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Here we are, reading the first sentence of the second installment of a column where I'll give you a chartsweep of every hit song from 1956 to 1997. If you're wondering where this all comes from, I applied a shell script I wrote (that finds the maximum amplitude of an mp3 and cuts 10 seconds from that point) to one of the great treasures of WFMU's music library - that magical folder of mp3s called "Top 100 By Year". For this week, I will not wax philosophical on why I find these cutups so beautiful...they speak for themselves!
Also, check out these related bits of compilation/traversal art! Listener Fred sent me a video of Noe Soulier perform several dance pieces - among them are every ballet step in alphabetical order and (!!!) an exerpt from every 19th century ballet taken in chronological order. Fred also sent me a link to a Max/MSP patch called CataRT, which cuts up sound into tiny "grains", graphs them, and allows you to reconfigure those "grains" creatively. In the comments to my last post, listener Robert showed me his awesome blog that makes a statistical analysis of the most popular keys of pop songs throughout the decades. One major work that I should also mention is R Luke Dubois' piece Billboard, which finds the spectral "average" of every #1 billboard song and then plays each distilled hit in chronological order.
If you like all this nonsense, please support my radio show. Follow this link to my playlist where you can make a pledge to WFMU, which misguidedly allows me to cutup and reconfigure pop shlock for the entertainment of nincompoops such as yourself!
Find the complete tracklist of these songs below the fold!
Here's an hour long teaser of the datadump I'll be unloading on this blog in the next few weeks. Listeners of my radio show know I've been obsessed with Hugo Keesing's Chartsweep of every #1 hit for too long now. After I made an homage to his work with a sweep of every #1 easy listening hit, I really saw the need in our society to have every large database of music cutup into tiny, bite sized pieces, but realized I didn't have the time to do it. So now that unix has turned 42 (happy b-day, big guy!!), I wrote a little patch using SoX to grab the hook from every mp3 in a folder and stich em together.
While pretty much everybody can identify and appreciate the hook from any individual song (it's the one part you remember of that song you hadn't heard in years!), definining the hook concretely is a tricky problem. It's usually the title of the song, but not always. It's usually at the beginning or end of the chorus, but not always. So when I wanted to teach a computer to grab the hook of a song I had to ask the deep question, what is the hookiness of these hooks?
With no real answer, my cheapskate workaround is that the hook of the song is almost always simply the LOUDEST part of the song. Super easy to teach a computer to do that, since an mp3 is nothing but a list of how loud sound is at a given time.
Yes, it's true, in this Darwinian yelling match that births the concept of a "hit song", there's no room for saving the hook for a quiet, subtle moment in the song. I'd go so far to say that any song that DOESN'T put the hook at the loudest part of the song is possibly communist. So even though these chartsweeps aren't nearly as pristine as Hugo Keesings, but they do get the point across pretty well. And as an added bonus, this program weeds out those songs that are immoral and unamerican.
I'll be posting a decade of chartsweeps every...eh, week or so, in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
The classy video-hosting site Vimeo launched a new service to connect their noncommerical community of creative independent video producers with quality legal music options. The Music Store utilizes the Free Music Archive API to index the portion of the FMA library that can be used in video projects under the Creative Commons framework (i.e. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike; about 11,000 tracks) and offers these curated jams as its free options. This is an exciting moment for those of us who share our music under open licenses to inspire new collaborations and expand our reach.
As many of you know, finding music for your videos can be somewhat... well, painful. Licensing music on your own can be confusing and finding good free music can take forever. Many of us here at Vimeo are video creators or filmmakers as well and we experience these frustrations on a regular basis. So, we decided to do something about it.
The majority of FMA's library is pre-cleared for noncommercial use only, so it might seem strange at first that free music is included in something called a Music "Store" alongside paid music from a company called Audiosocket. But for many artists, allowing for hands-on engagement with their work in the noncommercial sphere plays into a broader promotional strategy, and even leads to lucrative commercial licensing opportunities. We always love to hear about the collaborations that result when producers who actually have a budget discover one of the many great artists who share their work via the Free Music Archive, about artists being commissioned to score new documentary films, mobile app soundtracks, and viral videos that reach 2 million views.
