In July of 2003, Jeremy Brown, a.k.a. DJ Reset, took apart a song. Using digital software, Brown isolated instrumental elements of “Debra,†a song by Beck from his 1999 album “Midnite Vultures.†Brown, who is thirty-three and has studied with Max Roach, adjusted the tempo of “Debra†and added live drums and human beat-box noises that he recorded at his small but tidy house in Long Island City. Then he sifted through countless a-cappella vocals archived on several hard drives. Some a-cappellas are on commercially released singles, specifically intended for d.j. use, while others appear on the Internet, having been leaked by people working in the studio where the song was recorded, or sometimes even by the artist.
After auditioning almost a thousand vocals, Brown found that an a-cappella of “Frontin’,†a collaboration between the rapper Jay-Z and the producer Pharrell Williams, was approximately in the same key as “Debra.†The two songs are not close in style—“Debra†is a tongue-in-cheek take on seventies soul music, while “Frontin’ †is hard and shimmering computer music—but the vocalists are doing something similar. Brown exploited this commonality, and used his software to put the two singers exactly in tune.
Intro:
Some call it artistic musical creations, while others cry that it is blasphemy! It is all the rage in the U.K. and it has even gone mainstream, with MTV U.K. celebrating it on “MTV-Mash”. This new craze is called “mash-ups” and it involves taking the vocal from one song and joining it to the instrumental track of another. For instance, take a “mash-up” like “Paperback Believer”, which uses the musical track of the Monkees “I’m a Believer” with the vocals from The Beatles “Paperback Writer”.
Probably the best-known of the recent mash-up’s is the notorious “Grey Album” by Dangermouse, which mixed Jay-Z’s “Black Album” with The Beatles “White Album”. In February, when the record label EMI overreacted and blocked distribution of “The Grey Album” it pretty much created an instant hit.
And earlier this year, David Bowie had a contest in which he asked fans to create a new song using computer music software to blend or “mash up” two existing tracks – with the winner winning a car!
It is a truism today that we live in a “remix culture.” Today, many of cultural and lifestyle arenas – music, fashion, design, art, web applications, user created media, food – are governed by remixes, fusions, collages, or mash-ups. If post-modernism defined 1980s, remix definitely dominates 2000s, and it will probably continue to rule the next decade as well. (For an expanding resource on remix culture, visit remixtheory.net by Eduardo Navas.) Here are just a few examples of how remix continues to expand. In his 2004/2005-winter collection John Galliano (a fashion designer for the house of Dior) mixed vagabond look, Yemenite traditions, East-European motifs, and other sources that he collects during his extensive travels around the world. DJ Spooky created a feature-length remix of D.W. Griffith’s 1912 “Birth of a Nation” which he appropriately named “Rebirth of a Nation.” In April 2006 Annenberg Center at University of Southern California ran a two-day conference on “Networked Politics” which had sessions and presentations about a variety of remix cultures on the Web: political remix videos, anime music videos, machinima, alternative news, infrastructure hacks.[1] In addition to these cultures that remix media content, we also have a growing number of software applications that remix data – so called software “mash-ups.” Wikipedia defines a mash-up as “a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.”[2] At the moment of this writing (February 4, 2007), the web site www.programmableweb.com listed the total of 1511 mash-ups, and it estimated that the average of 3 new mash-ups Web applications are being published every day.[3]
Text source: Creative Commons Radio
The Creative Remix, with host Benjamen Walker, is an hour-long “lawyer free” examination of the art, culture, and history of the remix. The hour kicks off with a musical analysis of DJ Dangermouse’s infamous remix of the Beatles and Jay-Z. Then we go back in time to check out the ancient Roman art of the poetry mash-up, or the Cento. Then we rewind to the 18th century to check out the birth of copyright and how it effected writers like Alexander Pope; and the early 20th century when the visual artist Marcel Duchamp used the remix to reinvent everything. We also take a field trip to the Mass Mocca museum of modern art to check out the exhibit “Yankee Remix.” Walker brings along a few grad students and a pair of curmudgeonly New England antique collectors to investigate different attitudes towards remixing.
The Creative Remix, with host Benjamen Walker, is an hour-long “lawyer free†examination of the art, culture, and history of the remix. The hour kicks off with a musical analysis of DJ Dangermouse’s infamous remix of the Beatles and Jay-Z. Then we go back in time to check out the ancient Roman art of the poetry mash-up, or the Cento. Then we rewind to the 18th century to check out the birth of copyright and how it effected writers like Alexander Pope; and the early 20th century when the visual artist Marcel Duchamp used the remix to reinvent everything. We also take a field trip to the Mass MOCA museum of modern art to check out the exhibit “Yankee Remix.†Walker brings along a few grad students and a pair of curmudgeonly New England antique collectors to investigate different attitudes towards remixing. In the second part of the program Benjamen Walker speaks with unique remix artists, including Gideon D’Arcangelo the walkman buster.
The School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents Digital Diving: A “Cut and Paste†Update. Moderated by Suzanne Anker, chair of the BFA Fine Arts Department at SVA, the symposium will explore the uses and abuses of digital technologies as they effect knowledge acquisition and its manipulation. “New media†models of the visual and alterations in community configurations will be the focus of the discussion . The panelists are Lauren Cornell, Joseph Nechvatal, Judith Solodkin, Bruce Wands and McKenzie Wark. The event takes place Tuesday, February 27, 7pm at School of Visual Arts, 209 East 23rd Street, New York City. Admission is free. (more…)
This is a 40-minute MP3 of a British radio broadcast called “DJ Food – Raiding the 20th Century” that attempted to sum up the entire cut-up/remix/mash up music movement. It’s lots of crazy, whacky, jarring, harmonious, tricksy, and serendipitous sound, and it made me laugh and think. The landing page for the MP3 has an exhaustive list of the samples employed.
Blue Note’s recording artist Norah Jones with Lee Alexander on bass and Adam Levy on guitars performing at House of Blues in Los Angeles.
Image source: skipbolenstudio.com/
LOS ANGELES — The music industry is looking ahead to life without copy protection.
Major label EMI — home of Coldplay and Norah Jones — is in discussions with online music stores about selling its music without copy protection, or digital rights management (DRM), according to two sources with direct knowledge of the talks who would not speak for attribution because discussions are ongoing.
Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.
The commons movement may be groundbreaking and innovative but as it hurtles towards a global model, it risks the privatisation of culture and a disregard for national boundaries, says David M Berry. (more…)
