This isn’t news to many, but this morning, the band Nine Inch Nails released its newest collection of music this morning as a free download with a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share alike license. I’m not sure how realistic the all free music model is, but I really hope the “take this and make your own music” model sticks. It’s a great entry point for teaching kids about intellectual property and copyright, creativity, publishing, collaboration, etc. Obviously, it could mean kids making their own music videos, digital stories, etc.
Since I’m pretty ignorant in the music mashup process, however, (as well as many other things,) I’m wondering what makes it possible for anyone to add other vocals or instrumentals to these downloads. Is it the format? And can anyone point to a process that steps one through how to do it?
Adding more audio isn’t extremely difficult. Usually, you would record the new audio parts (perhaps while listening to the existing audio parts), then use a program like Audacity (or more likely, super expensive audio software) to combine the new and existing audio.
Separating or removing different tracks that have already been combined is pretty difficult and it’s not likely that you’ll end up with quality results. It would be much easier to do if the NIN tracks were released separately…i.e., for each song, you’d have a sound file that just had the drums, another sound file that just had guitar, another with lead vocals, etc. Some artists have gone this direction: I have a Moby CD single that has separate audio tracks, intended for a contest where fans could submit their own remix…Jay-Z commercially released the a’capella vocal tracks for The Black Album, which helped spawn the Gray Album (a mashup with The Beatles’ White Album by Danger Mouse) and the Black and Blue Album (a mashup with Weezer songs, search for Jayzeezer, it’s awesome)
What I’d recommend is that you find a podcast-related tutorial that teaches how to use Audacity (which is free) to add intro, outro, and/or background music to the “talking” part of a podcast. Once you have a better understanding of how tracks can be put together, the whole thing might make more sense.
I should have just made an analogy. Putting audio together is like cooking. It’s not too hard to add new ingredients, but it helps if you know what you’re doing.
If you want to take apart something that’s already been cooked, though, you can probably sort of separate the pieces and use them in something else, but it’s pretty hard and usually impossible to get ingredients that are as high-quality as you would want.
Ideally, NIN would release the ingredients: the individual tracks. I don’t think they did, but they did give us super-high quality versions of the songs, which is sort of like having a hundred portions of the finished recipe to try to pull ingredients out of…it helps, sorta.
A lot of the mashup process also involves “beat-matching” and pitch-shifts. While Audacity can’t do it (at least as far as I’ve discovered), you can stretch a sound wave to make it longer, often without changing the pitch. You can also transpose a full-song’s wave (so a song written in E flat, could be layered over a song in D).
(Another album to look for is the Creative Commons album released by Wired a few years ago)
“I’m not sure how realistic the all free music model is”
That’s interesting. I’m always thinking, “The All Rights Reserved model is not realistic in the digital era.” What makes you think that CC licensed music is not a realistic model?
Well, it’s not realistic in terms of making a living, unless you give it away to build a fan base for concerts and merchandising which thus far hasn’t scaled. I just spent some time reading the Masnick stuff (thanks for the link…pretty interesting stuff) and I guess what really stuck was the idea that before long, those who don’t give it away will be in the minority and thus marginalized. Still hard to see how that shift plays out in my brain at least.
Mike Masnick often posts about the economics of freely licensed music. Here is his take on the news…
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080505/0908591030.shtml
Some might remember a few years back NIN released a “the hand that feeds” as a garageband file. This did/does allow an artist mix around with all the “ingredients”, to grab onto the metaphor, of the song.
I find it interesting that NIN has taken this approach again (it must have been successful) and I seem to remember hearing about them doing it on a third occassion (though couldn’t find anything on it with a quick search).
As a musician I hope to see more bands taking this approach.
The thing with free content is that it leads people to want to support the artist other ways. If a band puts on a free show and their music is decent, I’ll buy a CD, even if I don’t think I’ll listen to it much. Stickers, shirts, hats, etc. are cheap to buy and super cheap to make so there’s a real good profit margin on them. If someone gives me a copy of a CD or a movie and I like it, I’ll buy the original, go to shows, buy merchandise, etc. There will always be those who take the free content and run, so to speak, but there have always been and will always be people who will take content, whether it’s free or not.