Vimeo introduced Creative Commons licensing for video last summer, and we've already seen a flurry of videos powered by CC music from the FMA -- everything from educational projects, travelogues, time lapses, recipe-sharing, and science videos to the immensely popular cute animal videos (although I guess that's more a YouTube thing). I'm including one example after the jump, along with the latest in FMA's series of mixes curated with the online video producer in mind. Vimeo's Music Store seems is totally new, so it's sure to be refined over the course of time. If you have feedback you can leave a comment here, and we look forward to the new collaborations that this bridge between the CC Music Community and the CC Video Community will inspire!
A few years ago, Andy Baio over at waxy.org put together a great 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," which enjoyed a bit of airplay over here at WFMU (click here to listen to the 8-bit cover of "So What"). The album's music was fully licensed from Davis' publisher, but Baio recently had to shell out $32,500 for an out-of-court settlement because of the tribute album's cover art (shown below next to the original album art). You can get the full details of what happened right here, in addition to an excellent overview of Fair Use and some recent examples of other similar cases.
It seems like every few months some story like this pops up and reminds me that the U.S. is in desperate need of clearer guidelines and a stronger legal precedence for Fair Use. The current state of affairs encourages predatory lawsuits, while examples like Baio's case produce a chilling effect on transformative creativity and remixing. Props to the EFF for fighting the good fight in this dept.
I don't need to point out the fact that new art has always been built by borrowing and reinterpreting existing ideas. Or do I?
It wasn’t terribly easy to get something to go viral back before YouTube, Facebook, and other meme distributors. Most viral videos came in the form of full websites (think the Hamster Dance) or e-mailed .mov files (think the dancing baby) -- odd little accidents that look a bit embarrassing today, like a pair of bell-bottom jeans. One early viral sensation that has held up, however, is the series of GI Joe public service announcement parodies produced by Fenslerfilms. The parodies were an absurdist take on the original PSAs -- exhortations to stay safe and never talk to strangers were warped into a world where heavily armed and armored super-commandos harassed and confronted kids who were playing on construction sites or riding without a helmet. Series creator Eric Fensler talks about the creation process, the legal trouble with Hasbro he narrowly avoided, and what he and Fenslerfilms are up to these days.
NAmag: How did the original idea for the PSAs come about?
The idea to make the PSAs came from just revisiting the footage from my childhood via a DVD I found at Virgin Megastore in Chicago, IL on Michigan Ave. I went there on my lunch break a lot just to listen to music or just check out the sale cart bin of DVD's, CD's, records, and lotions. I found the GI Joe movie on DVD for 5 bucks and it had 25 of the PSAs as an extra supplement. I ripped the footage off and put it on my computer and started just messing around with it. Nothing much more to it.
NAmag: How did you go about making them?
I used Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Pro Tools. Standard programs in the post-production process.
NAmag: How did you find out that the PSAs were receiving wide distribution? This was pre-YouTube, so you couldn't just, say, suddenly notice that their view count had skyrocketed.
My gallery in Chicago, Heaven Gallery, had been hosting them on their site in 2003 and we originally got shut down because the PSAs had exceeded the bandwidth for that month. Something like over trillions and trillions and googillions of hits in 2003. No one could pay the bill.
Uncle Joe figured it out -- he does all my website stuff. So each month, Uncle Joe would put new PSAs up until we exceeded the hits, I guess, and it would shut down. I really don't know for certain. My apologies for not knowing the facts, to be honest I don't concern myself with these types of details. I did get a lot of emails from people saying how much they liked them, that was a good barometer I guess. Should I think about this stuff?
Brown wax cylinders, the primary medium for commercial recordings between 1895 and 1901, were in circulation much longer as wax “blanks”—to be recorded on and "shaved" (erasing the old grooves) and recorded on again.
