RealWorldRemixed Servers Stolen

This is one of the stranger things I've seen in a while. When going to realworldremixed.com, it displays on the front page this message: "Real World, Peter Gabriel and WOMAD web services are currently off-line. Our servers were stolen from our ISP's data centre on Sunday night - Monday morning. We are working on restoring normal service as soon as possible. ...".

This points out another flaw in their model. By not allowing remixers to publish their remixes even non-commercially anywhere else than on the realworldremixed.com site, they have just taken a couple thousand remixes off the internet. Those remixers who have published there, find at least some of their artistic catalog suddenly off the air. Websites, which point to the remixes of that site, now have broken links.

While that site has fond memories for me, because it introduced me to remixing (and several of my remixes have now - at least temporarily - become "unpublished" as well), I had moved on from there about a year ago to find a better remixing home at ccMixter.org.

Thanks to fellow remixer "Doghouse Riley" for the tip.

UPDATE 2008-05-06: Looks like the site is back now. Good to see, because it does have some stellar remixes on it. Including around 900 Shock The Monkey's.

Metropolitan Youth Orchestra Scrollwerks Remix contest

Just got a note from Jeane Goforth from Scrollworks (a non-profit organization aiming to offer quality music education for children in the local community regardless of their ability to pay, with a focus on minorities and the under-served areas of Greater Birmingham, Alabama), They are holding a remix contest featuring a recording of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra in concert performing Paganini’s “Moses Variations”.

"We've finally got it up. I know it's short notice, but, having worked now 17 (or 18) days straight and with a to-do list covering multiple tablets, it's the best we could do. The growing pains of a new organization! (0 to 135 students in 2 months!!) Info here: http://metroyo.blogspot.com/2008/04/250-prize-for-remix-contest.html
or under 'What's New' at scrollworks.org "

Very cool, Jean - and may the contest be a big success!

Free Music Making Software Resources

FreeMusicSoftware.org - A blog by Crispin with the tag line: A collection of the best Free Audio and Music floating around in Cyberspace.

gersic.com - the giant free audio plugin database

KVRaudio.com - The premier news site for everything related to audio plugins. Fabulous search engine for plugins and host software, which makes it easy to find only free plugins or also commercial one's.

Trifonic remix packs, interview at ccMixter

From ccMixter: "Trifonic have just put the solo studio tracks from their debut album Emergence, into the Commons. Including a cappellas by Amelia June, Christina Courtin and David Forest.

Trifonic are brothers Brian and Laurence Trifon. Their music blends manipulated ambient sounds and synths with live guitars, strings and other instruments to create an alternative electronica sound distinctly their own. After working as a guitarist and programmer for electronic artist BT, Brian teamed up with Laurence in 2007 and composed several contest winning, standout remixes for ccMixter and licensed music to TV shows including CSI."

This one has a bit of a personal connection, since I've had the pleasure of doing a bit of a virtual interview with LT and Brian on behalf of ccMixter in connection with this release of their tracks.

more free sounds: soundsnap.com

From the sound of shoveling sand to the sound of pigeons eating, there are a myriad of free sound files available at soundsnap.com, another resource and community for free sound files.

Other free sound/sample sites we have mentioned before can be found here.

Reeemix.com tracks remix contests

Here's a site specializing in listing remix contests. "Reeemix.com provides you with a continuously updated link list to remix contests worldwide." Looks like an excellent resource.

Thanks to Laurent for this tip. He also says: "I'm looking for fellow producers to work with."

If you are looking for other producers, many of whom have been known to collaborate with others, I can highly recommend ccmixter.org. Or if you want to get in touch with Laurent directly, you can do so via his myspace space referenced in the link above.

ccMixter - She's Got the Look

Good friend of the site and remixer extraordinaire Loveshadow just posted a note at ccMixter: "This is just a little announcement that a remix i did of Calendar Girl has been used commercially for a fashion house in Vienna.

The site looks great as does their current 2008 collection. Its very cool to be selected and proves that the world is watching and listening to sites like CC Mixter and rethinking their commercial approach.

It also shows that collorabation thru CC Mixter can lead to greater things and Calendar Girl & myself would like to thank the Kalchmann group for supporting our online efforts.

Go take a look if you get a chance: Kalchmann"

eMXR's hearfelt congratulations to Loveshadow, CalendarGirl and Kalchman!

Glen Phillips / Kompoz Remix Contest

just got this note from Raf Fiol over at Kompoz.com:

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Glen Phillips / Kompoz Remix Contest!

http://www.kompoz.com/glenphillips

Tune your guitar. Adjust your drum kit. Fire up your mixer. Today we are thrilled to announce our second Kompoz celebrity remix contest, this one featuring Glen Phillips, singer, songwriter, and the voice of Toad The Wet Sprocket!