I know that Trent Reznor (NIN) has plans (and perhaps is already doing this), as do other artists, to release lower fidelity music for free on their websites. Higher quality stuff is available super cheap through the website, as is album art-work. It cuts out most of the middle-men, putting way more of the actual money into the hands of the creators. And it promotes their merch-sites and concerts way cheaper than hiring a promoter, who will get most of his work done by Myspace anyway.
It should be very interesting to see how things develop in the next decade!
I received an email back at the beginning of April from the UK band Radiohead announcing a “Remix” contest. Here’s the details they provided their fans.
“To celebrate this week’s single release (we still have those in England) Radiohead have broken up the song ‘Nude’ into pieces for you to remix.
For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, you can buy the separate components or ‘stems’ (bass, voice, guitar, strings/FX and drums) and remix your own version of the song. You can do this by adding your own beats and instrumentation or just remixing the original parts. More information here: http://www.radioheadremix.com/information/
You can buy the stems here: http://www.radioheadremix.com/buy/
You can upload your finished mixes here http://www.radioheadremix.com and be judged and even voted on by ‘the public’.
You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be sent through too.
Hope you enjoy it
For those of you who aren’t that way inclined, Nude is also available in its entirety on CD and 7 inch (UK release) at the usual retail outlets.”
As previously mentioned, Nine Inch Nails made a song available in Garageband format more than three years ago. While cool, remixing is no substitute for formal music education.
Plus, you are assuming that there are interesting things to learn from Ninch Inch Nail’s performance or compositional quality.
Is this really an artistic experience for us (and our students) or a cheaper marketing device than t-shirts for the band?
Unless our nation is going to invest public (taxpayer) dollars to generously subsidize the creation of art and sustainability of artists, “the all bit should be free,” will diminish our culture and destroy the livelihoods of artists who sacrifice mightily to enrich our world. The high cost of CDs is the result of corporate greed, not the machinations of already underpaid artists.
If an artist CHOOSES to give away a recording or image for reasons of generosity or marketing, that is their perogative. It is incredibly naive to devalue their work to the point where we expect their effort to go unrewarded and their products to be free. There are interesting compromises, like Artistshare.com (see http://brianlynch.artistshare.com for the project I worked on), but such efforts shift the financial risk to the artist while they are still not compensated for a lifetime of dedication to artistic development.
In that scenario, the evolution of music may indeed end with Nine Inch Nails.
Gary, Where do you read me to say that remixing is “a substitute for formal music education?” Just curious.
Will,
I didn’t accuse you of substituting remixing for formal music education. However, my own experience suggests that others are quick to do so.
I was merely responding to the excitement about Ninch Inch Nails giving music away by reminding the educators who read your blog that, while neat, there are other more important time-honored ways to learn.
Thanks Gary. I would hope that most educators who read this blog, while excited about new technologies and their potential (as I am) realize fully that there are many other, important, time-honored ways to learn (as I do.) I’m not canceling Tess’s piano lessons any time soon.
Will,
You make an excellent point when you say, “It’s a great entry point for teaching kids about intellectual property and copyright, creativity, publishing, collaboration, etc.” These are distinct goals from making music. They also don’t require the same habits of mind or discipline involved in making music.
From my perspective, the big question regards the necessary interventions necessary to support the transition between such “experiences” described in this blog to students really learning something that lasts a lifetime.
It’s fantastic that Tess takes piano lessons. It’s unfortunate, that she is in the minority. One of my 5 year-old students in a high=poverty school told me that she wanted to be a ballerina. When I asked if she took lessons she turned angry and said, “School does not teach ballerina.” I can think of no more important curricular experience for kids.
Hi… Great Marketing too, since bands make their $$ from live shows & merchandising.
Unrelated question from a not so technical person:
I want to be able to have my web-based apps open & available to use @ any time. Use only one log on name/password. Is there an application that lets you do this easily without being very tech savvy? Can someone point me in the right direction?