32 posts tagged “music”
Flight of the Conchords is a musical comedy duo from Wellington, New Zealand. Official Site.
Flight of the Conchords: HBO Series.
Flight of the Conchords: on Wikipedia.
Flight of the Conchords: Google Video search.
Jay Smooth's videos are found at the Official Site and on YouTube.
Regarding his recent video I can think of nothing else to say but WORD!
On second thought, I'll add that the Dance Hall genre and Jamaica have a lot of baggage also.
The musical comedy duo Rhett & Link are at the Official Site and on YouTube.
Evidently, they are live every Thursday night at 9 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. PST.
Previously, they quickly whipped up a ditty about Ze Frank's Colorwars.
Rhett is no longer dating Miss Scarlett.
Copy of the letter I sent to Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Amber MacArthur, Leo Laporte, Colette Vogele, and CBC's Search Engine radio program:
The International Music Score Library Project was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores that are in the public domain here in Canada. I was forced to close the site due to circumstance after receiving lawsuit threats from music publishers that do not want the public domain to exist.
The immediate threat was from Universal Edition, a publisher in Austria. Whereas copyright in Canada lasts until 50 years after the author's death, copyright in Austria lasts 20 years longer. Universal Edition threatened to sue me, perhaps in Canada or perhaps in Austria, for violating Austrian law. There is no reason why Austrian law should apply to this site in Canada, but as a student I did not have the resources to resist even an absurd threat from a company with money to pay lawyers to attack music.
I greatly thank Richard M. Stallman for his support in this matter, and for his offer and help in writing this summary introduction (something that I had neglected).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7074786.stm
As the BBC article states further on,
I haven't seen this covered at all in the press with the exception of the BBC article cited above.
I thought someone might report more on this ongoing saga...
Update: from the Michael Geist Blog:
IMSLP On the Way Back
CBC's Search Engine notes that the International Music Score Library Project, which I wrote about last year, is planning to relaunch this summer.
Update:
It has been confirmed that IMSLP will be online again on July 1st, 2008 at 12AM EST. In the meanwhile, much work remains to be done, and I will be setting up branch projects before then. I will update this page with any news.
In celebration of the Supreme Court of California's recent ruling.
If I were Leni Riefenstahl I'd be on the payroll of some nasty conservative PR firm or another.
Keep in mind I made this ad before Hurricane Katrina.
It was also before the Bush PR hacks tried to hijack the whole "World War II" thing. I did see that one coming.
Too bad I don't have a corollary for Earthquake Defense!
Assume for the sake of this post that ART means "audio reversed in time", i.e. any audio clip played (and saved) backward. This is an invertibly lossless transform.
Consider this mix, track times approximate:
00:00 -00.00 ART version of: "Barber - Adagio for Strings - Bernstein and L.A. Philharmonic "
02:00 -00.00 "William Orbit - Barber Adagio for Strings Techno Remix"
This mix goes from strangely familiar mourning straight to techno, and in between a short eight bars where you get the original theme. Were it not an overplayed piece you could insert the original (non-ART version) in the middle and go in and out of techno and/or the ART version.
ART tracks are more appropriately named by using the original name, with all the letters back to front, i.e. "cinomrahlihP .A.L dna nietsnreB - sgnirtS rof oigadA - rebraB".
Note that the reversed name is unique for all uniquely named tracks, and the capitalization is a hard-to-miss clue. Note also lack of misrepresentation and improper taking of credit where none is due. Also, no need to define a new abbreviation for this transform, which can be very confusing:
Another favorite example of this technique is the mix:
00:00 -00:00 "nialecroP - yboM"
00:00 -00:00 "Moby - Porcelain"
This is a pure "audio-palindrome" if you will; the ART version is undeniably musical and listenable. Key points: start with the ART version of a very familiar ART-friendly track, followed by the original track.
The question of applicability of Copyright law to ART-transformed tracks is an open one. It is quite complex, and assuming copyright did apply automatically, what of an ART-transformed sample? It seems unfair to think that ART-transformed tracks would be automatically limited, as they are NOT the same as the original at all. There is also a good bit of skill in knowing beforehand what tracks will sound like reversed, but of course this is a type of "recombination" art form, much as collage and remixing are.
A term I coined for unreversed backwards speech (* see below) is "Lynchified" with an abbreviation of single capital "L", but that does not really describe this transform: all [non-live] audio is ART-ible but only spoken or sung words are "Lynchifiable", furthermore "Lynchifying" begins at the time you make a recording, and cannot be applied after the fact since the vocalist must use phoneme-reversed words. And, ART reverses the entire track whereas "Lynchification" is the un-phoneme-reversal of many single words, but preserving the order of the words.