From April 1st through May 30th, Kompoz members can download the original studio tracks for the song "The Spirit of Shackleton" from Glen's new solo album titled "Secrets of the New Explorers". Rock it up, funk it up, jazz it up. Add a solo, sing with Glen, bang your drums. Post your entry before May 30th for your chance to win a Fender Squire Stratocaster autographed by Glen Phillips!

Prizes

Five winners will be selected. The best new individual track or original remix will win a Fender Squire Stratocaster autographed by Glen Phillips. The second-place winner will receive a one-year premium membership to TrueFire.com. The third-place winner will receive a StealthPlug USB audio interface from IK Multimedia. The top five winners will all receive a "Secrets of the New Explorers" CD autographed by Glen Phillips, and a cool t-shirt from INDISTR.COM.

Judging

Finalists will be selected during the last week of May by Glen Phillips and Kompoz staff members. Those tracks will then be posted on a special Kompoz channel on OurStage.com, where during the month of June, the fans will decide the winners, using OurStage's unique "battle of the bands" voting format. Kompoz members that register on OurStage will of course be able to vote, and will receive 12 free MP3s!

Did I mention that we're giving away a Fender guitar autographed by Glen Phillips? We're giving away a Fender guitar autographed by Glen Phillips!

For official rules and details, visit the contest landing page at http://www.kompoz.com/glenphillips. To get started now, visit the contest project page.

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Radiohead disappoints remixers

I just received the following email from fellow remixer DJ_Rkod:

---

Radiohead have invited fans to remix their recent single, "Nude," and have created a site to host said creations. It is easily navigable, the remixes are easy to listen to and many of them are pretty good.

It's also one of the worst deals I've ever seen when it comes to remixing.

The first problem is immediately apparent on the front page of the site, which states:

"Nude by Radiohead is out now. You can buy bits of it here and upload your remix here."

Buy? Really? On further investigation, I found that yes, the British band expects you to shell out your funds in order to have the privilege of mixing them. It's what I like to call a Very Bad Thing. But it gets better! A look at the terms and conditions reveals that this is in fact even worse than it appears to be. I'd like to deconstruct some of the terms below.

"...

1. all rights in and to any remixed versions ("Remixes") of the song "Nude" ("the Song") created by the Entrant shall be owned by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd ("WCM") and to the extent necessary the Entrant hereby assigns all rights in the Remixes of the Song to WCM throughout the World for the full life of copyright and any and all extensions and renewals thereof. If requested by WCM, the Entrant shall complete and sign a formal assignment of copyright to give effect to the foregoing;

2. all rights in and to any Remixes of the original sound recording of the Song ("the Master") created by the Entrant shall be owned by _Xurbia _Xendless Ltd ("Xurbia") and to the extent necessary the Entrant hereby assigns all rights in the Remixes of the Master to Xurbia throughout the World for the full life of copyright and any and all extensions and renewals there. If requested by Xurbia, the Entrant shall complete and sign a formal assignment of copyright to give effect to the foregoing;

..."

This essentially removes all of your rights to anything you do with the song. You do not control what Warner or Xurbia do with whatever you create. You do not own any part of it. You are essentially paying them so you can work for them, a complete and utter reversal of the way things should be.

"...

3. Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway will be registered and credited as the sole writers and WCM the publishers of the Remixes of the Song created by the Entrant;

4. the Entrant will not acquire a copyright interest in the Song by virtue of creating Remixes of the Song;

..."

4 is essentially a restatement of the above. But 3 is something else entirely. When combined with the rest of the contract, it means that, with or without your permission, Warner or Xurbia can sell your mix, without paying you a cent and without even giving you credit for it.

"Xurbia shall not commercially exploit the Remixes of the Song created by the Entrant without consulting with the Entrant prior to such commercial exploitation."

This is a laughable assurance, because the remixer owns no part of his own work, and can do absolutely nothing to prevent such commercial exploitation. A consultation of this type would only serve to fulfill the terms of the contract.

I do not recommend using this site (obviously) and hope that in the future remixing is thought of in terms other than monetary ones.

--DJ

---

editor's notes:
* The above obviously isn't intended as legal advice, but an opinion of the author.
* While I may be able to tolerate somebody charging for their remixing stems (although in this case it appears to be strangely inconsistent with the "pay what you like" approach previously taken by Radiohead), I am as deeply disappointed as DJ_Rkod about what to me appears to be an plain and simple grab of IP (intellectual property) rights. I do support the notion that the original artist and their publisher shouldn't loose the rights to their work because of remixing activities. However as remixes add new IP, just grabbing that new IP without compensation seems very unfair to me. I agree with DJ Rkod that "consultation" would appear to be a bit of a weak (if any) protection for the IP of the remixer. I Count me amongst those, that refuse to remix under such terms and conditions.

