much where it ends. There's no real market share to compete for there. iTunes went to windows because the more copies that get spread around, the more songs will get purchased on Apple's music store.
Apple doesn't make more money every time someone creates a new garageband song. They make more money everyone buys a mac, so keeping garageband as an incentive makes sense. I guess you could make the argument that people trying out garageband might decide that Apple makes quality software, and start looking at macs more seriously. I've seen some anecdotal evidence of that with iTunes, and definitely with the iPod. But I think garageband might be more work than it's worth.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I did a demo on ProTools in 1992. It was four-track. We had to rent a 1-gb hard drive -- for $100 a day.
This isn't a surprise. Reznor recorded [i]The Downward Spiral[/i] on a dozen or more Macs. They've been his "home studio" for well over a decade.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"Closer to Hogs" by Nine Inch Richards.
legacy hardware aside you might get some mileage out of this:
http://ardour.org/ it's about to go 1.0 any day and has served me well. Linux for now, soon OSten.
You'll have problems if you got something else that Mac OS X to get the file.
.sit (that's no problem since Stuffit Expander is available for PC)
... so you really need mac os x to open this one up.
... but it would not let it convert. So tough luck I'd say.
First it's compressed in
But then, the file is actually a disk image (.dmg)
Finally, you will have all the files in audio format inside the dmg.
I tried dmg2iso on pc as a challenge (I have a Mac too)
Sowwy!
Mike
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.
To be fair, Balance didn't contribute to Things Falling Apart. Additionally, Trent said in one of the Q&A's (Access) that he wasn't planning to do a remix album this time around. I hope he changes his mind.
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.
You'd be hard pressed to be more paranoid about this kind of situation than me -- I was once named in a lawsuit by Universal Australia for sending someone an MP3 of a Reznor remix. (nothing ever came of it...) I also had some unhappy dealings with Trent's previous buttwipe management, but that's another story.
I was assured that if any such lawsuit against a fan were to arise, Trent Reznor has veto power and would certainly use it. Otherwise, what's the point of doing this in the first place? Trent did not post this file just so he could get his fans sued.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
It seems reality would disagree with you...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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!
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
Bzzzt ... wrong.
It was actually done in Performer on an SE/30. Even better, their first video was produced on that same SE/30. Yep, 9" B&W screen and all.
He didn't get a Quadra until Downward Spiral. A 950, to be exact.
On my copy of "Pull My Strings" Jello stops the intro to "California Uber Alles" and says "... we're not a punk band we're a new wave band ...". I think the point was that the major labels had taken the new wave style and manufactured a radio friendly version with a band called The Knack. That's why the chorus of "Pull My Strings" sounds like The Knack's "My Sharona", albeit with the words changed to "My payola".