Related tidbits about reversal of glyphs, letters, phonemes, words, speech and audio:
- Phoneme reversal (phoneme-reversed words, or PRW): "it is not" becomes "tih zih tahn"
- Letter-reversal of text (letters reversed in time, or LRT): "it is not" becomes "ton si ti"
- Reversed letters (letter-reversed words, or LRW): "it is not" becomes "ti si ton"
- Word-reversal of text (words reversed in time, or WRT) "it is not" becomes "not is it"
- PRW, WRT, and ART together give you Lynchified speech. (Note: WRT and ART together restore word order)
- Reversed letter glyphs (flip single letters graphically on the X axis, or LRX): "p becomes q becomes p, b becomes d becomes b, z becomes s-like, s becomes z-like"
- "X-mirror" transform is related, allows you to make an "ambulance" sign readable in a rear-view mirror (hint: LRT with LRX)
[* Note: David Lynch invented the technique as far as I'm aware, used very effectively in Twin Peaks]
a cultural appropriation by Richard Walker
Update: May 2008
From the Lessig Blog:Deadline is June 2, 2008TotalRecut has launched a remix contest: "What is Remix Culture?" I'm a judge (as close as I'll ever get to that title, but now twice -- just finished judging the Obama in :30 contest). Cool prizes. Great question. Get busy.
Update: Feb 2008
- Lawrence Lessig has retired from his role as Free Culture advocate, and will be focusing on how money corrupts politics. A moment of silence, please!
- Steal This Film II is a very good shareware film that explain some Intellectual Property issues and history, without requiring you be a lawyer.
- The new book (and blog) "The Pirate's Dilemma" introduces a new name in the Copyfight wars: Matt Mason.
See Unread Book: The Pirate's Dilemma - Jenny Toomey has left the Future of Music Coalition.
- Nine Inch Nails released the source material to a work in the form of Garage Band Tracks. This was done specifically to allow remixing of the work.
- Nine Inch Nails in collaboration with Saul Williams offered a release with alternative payment options
- Radiohead stirred up a big controversy by releasing their last album In Rainbows with alternative payment options, including "zero money" pricing.
Cory Doctorow EFF graduate, Sci Fi writer, copyfighter, technologist, Canadian, CC-er
US Rep Mike Doyle Defends Mixtapes and Mashups on Floor of Congress
by Marshall Kirkpatrick
The Ecstasy of Influence (on radio program "Open Source", Christopher Lydon, PRI) Feb 2007
The "Ecstasy of Influence" with novelist Jonathan Lethem, who asks: without borrowing, stealing, cribbing, remixing, mashing-up, collaging and compiling -- without influences great and small, in other words -- is "creating" even possible?
Open Source » Blog Archive » The Ecstasy of Influence
Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)
Click to listen to my "Back to School Edit" of the Show (30 MB MP3)
(includes illustrative audio under hosler interview)Jonathan Lethem
- Author, The Ecstasy of Influence (Harpers.org), Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and the forthcoming You Don’t Love Me Yet, among many others
Siva Vaidhyanathan
- Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University
Blogger, SIVACRACY.NET
Author, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens CreativityMark Hosler - Founding member, Negativland
Mike Doughty - Solo musician, Former guitarist and lead singer, Soul Coughing
- Extra Credit Reading - You can find Greta’s Mother of All Reading Lists here. She spent all day on it. It will make her very happy if you go check it out.
Update, 2007/02/07 (Christopher Lydon)
Mark Hosler of Negativland was kind enough to send me a few MP3s from their latest album, No Business. I asked him if he’d mind if we posted them on site. His reply: “I don’t give a s**t what you do with them!” Well, this is what we’re doing: No Business Downloading Favorite Things
Urban Slang: Gank: n. to steal or take something that does not belong to you.
An episode of Center for Internet and Society published on February 2, 2007
The Stanford Law & Policy Review and Stanford Law School welcomed Congressman Rick Boucher (D., Va.) to deliver a speech entitled "Congress Must Balance its Copyright Agenda".
Jonathan Coulton's charming "Code Monkey" is a song about a programmer. At the end of 2006, Jonathan and Quick Stop Entertainment held the "Code Monkey Remix Contest" [which provides links to tools to help get you started at remixing]
Here are the winners; I particularly like what Kristen Shirts did with it.
There many code monkey videos and video remixes on YouTube. Click here to search.
Thanks to Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte for covering this on their podcast Net@Nite, ep14Future of Music Coalition
I've been a supporter and fan of Jenny Toomey's efforts for years now. She and her cohorts are working hard to make a better future for artists.
Lawrence Lessig (his blog)You may have heard of Creative Commons or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two critical efforts he champions, both conceived "for the good of the people."
He welcomes artistic appropriation of his book "Free Culture," just click the link below...
"The Creative Remix" (October 2004) an hour-long broadcast special from
Here are Track one and Track two
A very enjoyable, lawyer-free, in-depth examination into the nature of creativity and "originality" from antiquity to the present day. Grey Album. Ancient pornographic literary theft. East Coast relics are given new life during an installation. Curmudgeonly antiques dealers are contrasted with young art school graduates. What is this thing? Less than five hundred bucks, the trafficker in dead things mutters.
Wonderful cast and song; the security guard was excellent.
The audience seemed to agree.
