Some of my friends have noted and I’ve heard other people around here mention that a lot of the remixes “sound like songs”. For a few people I’ve heard it from, they clarified when I asked that they meant it sounded like an original composition.

I understand for the purposes of the site mechanics, a remix is a track that uses samples from within the system.

What I am wondering is what people think of the differance in an aesthetic sense. In the technical sense, or taking “remix” and “original” as artistic labels, what is the differance between the two? What draws the line between “remix” and “original song”? Is the line hard to determine? Is there a line at all?

I’m just curious to hear people’s thoughts on this.

*meow*

For perspective’s sake, you could place a Celine Dion lyric over a techno track and call it a remix, as has been done. Remove the lyric from this track, and it *might* pass as an original, depending…. interesting question.

Hmm, things get complicated. Now we have three distinctions: remix, original, and cover. The question “Where’s the line” remains at the heart of the matter though, huh?

Here’s a link to a very similar past discussion. I think it might be interesting to see a diagram of the different types of songs that incorporate samples with mashups and remixes being a subset of songs that incorporate samples and that being a subset of songs, etc…..it’s tricky, because there are original songs made without samples but that may be sampled, original songs that incorporate samples (a subset of the technically codified “remix” on ccM), samples that have not been derived from songs, the true remix (which I think of as recognizably a new version of an existing song), mashups (which I think of as being significantly and recognizably derivative of two or more works of art in a way that a new work of art is made), etc. etc…..it is interesting to discuss, but as a wise man once said, it’s all “still music”, and thanks to cc we *can* “use it”….. .. .

I might as well weigh in here…

Some ‘remixes’ sound like ‘songs’? Maybe the word ‘remix’ has lost any meaning. Maybe that’s a good thing ;)

The current structure of the site is based on our first year’s experience of getting it completely wrong and confusing — now it’s just sort of wrong and slightly less confusing once you get the gist of the thing. It’s as ‘simple’ as I could come up with considering that we’re trying to prove, though a living example, what the CC licenses enable - creating new works, building on what’s come before with a set of well understood, reasonable requirements, none of which hinder the creative process.

Hence the emphasis on ‘I/This used samples from’, ‘samples from this are used in…’ terminology. I would love to use a term other than remix but whatever the replacement is has to fit in the navigation tabs and menus ;)

But there’s more…

Philosophically speaking I’ve come to the firm conclusion that there really is no such thing as ‘remixing’ as distinct from ‘composing.’ I’ve been deeply involved in both worlds (as artificially and unfortunately segregated as they are) so, yes, I claim a certain degree of what may be termed expertise and I’m here to tell you that the mental, creative, i.e. internal process that goes into composing is 100% the same as what goes into what we call remixing. The only difference being the term remix is applied to compositions that re-record previously captured performances (or previously re-recorded performances ad infinitum) and the term composition is applied to works where the artist has trained their body to re-perform the previous works. This distinction is nothing more than an artifact of history, or in the case of remixing, the lack of it. A few generations from now that distinction won’t even be there.

In both cases the resulting work, if successful, is a uniquely personal re-arrangement of snippets of works very familiar to the artist and that reaches the observer in an emotional way making the process itself, ironically, invisible.

Dividing a site like ccMixter into categories based on the process by which the compositions are created (‘artist x used the whole a cappella’, ‘artist y used one line from the a cappella and a snare hit from freesound’) seems unnatural (read: cerebral) when talking about the experience of the listener.

Having said that there is a teaching/learning component to ccMixter so it could serve less technical musicians to get a feel for the different processes if perhaps the ‘How I Did It’ interface included a tagging system that could catalog the different approaches and allowed us to see a group of uploads that were done using similar techniques. There might be something there…

VS

re: Distinctions made in the commercial world between remix or not & the ccMixter usage

I think we’re all pretty much in agreement (thanks Jack for the input, and Teru earlier) ccMixter has a different meaning for the word remix as compared to the commercial world for all the reasons discussed previously.

The Webster definition is simply “to mix again”, I actually think MCJackInTheBox has a point, this is new ground and maybe it would have been interesting to invent some new term. After all, whoever heard of a web site pre-internet, other than arachnologists ;) Blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. Silliness aside, there is a valid rationale, where a new word or group of words could describe this new evolutionary process. In many ways remix just doesn’t encapsulate all the different possibilities, compositionally and contributory.

