I know it’s August and this makes me officially crazy but I think it might be the right time to start thinking about seasonal (x-mas, solstice, winter festival of your choice) music.

The dream:
To create a couple of hours of exceptional seasonal music. An alternative to the canned stuff normally played on the radio.

Here’s the deal:
1. we have a lot of talented people (singers, musicians, songwriters, producers)
2. there is a lot of beautiful traditional music and public domain music available for use.
3. we have the means to create, remix, rediscover hidden seasonal gems.
4. we even have the means to write our own :-)
5. and we have 4 months to do it!

What do you think? Anyone interested? How do you think we should proceed?

n9

Last year I enjoyed doing “hark the herald angels sing” on a netlabel compilation.
http://www.darkwinter.com/s...

I could do a sing-able public domain Christmas hymn if anyone wished to do the vocals for something in my, uh, style.

I think it could be a lot of fun.

One of the to do items would be to find candidate songs, where publishing rights (song writing / composition copyrights) are unencumbered. (e.g. PD or CC).

Another one would be to determine, if religious themed materials are ok or not. My first intuition would be to rather allow them, because otherwise there could be a never ending argument about what constitutes a religious theme).

i’d be happy to chip in.

a few years back, i actually wrote and recorded an original tune for songfight called “merry christmas”. i’d be happy to donate the source for it if anyone wanted to remix it.

for shits and giggles, you can hear it here.

i also think it would be fun to put together some sort of “we are the world” kind of thing…with the ccmixter community chipping in on various parts of course. i’d be happy to take part in something like that as well.

so yeah, cool idea!

There’s a large amount of very sample-able ‘spiritual’ and seasonal material on Magnatune. (if by album you mean commercial then forget that)

Narva that’s a great idea and as a kid I sang in the local choir. The voice has dropped a bit since then but I would be more than happy to take part.

The “We are the world” idea seems a good way to go about it.

I like the Idea of creating my own christmas song, It’ll be the next carol of the bells. :P

If one is ambitious, one could shoot for an entire album’s worth of materials, where one or two songs are “we are the world” kind of large scale collaborations and the rest are smaller collabs and/or remixes?

Oh my…this is wonderful and thank you for the encouragement. :-) Perhaps we should consolidate the facts so far from this thread (I love making lists!):

1. Public domain (would anyone like to volunteer to generate a list of songs available) or original material only.
2. Seasonal music! All welcome religious, or otherwise.
3. “We are the World’s” encouraged but since I’m Canadian let’s refer to this as a “Tears are not Enough” project :-). Volunteers to organize wanted.
4. Collaborations (at our house anyway) seem to grown arms and legs, generate a large amount of guilt, and generally become creative blocks. So I’m trying to avoid calling it that :P
5. What if we all just “donate” a seasonal source file (bells and/or pells) for posterity. There are 7 of us here already in this forum…that would immediately give us 7 songs :-) and maybe we could each tap a friend to join in the chain. This way we add to the general sample pool….and let the remixing end work out naturally.
6. Commercial? What do you think? Maybe not as a goal but as a happy accident. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could generate proceeds! Even better if we could donate them.

The floor is open. Your comments please.
n9

One of the reasons i am not around much at the moment is i am involved in a bunch of projects. One being a commerical Christmas album which i recorded in the last month, live in a beautiful church in Wales.

Its worth noting that a lot of carols considered `traditional’ are in fact still in copyright i.e not older than 1930.

We also recorded some new modern carols, so to avoid any fuss perhaps its time for some orginal CC vocals here.

I would love to contribute…having some roots in Troubadorial music and early music and Chant…I think I could add something. Great Idea Miss Narva.

Why not open it up a bit to include the idea of Winter Solstice? I love Christmas Music, even though I am ethnically and religiously Jewish. I have sung most of the major works of Christmas music when at school, etc (most notably Handel’s Messiah by candlelight in a 300 year old Quaker Meetinghouse with string accompaniment - now that’s Winter glory).

Since I can neither sing nor compose I would be happy to contribute either a remix or a spoken word piece on the theme of light in the darkness, trying to avoid a specific Hanukah reference, which I find irritating when it is just thrown out as a counterbalance for Christmas. Please keep me posted. If anyone out there would like to collaborate with me, I could definitely use some help :-).

I also mention here my love for the concept of Paul Winter’s annual solstice concert in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. I listen to a bit of it each year and it is very inspiring.

ok, i started a new collaboration project for this and invited anyone that posted here, as well as a few others. this is obviously open to anyone that wants to contribute, so if you want to play, post something here saying so and i’ll shoot you an invite to join the group.

also, not trying to take over yvonne’s idea, just trying to help! :)

Count me in.

Sorry I’ve been Mr ccQuiet for a while, but intend to get back into things as soon as I finish setting up my music kit again.

I’d like to write something original, and possibly sing something traditional too. Hmm…

Thanx for the invitation MC
I have not worked on something like this before and the whole idea of making a CCMIXTER Christmas album is really intriguing!
Maybe a dance mix of one of the tracks that would be made it would be my take on this !!!

so a few years back i released a compilation for xmas. i would be willin to provide tracks whole or seperated if any are interestin enough….
it can be found free for download here
http://www.gingerbreadpatri...

with a weekly podcast we’re starting to look around for music for our upcoming “christmas special.” we’d love to see more christmas music released as CC.
i downloaded several of the tracks and such that were suggested in the forum - would love to see some more.
check out the podcast and drop us a note if you’ve got some tracks and/or interested.

I might be interested, if I find the time :) Has anyone collated a list of permitted tracks anywhere?

maybe we should resurrect this thread.

Now is the time to do it, for next season. That would give time for getting it distributed.

There is so much stuff on this page’s topic reply that its hard to follow….How is this project progressing? I’d like to contribute but can’t discern what is needed….
Thanks
Anchor