I think Radiohead could learn a thing or two about creating friendly remixer relations from Nine Inch Nails.

Remix Fight!

Here's a fun place for remix contests: Remix Fight!: "Remix Fight! is a remixing community open to everyone. We get people to send us source files for their songs and then make that source available for download. People download that source, make a remix, and then e-mail an mp3 of their mix to us. Then, we post all the mp3s we’ve received and set up a poll so that visitors to the site can listen to the mixes and vote on which one they like the best. After a couple weeks, we close the poll and announce a winner."

Fourstones, who is the mastermind behind ccMixter.org has often said, that Remix Fight has been his inspiration for ccMixter.

Songpull

Here's a nice concept for songwriters suffering from difficulties with finishing a song: Songpulls offer songwriters a place to gather and try new songs in an encouraging environment. Inspired by the classic 'guitar pull' of the past, the Songpull community gives genuine feedback and recognition on every performance. Finish your songs by joining a Songpull today".

Free sources for cover art

Whether publishing music on the web or via CD, it's always nice to have a bit of a visual imagery accompany a song. That goes for remixes as well as for fully original work. Just like recorded music, more and more good stock photography is becoming available for free. This can be a nice resource, unless of course you are a visual artist yourself. Here are a some sites, which host free stock photography:

MorgueFile doesn't even require you to log in to download images.
SXC.hu is one of the largest and best quality sources for stock photography on the web.
PixelPerfectDigital has over 5000 free images.
Flickr's Library of Congress image collection has some great historical images. (HINT: follow the persistent URL at the bottom of the description of a particular image for high resolution versions of the images)

Some music makers have used pictures as inspiration for their music. And some others have sort of remixed that. :-)

Note: Pictures with individually identifiable people on them can be a bit of a tricky issue. To be on the safe side, a "model release" may be a good thing to have when publishing a picture of a person.

A great simple to use free Photo manipulation image editing program for Windows users is paint.net. Almost as easy as MS Paint, but way more features. Mac users have been spoilt for years with iPhoto which ships with iLife as part of a standard Mac OS/X system.

And for the really ambitious, who have the appetite, but not the budget for Photoshop, GIMP is an amazingly feature rich image manipulation program to be run on one's desktop.

Mashable.com has a great compilation of more than 90 Online Photography Tools and Resources including many online tools for image manipulation.

This is an update of an entry originally posted in July 2007.

Uploading remix packs to ccMixter.org

I've gotten this question a few times, so I'll just post my answer here for reference:

There's a 10 MB per file limit on uploads at ccMixter. So there is a very good chance, you'll have to split your sample pack into smaller chunks of less then 10 MB each. In addition, I would recommend using FLAC as a compression tool for the whole bunch before submitting them. Explanation of FLAC here: http://blog.emxr.com/2007/07/flac-file-format-for-audio.html

The exact sequence of steps would be like this:

1. Use the FLAC compression tool to create .FLAC versions of all your WAV files
2. Group the FLAC files into groups of less than 10MB each and create a ZIP file for each group
3. Upload the first ZIP file, creating the ccMixter page with all of the info for the song (name, description, bpm, tags, etc.) in the description also put a link to your original version of the whole song, so people can get an idea what is in your sample pack before downloading the whole thing.
4. After the first ZIP file is on ccMixter, open the page for that one, and click on the link called "Manage Files" on the right hand side of the page.
5. On the resulting page start uploading the remaining ZIP files (containing the FLAC files) of your song one by one. Don't worry about the textual description about the Manage Files being intended for different formats - many people are using the multiple file upload for the purpose of having a complete song sample pack.

If you're curious what such a page with multiple uploads looks like, have a peek at one of the a minor theory remix packs: Dream In Blue remix pack;

• on the right hand side of the page, you will notice the multiple files to download
• at the bottom of the page, you will notice the detailed breakdown of the contents of each ZIP file (ccMixter does that automatically)..

NOTE: You don't have to do the thing with the FLAC compression - you could really do the same thing with groups of ZIPd WAV files, but FLAC is a lossless (no quality loss) compression. But WAV files themselves can get rather large (over 10MB, sou you would possibly have to split some WAV files at a bar boundary somewhere to make them under 10MB each even when ZIPd.

Alternative: make ZIPd groups groups of a very high quality MP3 (320kbps) format - that one is technically still a lossy compression, but it sounds very good.

Sources For Creative Commons Content

Mashable.com, the impressive and wildly successful blog about social networking has a useful list of Sources For Creative Commons Content. Remixers working in the creative commons realm, will find a number of useful audio resources listed there.

CalendarGirl does CalendarSongs

CalendarSongs is a great idea of a talented songwriter and singer from London. Appropriately calling herself CalendarGirl, she wrote and recorded 12 songs, one per month over a year and made the a capella tracks available on her CalendarSongs website as well as at ccMixter.org. The year is now up, but the remixes are still pouring in.