The following is a selection from our minor collection of these. Each recording is a small wonder, for it is highly doubtful that their creators would ever have imagined that they would be heard so many years later.
A boy recites a psalm in the sober, headlong fashion of a child. How old is he? Men sing to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” Have they had too much to drink? The vocal duet of Suwanee River—is that a husband and wife, brother and sister, friends? And then there are the animal noises--is that a real cat or someone imitating a cat? We hope it is the latter...
These few minutes of sound give us an aural snapshot of the lives of people from a previously silent era. This glimpse into the quiet past has its complications though. Since amateur recording practices weren't standardized at this time, level discrepancies, speed fluctuations, and unintended noise were recurring issues that we have to deal with while preserving and digitizing these cylinders today. In spite of these engineering problems, the essence of the past remains. It is this, more than anything, that keeps us listening. [Berto Solis @ Free Music Archive]
We thought about throwing an anniversary party this year, but at this point there is so much incredible music events flowing through the FMA from all over the world that it would be difficult to sum it up in one cohesive event. We've come a very long way since April 4th 2009. The library has grown from 5,000 to 33,500+ mp3s, all curated by an ever-expanding worldwide curatorial consortium. We have some exciting new features in development including a recommendation engine that will bring the library to life, and an expanded API that will open up a new world of possible uses for all the great music that wants to be shared.
Leading up to the launch of the FMA, we curated two FMA Samplers (volume 1 / volume 2) to hand out at the Free Music Series of concerts, previewing some of the sounds that would appear on the FMA. I think they hold up pretty well as a template.
Here's a new mix of 50+ of the many highlights that've been added over the past two years. As always it's just the tip of the iceberg, so keep on diggin' deep and helping get the word out about good music that wants to be shared!
WFUD's "day-long celebration of fair use, creativity and remix culture" digs deep into the audio universe for this, their second year with a a panel titled "This Is the Remix: Fair Use in Hip-Hop Culture" (featuring all three members of Das Racist), Dan Lynch of Negativland joining in on a "Visual Art and Fair Use" discussion, and a keynote by Jace Clayton aka multidisciplinary hero DJ /rupture.
I'm spinning off the podsafe portion of my regular ol' WFMU radio show into a Free Culture-themed podcast called Grey Area. Each week I'll deliver "all the hits that fit" straight outta the Free Music Archive, plus conversations with guests about the grey area surrounding music and free culture in digital era.
The first episode features Eric Steuer from Creative Commons (also of Wired Magazine and the electronic/hip-hop group Meanest Man Contest). We talk about the licenses that facilitate sharing, openness and innovation everywhere from The White House to Al Jazeera to the Free Music Archive to this very podcast. We also talk about CBC Radio's recent decision to stop using Creative Commons music -- once a prominent feature of programs like Spark -- due to the usage restrictions of CC's more popular noncommercial licenses. To gain a better understanding of the situation, we crack open CC's recent Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” and discuss how this might play into the future of Creative Commons. And speaking of The Future, the nonprofit organization is currently in the midst of their Superhero campaign, so we talk about some of the exciting things on the horizon.
Next week, we'll talk with Sam Brylawski, the co-author of The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States. It's a new congressionally-mandated study, and it's subtitled "A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age"...but wait, wasn't the digital revolution supposed to solve this problem? The former executive director of the National Recording Preservation Board will outline some of the hurdles that stand in the way of our utopian digital archive.
This week the Free Music Archive rolled out a bunch of site tweaks + improvements, including Recent Activity Feeds for user profiles, the oft requested last.fm scrobbling, and the long-awaited Message Board (aka "the Forum")!
With 26,473 26,525 curated mp3s and counting, the FMA has many web pages, which means a lot of different spaces where conversations can take place. Up until now these discussions have been kind of decentralized, so I'm excited to see what happens to the FMA community now that we have a centralized Discussion Forum for announcements and conversation.
