Category: creative commons

creative commons

Creative Commons entertains ccMixter RFPs

Last year Creative Commons began a process to evaluate how to make their already-successful ccMixter project even more successful.  Yesterday they announced a full-blown request for proposals to make ccMixter a fully stand-alone entity (without compromising any of the core values of Creative Commons or ccMixter–forever free).

What a great opportunity!

Are any of you thinking of responding to this?  Want to chat about the possibilities?  If so, drop me a line or post a comment!  (Due to comment spam, I’ve required that only registered users can comment, and of course I promise I won’t ever share your registration info for this site with 3rd parties.)

Possibilities

Last night I was invited by some friends to sit down and watch Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, a DVD that embodies many of the ideas I’m attempting to realize with The Miraverse.

First, there is the premise, which Herbie lays on the line straightaway: that to grow as a musician, he must walk outside the lines of his comfort zone, meeting other artists halfway or more than halfway.  In the first few segments, he explains this idea of sharing, give-and-take, and you can see the chosen artists saying “yes” but acting as if “OH MY GOD!  IT’S HERBIE HANCOCK!!  WHAT DO I DO?!?!?”  It takes Herbie a few times to really get the message “just be yourself” through through to them.

Continue reading “Possibilities”

Linda Ronstadt had her chance…but who’s going to get it now?

Growing up in the 1970s, Linda Ronstadt was one of the first female vocalists that made me want to spend more time on the Rock and Roll side of the FM dial and less time listening to classical music on our local NPR affiliate, WMHT. But a few weeks ago, completely by chance, I heard her talking about her experiences in the Music industry as a special guest of the NPR news quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, and the course of the interview practically wrote a blog posting for the Miraverse concept. Here’s my transcription of the relevant stories:

Continue reading “Linda Ronstadt had her chance…but who’s going to get it now?”

Stephin Merritt exposes his creativity

The NPR show All Things Considered issued a challenge earlier this year: write and record a song—in two days. Stephin Merritt took them up on their challenge, enjoying the benefits of NPR’s beautiful recording studio (studio 4a) fully stocked for his creative purpose.

You can see a video of that two day creative sprint on the NPR website, and you can form your own opinions about whether the challenge or the result are for the ages or not. My question is more technical: how well did the studio itself perform? How well did the video capture the creative process at work? If you had access to all 48 hours of recorded materials (multitrack inputs, video cameras, computer monitor outputs, etc), what would you want? What would you cut?

As Stephin himself acknowledges, the song itself had only one section–most popular music has at least two and usually three–so perhaps two days was a bit short. What could have been done in three days? What about five? And what about an elegant corpse model of music composition–what if three artists had been given the image and the word that one had selected, they agree on the key, tempo, and major thematic device (in this case, 1-9-7-4), and one did the verse, one did the chorus, and one did the bridge? How exciting might that have been upon reveal?

If you have links to similar experiments, please share!

This American Life—the remix

I have always been a huge fan of This American Life because of all the shows on our NPR affiliate station WUNC that I listen to during the week, none make me laugh or make me cry so more rapidly, so frequently, or so powerfully as a typical episode of This American Life. A few months ago my wife Amy burned me a CD and said “you’ve got to listen to this—it’s so Miraverse you will die!”

Continue reading “This American Life—the remix”

Philly Through My Ear

The things I learn by talking with just a few people who know a lot!

I just learned about Philly Through My Ear, a creative, collaborative effort to bring together great jazz musicians, honor them, pay them, record what is still <em>great</em> music, and then give them a lottery ticket in the form of a CD that they are free to sell whereever and hoever they wish. Why, that sounds just like the fair share model I’m trying to promote in The Miraverse!

According to the wealth survey of the Wall Street Journal, there are now more than 10,000,000 millionaires in the world and 3.2 million living in the US alone. Why are they spending so much on mere stuff that’s polluting the environment and not much on transcendent experiences that can be made in carbon-neutral ways? I don’t know, but I do know that Will Smith Sr. (father of Will Smith Jr.) has his priorities in order, and his generosity expands far beyond just the support of his favorite living artists: it actually enriches the arts.

So a shout out to Will Smith Sr., and an invitation to those who are trying to decide how they might allocate their assets between things (that need space) and experiences (which can be carried always). And a prayer that my favorite living artists will have the creative and legal freedoms to create more musical descendents to fill us all their their genius.

Audio Clips of Rough Mixes

How cool is this?  A bunch of recording engineers sharing their works in progress so that they can learn and improve their craft.  (And maybe show off a little, too.)  This is one example of an organic version of what I hope to do when permission to share is granted.  As I explain in the thread:

While the Manifold Recording will certainly cater to high-end folks that want to lock it out and keep all the mixes and masters to themselves (until they release commercially), I’m also hoping that there are artists, engineers, and co-producers who are as interested in really developing not just an understanding of equipment and techniques, but creating works that are interesting and rewarding to others who try their hands at mixing and production. I detail that somewhat here the PROGRAMS section of the Manifold Recording website.

One particular technical challenge I have to address is the best way to tag all the data so that equipment chains can be easily annotated in the recording process and can be easily searched in a large (100TB) online archive.  As you can see from the thread, there are no standards as to the level of detail or the integrity of the data of these community-led efforts.  One idea is to use RFID to tag basically every piece of gear that can move (plus those that cannot) and then scan the chain from source to console and then attach each signal chain’s scan data to the respective track.  This will ensure that every device is scanned according to its canonical identifier.

Will this catch on?  I certainly hope so!

What is music worth?

I’m very behind on my blog postings, so don’t worry—you’re not reading my postings out of order. In October of this year, Radiohead put their album In Rainbows up for sale at whatever price you’re willing to pay. There was quite a flurry in the blogosphere, particularly from techcrunch.com, which argued that the pricing trend of commercial music is headed inevitably to absolute zero.

I had two thoughts about this. Continue reading “What is music worth?”

Gary Powell on collaboration

Gary Powell hits the nail on this head with his post Sharing your creative process.  How many times have we been told, or sold, on the idea that creativity comes only from within?  Or that creativity is like some kind of artistic virginity, something that can never be restored to its purest and most wonderful state if co-mingled with the works of others.  I don’t defend those who try to create by committee.  And if a movie gives title credit to “Head of Story”, I’d rather know in advance so I can avoid it.  But in my experience, knowing how people work helps me work better with them, and helps them work better with me.

A particularly excellent example of this is the collaboration story of Elephant’s Dream.  In the DVD extras, the artists and producers talk about what it was like when the project began: everybody trying to do everything so as not to show any particular weaknesses.  But as things cracked under enormous time and creative pressure, the collaborators became more honest with each other, and suddenly they all discovered how to best fit together.  The courage to share helps create new levels of creativity and productivity.

I honor those who are willing to give a little (at some personal cost) to gain a lot more, for all of us.

A Barenaked guide to music copyright reform

On May Day 2006, Stephen Page of Barenaked ladies published The Barenaked guide to music copyright reform. It appears that yesterday Canada’s government decided to ignore some of its most famous and commercially successful artists, including Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Broken Social Scene, Stars, Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, Dave Bidini of Rheostatics, Billy Talent, John K. Sampson of Weakerthans, Sloan, Andrew Cash, Bob Wiseman, a co-founder of Blue Rodeo, and Page’s own band, the Barenaked Ladies, by giving standing to rightsholders in the music industry who wish to sue music fans for downloading music.

Continue reading “A Barenaked guide to music copyright reform”