Her invitation is "I write one song a month. You remix and feedback. We make a record." While I have no idea what making a record really means in this age of iPods and mp3 files, that isn't the point. Her song writing is great, her voice is really nice to work with and in the end there are only winners: people who love music.

This is a wonderful idea, well executed and drawing remixers like moths to a flame, including this one:

Radiohead's grand experiment

Usually I don't post about stuff that has plenty of coverage all over the media or in plenty of blogs already. But this one is just to interesting to not mention: Radiohead will be distributing their upcoming album online and are allowing their fans/customers to set the price for the download of the album. And they sell two versions: downloadable music only (with variable pricing) and a fixed price box set including a variety of Radiohead swag.

This is remarkable, not because it's totally unique (it is not), but because Radiohead is a band arguably still in it's commercial and artistic prime (although the forthcoming album may prove or disprove that).

If this grand experiment proves to be successful (however they define that), it could have a dramatic ripple effect in the recording industry. It will be very interesting to observe and hopefully they will share their experiences.

Nine Inch Nails Open Source Remixes at Painful Convictions

Nice to see that there's a place to listen to the best remixes from the NIN remix site. From the site Nine Inch Nails Open Source Remixes at Painful Convictions: "After months of deliberation of nearly 200 fan submitted remixes, 'The Limitless Potential' open source remix collection is finally available. This 21 track collection of the very best Nine Inch Nails remixes can be downloaded absolutely free from Painful Convictions. Thanks to Trent Reznor for providing the Multitrack files to the public to do with as they will, and the many talented artists who remixed the tracks."

In an open source environment, music gets to be made primarily for the joy of it, rather than just being enslaved to money. I'm very much in favor of artists being able to make money, but not all art should be locked up. So I would generally recommend that artists license their art liberally for non-commercial exploitation, but maintain commercial rights for their work. You can always give specific commercial rights away for free to someone you like. :-)

Creative Commons licensing facilitates that approach very nicely, one of my favorites being the
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

mi7 hosts remix contest featuring DJ Rkod

mi7.com, which earlier this summer hosted the "Dream in Blue" remix contest, has announced another remix contest - this time featuring original materials from DJ Rkod, a long time friend of this site and "a minor theory". Submissions are accepted until October 05, 2007. The prizes are vouchers for samples from mi7.com's library.

I find this remix contest especially interesting, since the original material consists of instrumental songs, rather than songs with vocal melodies or rapping, which are more typically featured in the remixing scene. Will we hear any attempts at melodies or rapping? Or will the remixes all be instrumentals? We'll stay tuned to this fascinating experiment.

a wonderful afternoon

It's been a little quiet around this blog for a bit too long. Part of the reason is, that I've been traveling for a while and therefore quite busy with other stuff, and partly because I haven't bumped into anything overwhelmingly exciting in remixing land.

However today that changed on a personal level. On my current visit to Toronto, Colab and I decided to meet in person over a couple of pleasant Belgian beverages. What a great experience to meet somebody in person with whom one has exchanged musical commentary on distant websites for a while. The couple of hours we spent together seemed very short. So much stuff to talk about in music and in real life. Reminiscing about Atari ST computers, about moving from Europe to Canada, about controlling music machines with hardware interfaces rather than via a screen based user interfaces, the rewards and perils of honesty when commenting on each other's music and many more topics.

And it was kind of ironic, but very cool to find out via a real life conversation about a couple of things I had missed in our common remixing stomping grounds on the web.

Over time I hope to have additional opportunities like this and can only wish the same for my other remixing/web friends. If you are traveling, you may want to think a couple of extra minutes about a potential opportunity to meet one of your online friends. It can be a very rewarding experience. It was for me.

Loveshadow's blog

Multi-talented artist, remixer par excellence and very good friend of this site Loveshadow has just started Loveshadow's blog about "Music, Video, Remixing, Art, Writing, Photography". Having corresponded with Loveshadow privately and on public forums since a few days after posting my first remix almost exactly a year ago, I'm looking forward to his insight, experiences and opinions being available in a more public setting rather than just to us few who have interacted with him before. Welcome to the wacky world of blogs, comments and RSS, Loveshadow!

Jamglue - T-Pain Remix Contest

This is interesting in several ways: Jamglue is hosting a Remix Contest for "Bartender", a track by Jive Records recording artists T-Pain. The tracks are creative commons licensed, and the winner will have their remix turned into a ringtone by Jive Records. However there is no indication, that the ringtone would be distributed commercially - so the prize may be more about fame than fortune :-)

However, Jamglue is a "remixing for the masses" site, with a browser based mixer right on their site. It is thus a pretty neat way to try our remixing without having any of one's own audio software.