We're a pretty unique global network of musicians, label-owners, industry folk, multimedia artists, bloggers, podcasters, video producers, radio storytellers, documentarians, archivists, people who love music, free culture advocates, copyright/left-ies, open source hackers. Most of us actually seem to wear quite a few of these hats. And we've all come together in the midst of this extremely disruptive yet incredibly innovative moment for music. To share music, of course. But also to talk about the tech and legal currents that surround us. And maybe to start the world's raddest animated gif thread, and share homebrewing recipes for Free Beer.
There is so much potential in the FMA Forum, and it's entirely up to you where it goes from here...so c'mon and introduce yourself!
It's the first and probably last time the Free Music Archive will ever tweet about Justin Bieber (though he is the preeminent trending topic). But I just had to this week on the occasion that multiple major labels have lent their support to a hugely popular (and quite excellent) 800-x-slowed-down remix of Beiber's song "U Smile". This, despite the fact that it is arguably "an infringement of both the sound recording (owned by Universal’s Island Records) and the musical composition (owned by both UMG and EMI)" (Billboard). I mean, with the same free open source program that producer Nick Pittsinger aka Shamantis used to create this 30-minute glacial epic, it could just as easily be shrunk back into the actual song.
If you just listen, clearly this is a transformative work that meets the conditions for Fair Use. But Fair Use has yet to reconcile with US laws pertaining to sound recordings, and the influential Bridgeport ruling seems to imply that there is no such thing. Meanwhile, Soundcloud who are hosting the file are based, one of many countries where "fair use" doesn't even exist (though a court in Germany did recently reverse their decision and declare that a 2-second sound recording twisted beyond all recognition and not used as the basis of a new composition, is legal [BBC / Techdirt]).
Fortunately, there was no need for the law i this scenario as it clearly stood to benefit all parties. Beiber's tweeted about it (link) and this new form of public announcement from our young king of tweet-pop declared it to be good, it shined an interesting light on Bieber's own music for new fans (and twitter followers) who now have a much deeper appreciation for his music. All of which is invaluable in our increasingly fragmented Attention Economy.
In cases like these (#musicblogocide, for example) I often think of Lawrence Lessig's chart describing the Law as one of four forces that impact reality. Our society and the structures of the music industry are changing rapidly. Soon -- with any luck -- remixes like this which clearly just draw attention to the artist in a purely noncommcercial environment may even be declared legal! Or at the very least, we should be able to publicly acknowledge that there are certain noncommercial forums for shared creativity where the law need not interfere. Transformative remixes are already kind of impossible to stop, and seem to stand to everyone's benefit. Quite an artistic and politicized cultural statement by our friend Shamantis.
Maybe even Prince will come around to this. Or -- since he's already declared the end of the Internet -- maybe he'll simply sit back and let his music (and the people who love it) take care of spreading the word on his behalf.
One solution is to play recordings that are not covered by the agreement to begin with. The blanket license for recordings (but not compositions) is overseen by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA). Their catalog includes the discographies of hundreds of Australian labels & artists who've opted to join the collecting society, but its primary licensors are the four multinational major labels.
In other words, "Real Music". Or at least that's the language the PPCA uses in its press release. This doesn't mean to say that PPCA members are any more "real" than independent artists (though it may seem implied). Rather, it's referring to the hundreds of fitness centers across Australia who are phasing out original music in favor of cheap cover recordings that aren't subject to PPCA control. The trend was recently spotlighted in this Wall Street Journal article, and these Britney Spears knockoffs are apparently big business for anybody who really wants to make money through music.
For those who want something a little real-er than mock pop tunes the next time they're at the gym, I made this mix of Creative Commons-licensed workout-ready tunes. All of these tracks (except the liberally-licensed Juanitos) are licensed under NonCommercial terms (click the "i" for the complete terms). So other than the Juanitos, these tracks wouldn't fly in a for-profit gym, but they could be used in school gyms and non-profit YMCA types of fitness centers. As long as the song isn't being used to enhance somebody's business, these artists would bee happy to see you getting in shape to their music. So feel free to download and bring this with you on your next trip to the gym. And if you find yourself having to use this to block out another knockoff "Oops I Did It Again" again, now you'll know why.
