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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.
...open source music? I wonder if it was released with a Creative Commons license.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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
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*
Acid Pro is the Windows equivalent of Garageband. In fact some of the guys who wrote Acid worked on Garabgeband for Apple.
Brian "Head" Welch" (the ex-Korn guitarist who found Jesus) allegedly recorded his new album entirely in GarageBand. Maybe he will release his stuff too, being that's the Christian thing to do and all.
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 :)
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.
Yes, the Windows Recorder will do just fine. Muli-track? Just start a few more instances of the program. Feedback and Distortion? Just plug the speaker-out into the record plug. I think that about covers the steps involved in making a NIN sound-a-like track on Windows...
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
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...
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.
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.
Some fan you are. You spelled their name upside-down.
In the little blurb he wrote up to go with the release, one of the things he talked about was how going to garageband allowed for much smaller file sizes. Maybe nobody wanted to host the full size dealie.
People like you, I just don't understand. Someone gives the world something, a complete gift, and you bitch that it's not enough. What is your problem? If he did put out the ProTools session, you'd probably complain about the EULA. If he made it less restrictive, you'd wonder where the hell the rest of his songs were.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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.
Personally, I'll wait for: "Trent Reznor Releases Three Guitar Riffs as Halo 2 Weapons."
Which songs from halo two are you talking about?
Well, yes, I guess I do sound like I'm bitching, but it's not about Trent Reznor or the fact that he released the tracks to the public. That, in and of itself, is a very cool move, and I agree, it's a complete gift.
This having been said, let me ask you a question. Do you think that if the tracks had been released in some, oh, I dunno, say, Windows-only format, that it would be receiving the same ebullient praise here today? I didn't think so. See my point now?
As for the EULA, it is fine and completely understandable. If I were Trent Reznor, the last thing I would want to do is be in some club somewhere and hear samples of my material in some crappy remix that was "produced" by DJ WhiteKidWannabeGangstaFromDaBurbs. Would you? Again, I didn't think so.
So, where the hell are the rest of his songs? Hehe.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
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.
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?
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.
Maybe they figured out that if they didn't seem to appreciate it you'd make them watch it again until they did ;)
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
"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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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".
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).