The tracks can be downloaded as well for remixing in one's own audio software. The link for the download is towards the lower left hand side of the page for each published track.


Related: Splice is another site where beginning remixers can remix online.

ccMixter quick tips 2

This is part 2. Part 1, which deals with listening to music can be found here.

These few quick tips deal with ccMixter features for remixers as well as for providers of tracks, loops and samples.

• As a general rule, to upload content (including reviews, playlists forums posts, messages), you will have to register/login at ccMixter - to download stuff you don't have to.
  
  
• ccMixter is not intended to host your original music like myspace or other "bands and fans" sites. If you have creative commons licensed original music and are looking for a place to host it, you may want to consider uploading it to the archive.org audio section. ccMixter is dedicated to the specific musical form of remixing.
  
  
• ccMixter is remarkably spam free. That's not an accident, but a result of diligent observation of the uploaded content by the site administrators. Trying to spam the site is not only uncool, but pretty much a waste of time. This includes not so subtle "tricks" like slapping too many or misleading tags on uploads to try to show up in more search lists. That nonsense may work on youtube, but not on ccMixter. Whoever tries to be cute that way will find their upload deleted rather unceremoniously. Which keeps ccMixter more useful and enjoyable than so many other social networks. There's an acceptable place for on-topic self promotion in the pluggy plugs section in the forums. However, ads for medication, replica watches or too-good-to-be-true software deals don't stand much of a chance there either. :-)

Source tracks, samples, loops

Finding

• Go to the ccMixter home page, and then click on one of the high level tab menu items on the top of the page: Samples or A Cappellas. On those respective pages, explore the sub-menu tabs. Good places to start are the Samples Browse page and the A Cappella Melodies page.

Uploading

• ccMixter generally makes a high level distinction between vocal tracks (a cappella's) and any other kind of sample. When uploading, you'll want to make sure, that you upload to the appropriate area, because currently you can't change that high level distinction after you have uploaded your file. One nice feature on ccMixter is, that you can re-upload a file in addition to editing the information associated with a file after the original upload. This is great for correcting errors or adding more useful information or tags after the fact.
  
  
• There is a way of putting multiple files into a group, by using the "Manage Files" link on the right hand side of the page for an uploaded file. Although the purpose of that feature is mostly to allow more than one format for a specific file, it can also be used to group multiple files of a remix pack for an entire song together. Doing that creates less clutter in your upload page, however it makes all of the subservient files only accessible via looking for the main one. For example, I uploaded the instrumental loops for a song as additional files under the a cappella vocal tracks. This keeps all of the tracks/loops for an entire song together, but it makes it pretty much impossible to find the instrumental loops by themselves. Decide for yourself, what's more important to you: to keep the parts for a song together, or to make individual parts easier to find.
  
  
• For uploading high quality audio source files, use the FLAC format. It is the best of both worlds: The quality of an uncompressed WAV file at a significantly smaller file size. If you have several files, which are likely to be downloaded as a group, put them into a ZIP archive before uploading. You can decide to upload your source tracks in FLAC and in mp3.
  very cool: ccMixter will list the contents of your ZIP files on their download page.
  
  
• If you are uploading an a cappella track, consider putting a link to a full mix into the description. Since ccMixter doesn't like uploads of full mixes, an external link pointing to a full mix is a nice way of giving remixers an easier starting point to work from. Try to make sure, the target location will really hold your full mix for a long time, because somebody may only bump into your song months or years later.
  
  
• Make all of your file names as meaningful as possible. That's will make them more attractive to others. If it's a female harmony vocal to verse 1 of your song "I dream of fame", call it something like "I_dream_of_fame_vox_harmony_female_verse1". Of course, if the file is part of a ZIP archive containing various parts only for the song "I dream of fame", the file can be called "vox_harmony_female_verse1" and the ZIP archive can be called "I_dream_of_fame_vocal_parts".
  
  
• Try to make life easy for remixers by cutting the beginning of tracks and loops at even bar boundaries. It's generally not very useful to have many bars of empty space at the beginning of a track, and most certainly not at the end.
  
  
• If uploading instrumental tracks or loops, consider uploading a midi file in addition to an audio file. It allows remixers to make use of your playing or midi programming while using sound sources (hardware or software) of their own choice. That opens up an entirely new world of possibilities. For drum parts, it's the easiest to work with drum parts adhering to the GM midi standard kit note assignment. However if that's not possible, it may still be valuable to have the midi file of a drum part, if the groove is really cool. Midi files are currently a rare find at ccMixter, so uploading a few great midi loops may make you a ccMixter star in no time :-)

Remixes

• The best file format for complete remixes is mp3, because you want to make it very easy for listeners to enjoy your remix without having to do conversions. 192 kbps is a pretty good quality setting for most mp3 music files, sounding close to CD quality to most people.
  