More about each artist after the jump or by clicking the "i" button next to their track. As always if you like what you hear, you can tip the artist by hitting the $ symbol on their artist page.
It's no secret that the art and music scene in Baltimore is out-of-control amazing these days, but if you needed an excuse to visit the city aside from Dan Deacon, Lexie Mountain Boys, Nautical Almanac, Ian Nagoski, Ponytail, Double Dagger, Teeth Mountain, Lo Moda, Ecstatic Sunshine, GDFX, John Waters, and and and... the Megapolis Audio Art Festival hits Baltimore May 14-16.
Jason Sigal and I hosted a session about the Free Music Archive during Megapolis last year (when it was in Boston) and we had a blast. This year, WFMU's Trent will be bringing his cointastic DJ skillz to Megapolis, and Benjamen Walker will be hosting a session about oversharing on the radio.
Other artists involved in Megapolis this year include WFMU faves Felix Kubin, Lucky Dragons, Arrington de Dionyso, Lexie Mountain, and many other creative folks. Workshops will teach everything from how to build noise generators, contact mics, and mini transmitters, while other sessions will involve interactive audio experiments, an instructional for how to make music using free software, and even Nelson's electric chaircuts.
The
law has pretty much steered clear of the grey area surrounding mp3
blogs since their rise to prominence ~7 years ago. Meanwhile, other
regulatory forces have helped the blogosphere develop an organic code
of conduct that benefits the interests of the music industry and our
society as a whole.
Last week, in what's been called #musicblogocide2k10, Google's Blogger service shut down several popular blogs
accused by the IFPI and RIAA of copyright infringement. Due to a bug in
Google's system (for which Blogger later apologized), at least one of the bloggers (the amazing Masala blog, which has since been restored) did not receive notification until after the blog's deletion.
Sure, you can blame Google for that error. But you can't really
blame them for following the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to remove
allegedly infringing content. As part of Bloggers' DMCA policy Google forwards their takedown notices to ChillingEffects.org where they are available for all to see. Chilling Effects is an incredibly useful resource conceived by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
(who also advise our work on the Free Music Archive) in collaboration
with a group of university law clinics and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Check it out, and you'll find myriad DMCA copyright
complaints like this one,
each listing hundreds of allegedly infringing Google-powered blogs, and
claiming that Google may be liable. Google has no choice but to remove
this infringing content, and from there the alleged infringer can file
a counter-notification.
This back-and-forth DMCA procedure is far from perfect. But it's
designed to protect online service providers like Blogger, who can't
possibly be expected to look into each and every one of these claims.
It's up to bloggers to defend themselves, and (as long as they are
properly informed) there's a relatively clear way to go about it. This
way, the inevitability of infringing content doesn't have to take the
entire blogging service and all its non-infringing treasures down with
it.
Let's leave Google alone for a second (they've got other problems
right now) to consider "the inevitability of infringing content." There
is still a great disparity between the law and the other codes/norms
that govern the blogosphere, and musicblogocide is a great example of
how this plays out. Before you read on, take a look at the above
diagram from Free Culture, in which Lawrence Lessig describes the law as one of four regulatory/enabling forces acting on...let's say...the blogosphere.
'It's gone!' sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. 'So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has aroused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!' he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound. 'Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,' he said presently. 'O, Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.' ---Kenneth Grahame / The Wind in the Willows
The origins are mysterious, even to one who was in the band 25 years ago, but it is generally known that Big City Orch., or BCO for convenience, began in southern California in 1979 and moved north with some of its members and noise-music philosophy to its present operational base in the Bay Area. From then to now, a fair number of cassettes, films, records, videos and cds have consistently poured forth from this flexible aggregation of artists. Many musicians and non-musicians answered the call, and today let's dip into a baker's dozen of rare older documents from their long history.
Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker (click here to subscribe via iTunes) - On TMi everyone is invited to the oversharing party! Gurus, Crackpots, Hucksters, Ordinary Folks, and your host Benjamen Walker tell tall tales and share intimate stories about a world where nothing seems real and everything is downloadable. Information Overload - Every Week. (Benjamen's podcast got some major love in the iTunes store this week, see red circle to the right!)
Liz Berg (aka me, click here to subscribe via iTunes) - Caffeinated rock, experimental pop, oddball beats, and more stuffed into a chewy, bite-sized, downloadable snack. A quick rundown of my faves from the Free Music Archive, including many tunes from my weekly radio show, plus a few special treats that are too hot for airplay.
One more bit of news: Andy Theodorou of Night People (also a podcast, subscribe here) is producing the play "Safe Home" at Women's Interart Center (500 West 52nd Street) in Manhattan. It runs through January. Find more information about it here.
We're very excited to announce the winner of the Anti-Pop Consortium "Reflections" remix contest!
It was extremely difficult to pick -- we received 50 submissions from
all over the world that reimagined APC's innovative hip-hop in a
kaleidoscope of styles and unclassifiable genres. And this was not an
easy song to remix, we're very impressed by all of the talent that's
out there. Here's a note from Anti-Pop Consortium:
Thanks to all of the artists that took the time and effort to
create these hot remixes. Each remix had a different approach which
made it difficult to decide on a winner. The arrangements and attention
to detail were very impressive. And if you were brave enough to
incorporate the "tempo change ending" we salute you!
It was a pleasure to listen and we wish you all much success in your future musical endeavors...Thank you.
Back in 1979 in crappy little towns south of LA such as Torrance and Hawthorne a cassette-trading, noise-embracing, non-musician-friendly band was formed and the darned thing still exists today under the same name, after going through over 100 members in its 30 years of operation. Indeed, BCO celebrates this milestone in January 2010 in San Francisco, so look into that if you're in town. In the meantime, let's celebrate with two blogs featuring rare and unavailable audio material by the venerated group. This being part one of two, we present this week a couple of Beatlerape rarities and an unrelated Shatner-centric cut.
There Will Come Soft Rains is an old cassette-only track of theirs which was featured on several unique radio shows as well, it features Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner on main vocals (from two different sources) and of course the Fab Ones on backing. The cut Beatlerape Stars on 45 is a recently-made rehash of Beatlerape fragments which come from an unreleased 10th Anniversary Beatlerape cd, and it sports some moments which were not on the original cd at all, as well as completely new mixes of the bits featured in it. Merely some throwaway candy. A bit of stocking-stuffing as it were. And our third chunk this week is the soundtrack music (tastefully re-edited) from an old Christmas BCO show where "William Shatner" appeared and treated the audience to an interpretive dance based on his life story, and also a rendition of Hugo Ball's Karawane, with Bill leading them through the poem. The music later appeared (in VERY limited release) as Post No Bills, on the cd of the same name. I'll meet you here on January 23rd at this same time for an even bigger and better haul of BCO goodies.
+ It's a big week for the Downtown Music community as ISSUE Project Room is in the midst of the second annual Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire Festival (Dec 3-5th). This Phill Niblock piece is a preview of what's in store, you can read more here, and re-live last night's performances here.
+ Peppermill Records offers a series fantastic seasonally-themed compilations (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer), featuring the likes of Daedelus, Nathan Michel, Mochipet, Dev/Null, Bran Flakes, Satanicpornocultshop, Jason Forrest (aka WFMU DJ Donna Summer) and more! Here's an awesome auto-tuned jam from Rafter:
After the jump there's a mix of recent WFMU live session highlights featuring Roland P. Young, Frantz Loriot & Ben Miller (of Destroy All Monsters!), El Perro Del Mar, Hopewell, Manikin, Doug Gillard, De Cylinders, Delta Dreambox, and Wild Carnation (Brenda of the Feelies!) with much more from each session on the Free Music Archive.