  
• Don't forget to give credit for original source tracks used in remixes. ccMixter makes that very easy as part of the uploading process for remixes. It also allows you to add additional credits for other people's samples via the "Manage Remixes" link after you have already uploaded your remix.

All uploaded files

• ccMixter has a kind of a "draft mode", which allows you to have files and their data already uploaded to ccMixter, but not yet visible to anyone else but you and the site administrators. In ccMixter terminology that is called "unpublished". This can be very useful while you are still assembling some of the descriptions for a file, or while you are uploading additional files. You can already see how the page with the file will look, proof-read everything, test all of your links, before making the page with that file and it's descriptions publicly available.
  
  You can also un-publish a file after it has been published. But try not to do that too often, because it will confuse the heck out of people, who are following links. But it can be useful, when people have already linked to your file, and you found a major problem with it. In that case, you can un-publish the file, upload a new version of it, and then re-publish it. And all the previous links are still working.

That's it for now. Happy remixing!

As always, comments and corrections are welcome.

RSS in plain English

Thanks to the folks at Common Craft for the following video explaining RSS, why it's useful and how to use it quickly and easily. RSS is becoming more and more used at many music sites as well, and it provides the easiest way of quickly staying in touch with goings without having to visit each web site separately. Of course this blog has an RSS feed, too.

Click To Play

ccMixter quick tips 1

ccMixter is refreshingly different than - and in my opinion superior to - many of the cookie cutter social networking sites on the web these days. Here are a few quick tips for new ccMixter users (note: some advanced features require registration - it's free and easy).

Searching and finding stuff (people, songs, samples, keywords)

• It's pretty straight forward with one caveat. In the ccMixter databases, in terms containing spaces, these are converted to underscores. For example, the term "a minor theory" becomes "a_minor_theory".
• Don't overlook the small link to an "Advanced search" just above the main search box on the top right hand side of each page.

Listening to music

On pages where you can listen to remixes on ccMixter, you will find one or more buttons:

• Pressing the little speaker icon next to "Play", will play a song (or sample) in a little flash player applet inside your browser.
• Clicking on the "Stream" button will begin playback in the default media player of your computer/browser pretty quickly.
• Clicking on mp3, WAV or FLAC, will typically download a song before playing it.
• Very cool: a larger blue button "Stream This Page" will stream all of the items on that page.
• Ultra cool: To grab a podcast of the collection of songs on a page, open iTunes and then drag from the orange "Podcast" button on the ccMixter page onto the "Podcast" menu item on the left hand pane of your iTunes window. In iTunes, click on the little triangle to the left of the newly listed podcast labelled ccMixter to expand the list of individual songs, and then click on the little GET ALL button - and voilà, you are a a whole bunch of songs richer! You can now copy the songs of your choice into your main iTunes library.

One of the shining aspects of ccMixter is the myriad of ways you can find and organize remixes to listen to. Here are just few to get you going:

Newest Songs can be found under the "Remixes" main tab and then the "Latest Remixes" tab. Try the "PLAY this page" or "STREAM this page" buttons on the left hand side of the page. If you don't like a song, just use the regular controls to skip to the next one.

Remix Radio is found under the main "Remixes" tab and is a quick way of creating an instant randomized playlist of remixes from selection criteria.

• Quick tips: Editor's picks are only very few - they get you to a quick list of songs that are pretty decent, but there are tons of great songs that never make the Editors Picks. Don't rely on star ratings either, since ratings are a weak indicator of quality at ccMixter (and at every other site I know). There's no way to program a fair and easy to use rating's system, because it's more of a social issue, not a software one. I could rant on about the difficulty to create decent ratings systems - effectively a voting system, which is a better topic for political science scholars - but I'll spare you the boredom. :-)

Favorite Songs list keeping is another stellar feature of ccMixter (for registered users) via the concept of "Playlists". You can make many playlists - and your playlists are visible to others and vice versa. On pages containing remixes or lists of remixes, there is a button "Add to Playlist", which gives the option of adding a song to an existing playlist or create a new one. After creating a new playlist, you can rename it on the page for that playlist.When playing a playlist, the feature to open it in a separate window will keep the music going while you are browsing to other places.

• Very cool: Since the playlist feature works for sample files as well, remixers can create playlists of sample files, essentially creating a bookmarking system for files they may want to come back to.
• Ultra cool: Even if you are not a remixer, you can become a creator and maintainer of great playlists which other people can link to or subscribe to. If lots of people subscribe to your playlist, it will show up under the main "Playlists" tab in the "Hot Playlists" tab. If you've always dreamed of being a Radio DJ or station manager, here's your chance.
• Fun: Record and upload your own "station identification" as a short sample and put it at the beginning of your playlist, and possibly a couple of other places, but not so often as to be annoying to your listeners. (Listen to ccMixter's own "Remixer Radio" for examples of that).

Friends type of relationship management is implemented philosophically differently (in my opinion much better) in ccMixter. It's not reciprocal, but when you are on a person's profile page (and are logged in as registered user), you can click on the link "Add ... to your favorites" at the bottom of the page or a bit higher up is a link next to Notifications "Get Notified About ...", which allows you to get emails when the person has uploaded a new remix and/or has been remixed. So you can keep track of other people remixing the same materials as you as well as keeping track of your remixers. So it's really easy to keep track of relevant happenings at ccMixter without even having to go there. Since ccMixter doesn't have an interest to always suck you to their site and click on ads, it is much more gentle with your time than commercially motivated social networking sites. And that's a good thing!

• Very Cool: clicking on the Publicize link on a user's "Profile" page gets you to a page of html code snippets to include in your own website or myspace or similar sites. There are a number of different options - one of my favorites can make it look like this (yes, this player [invisible in some RSS feeds, though] is really included and piped in from ccMixter):
  
  

Private Messaging is implemented differently as well (philosophically and technically). Again, since ccMixter does not need you to click on advertising, it doesn't need to suck you to their site for every little thing. Registered users can send an email to a fellow registered user, by going to that member's profile page and clicking on the [email contact] link next to their name. That will send a message to the email account of that member. Note, that this will reveal the email address you have registered with ccMixter to the other person. So it's not private messaging like on some other sites, but facilitates making off-line connections.


There's quite a bit more, but you'll get the idea. Next time I'll try to mention a few ccMixter features for sample providers and remixers.

Happy ccMixter listening, and as always, comments and corrections are appreciated!

7 good things about remixing

Preamble: The concept of music remixing is still evolving. It originally started mostly as an alternative version of audio manipulation techniques applied to a master stereo recording. For example different equalization, addition of effects like reverbs, delays and compression would be applied to the stereo track of a song, often done to make songs more dance hall ready.

However more recently, remixers are taking it much further, thanks to individual tracks (e.g. vocal, guitar, bass, drums) of songs being made available to remixers by the original music makers. This has enabled remixers to create much more dramatically different versions of songs, than before. In addition, this added freedom has made it possible not only to punch up a song for the dance floor, but also to mellow it out, or even to take it into different genre's. This in turn has made the distinction between a remix and a remake more blurred. I would therefore propose, that the distinction between a remake and a remix is becoming less relevant.

So here we go (the order isn't very important):

1. Remixing teaches composition and arranging
Since remixing starts with one or more given pieces of music, it is a less intimidating starting point than a blank piece of paper. The remixer can just re-arrange the given musical snippets, or cut them up some more before re-assembling them. Or the remixer can venture into more advanced compositional techniques, like adding their own parts, or even changing the chords around a given melody. The latter one is definitely one of my favorite pastimes!

2. Remixing teaches production techniques
With even entry level DAW (digital audio workstation) software featuring built-in equalization and effects, remixers get to use and therefore learn the same kinds of tools that professional recordings are made with. Instead of just pretending to be Paul McCartney or Nelly Furtado, you get to be like George Martin or Timbaland.

3. Remixing changes how you listen to all music
Remixers find, that their own compositional and production experience gained from remixing, makes them experience other people's recordings more intensely. Great music becomes even greater for remixers, because they start to hear subtleties in compositions, individual musicianship and recordings, through their ears and brains trained from their remixing work. Once you have dissected and worked with individual tracks of a song, you become better at hearing individual tracks in other songs, too.

4. Remixing is an additional way to become a music maker
Traditionally, music makers were mostly singers or instrumentalists. And to create something that sounded somewhat good, you had to be a good singer or a good instrumentalist. As a remixer you can create an end product exceeding your vocal and instrumental skills. Numerous music makers have come more from a DJ background than a musician background. And more recently, music lovers with limited (or rusty) musicianship are turning into music makers because of remixing. Regular readers of this blog will note my abundant use of the term "music maker". It is an acknowledgment of music being made not only by musicians in the traditional sense anymore, but also by people with turntables, Kaoss pads and computers.

5. Remixing builds musical community and collaboration
Remixing is a form of sequential collaboration, in some ways similar to certain aspects of open source software development, or creating art collages. Sequential collaboration hands off the decision making from one person to the next. Therefore it's collaboration without infighting, arguments and artistic hissyfits. Since most remixing is done at sites where more than one person remixes the same piece of music, it fosters dialog around a common theme. In some cases, remixers find musical kinship through their remixes, and end up collaborating in more traditional ways. In addition, there's something deeply gratifying on both sides of the remixing equation. Having experienced both, I can attest, that it's very gratifying and humbling as remixer to be able to work with somebody else's source materials. But it's also very gratifying and humbling to have one's song remixed. Both sides are giving musical gifts to each other.

6. Remixing increases understanding and appreciation across musical genres
A classically trained musician can take a rap song into a classical direction of their choice as much as an industrial hard core rocker can re-interpret a new-age piece. This cross genre appreciation is easiest to achieve when remixers with different musical leanings remix the same song. While one may not necessarily start loving extremely different music, most well intentioned remixers can't help but gain respect for music makers with different backgrounds.

7. Remixing increases cross-cultural appreciation
Remixing songs from different musical cultural backgrounds can be a good learning experience for different approaches to music. From different instruments, different singing styles to entirely different scales. My last four remixes have been for songs with a good helping of Asian and African backgrounds. Incredibly cool and ear-opening experience. World peace through remixing? We can only hope!

Do you have any favorite things about remixing? Agree or disagree with my top 7? I'd love to hear it in the comments!

Freesound - sound sample collection

For music makers, one of the great sources for sounds is theFreesound Project. From the "what is freesound?" page: "The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

* browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a 'sounds-like' type of browsing and more
* up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
* interact with fellow sound-artists!"

A remarkable resource. Where else could you find a recording of a tire being rolled around on sandy pavement?

Remix Commons

Thanks to Loveshadow for the following. He writes:

"Sometime ago on the Realworld Remixed site i posted in the forum there about the site extending its borders to include visual art. For those who liked a remixers work and were moved to add artwork to support it.

Well here is a vision of the future: remixcommons.org

It is an inspired UK based project embracing the Creative Commons ideal whole heartedly. You will find music, video, artwork, blogs, poetry, links to other sites and projects. There is also a full and simple explanation of the mechanics of the CC protocol.

I am sure there are other sites out there blossoming like it, but even if you don't get involved it's an entertaining way to spend a hour or two and worthy of your support."

More from the Remix Commons home page: "Remix Commons is a network of free culture projects in the UK. Our aim is to get artists (working with music, video, images and text) to come together and share their work, be inspired by each others' work, and ultimately to create 'remixes'. Our volunteers run local events promoting free culture, bringing the ideas and content to people across the UK who would never find this stuff online."

For some most amazing remixes, check out Loveshadow's realwordremixed page.

ccMixter.org - First Impressions

I've finally just started to experience both sides of ccMixter.org for the first time - once as content provider and once as as remixer. And the first impressions are very positive. If you want to hop right over and skip reading my notes below, I would recommend starting with the ccMixter about page.

So you are still reading this? Ok here we go:

General Impressions
Being sponsored by the Creative Commons organization, ccMixter is not littered with advertising and assorted visual madness so commonly seen at social networking sites these days. While I consider that as an overwhelmingly good thing, some aspects of the user interface take a bit of getting used to, because it is so refreshingly clean, different and not yet another clone of so many other over-hyped so called web 2.0 sites. It's a bit like using Google for the first time, after having used Yahoo for a long time. ccMixter packs plenty of web 2.0 punch, many things implemented much cleaner than on other sites. How many sites have we all visited with more than one "play" button for various snippets of music, but when you already have one piece playing, and press on another play button, the first piece continues to play? ccMixter gets this right. A newly pressed play button switches off the previous piece and starts playing your newly selected one. And the site handles changing browser window sizes and/or font sizes about as elegantly as can be done these days. Just those two things - done better than so many high profile sites - are a couple of immediate tip-offs about the thought, craftsmanship and caring that is going into this site. Victor Stone is the gentleman behind most of the programming code and he goes by the handle of "fourstones" on the site. And being a very good music maker and remixer in his own right, he is an active participant in remixing as well as uploading samples in addition to hovering around the forums to answer questions and give guidance. I wonder, if he ever eats or sleeps. :-)

ccMixter (so far) doesn't have a "friends" mechanism. I don't know, if that is a philosophical choice or a question of maybe adding it later. Personally I hate the inflated friends thing (and on many bigger sites it quickly gets to be that way) - it becomes quite useless, once there are too many friends for each person. But on the positive side a friends mechanism is one interesting way to link-hop and can be a fast way to find people one already knows, because a friend may have already marked them as friend. So a friends mechanism has worked for me at times, but only while the numbers of friend linkages is reasonably small - maybe up to 30-50? However ccMixter offers fabulous RSS feeds for following the exploits of the people one wants to stay in touch with. In addition it's easy to see what comments (called "reviews") a site participant has made, so that is one way to to link hop, although those lists end up quite lengthy as well. Maybe the system could be programmed to derive a "friends" type of list from multiple comments having been sent back and forth between individuals? In any case, it's a fascinating problem to solve for social networking sites, regardless of topic.

Generally speaking, ccMixter doesn't try to re-invent all kinds of wheels or make itself the hub of your entire life on the Internet. So while it clearly is a social networking site arou