Please Victor, don’t have a heart attack, I’m just thinking out loud here ;) Though it could be something to openly discuss in future. I do think there’s a lot to be said for involving the community in the fundamentals of it’s own environmental essence. I’m sure there’s a lot of really great ideas ripe for submission ;)

re: Distinctions made between what is attribution and what isn’t:

Quote : That is more a question of licensing, as in: what constitutes proper attribution and is discussed at some length here with lawyers and such. At ccM we follow the instructions as given to us by the law staff at CC (the folks that wrote the licenses) and they tell me we satisfy the terms of the license so I’m prone to take their word for it.

Oh, I don’t doubt you do follow their guidance, however I still feel the spirit of the license isn’t upheld when it’s not made absolutely clear who did what at all times. The attribution license is after all called that for a reason, and having read through it I was actually surprised by it’s clarity and insistence. I’ve read lots of artist citing it as the way forward and being really encouraged by the chance of some kind of recognition, props, kudos, call it what you will. I don’t see it as you do, a pseudo-cash, because artists who choose CC are absolutely not in it for the money…..yet. Your comment got me thinking though, and if CC is to become a valid alternative to the “signed” mentality the attribution chain becomes totally essential. Even for something as simple as a resume.

Looking at it purely from an artist point of view, I think it’s worth implementing some kind of tree-view just to simply see who was/is involved. Surely this will encourage more involvement. I can almost hear CDK and Porchcat planning some kind of push-the-tree colab as I type ;)

I really don’t feel comfortable with the “last one is it” way the tracks are presented, I totally understand why you’ve done it like that, but baring in mind everyone is equal who contributes (because there’s no money to argue about and hopefully no super egos) I think it’s far too tipped towards the last contributor.

To return to a previous example, a contributor who downloads tracks from you, teru, CDK and EJG can quite easily add next to nothing and re-upload under their id taking the lions share of credit pie. Sure you can maybe delete and ban him/her, but only if you spot it and take the moral high-ground as super-victor.

Again, I’m thinking out loud here, no babies required! I just think it may be necessary in the long term to switch the onus to the track (or project) and have contributors who are all equal - including the next-to-nothing uploader. You could then switch the responsibility to the contributory group to deal with time wasters, in the same way open source software does. Treating a track as a “project” also has organisational and management benefits, imagine being able to set a schedule, reminders and requests from your project page….

Urm….I digress….lol :)


Quote : Each and every MP3 is stamped with the URL to the track’s page, which in turn has direct links to the sources in the ‘human readable’ HTML and in the ‘machine’ code RDF/XML for bots and search engines to read. At ccM we’ve taken the extra step to add a ‘featuring’ field that we stamp directly into the TITLE tag of the MP3 which is often very prominently displayed in media players. Again, at the risk of sounding defensive (and prickly at the notion that attribution is ‘lost’), …. I’m guessing ccM will be the first to implement whatever this group decides.

Well in that case it’s easy for the ccMixter coders to add to their already wonderful work the full attribution tree to the ID3 comment field ;)

How about stamping the artist field with “Creative Commons” (or a new word for a community production)?
Then we can pressure the authors of the players to detect this and display full the attribution which they can fetch from the comments field.

At the risk of sounding whiney, I appreciate what you’ve done but there’s no attribution chain beyond the entirely optional “featuring” field which seems to me to be an unnecessary work-around. A full attribution tree would after all negate the need for a featuring field, which again harks back to the recording industry model of music branding for marketing and egos.

Once again Victor, thanks for taking the time to answer these posers. I offer up these comments and suggestions merely to prompt your response in the hope that we can have an honest debate about these issues. …and btw I’d be happy to take some of my concerns to the legal mailing list if you think that’s more appropriate.

:)

ooOoo! Talk about a low ball, lol :)

*clears throat*

From a traditional perspective, which I guess is a good starting point, the originator of the music is technically the attributed author. So for instance, I have a bunch of Depeche Mode remixes, by people like Francois Kervorkian and The KLF. Despite their significant contributions they remain credited with **remix and additional production

I think the key to that kind of attribution is that they have been tasked to do a specific job. “Here, remix this wouldya….for this small bag of money”. They started with a finished item, usually the album mix. The brand that is DM is maintained, and most of the integral structure of the song. The voices aren’t changed, other than production tweaks and tricks.

ccMixter breaks the rules by inviting us all in at a much earlier stage in the creative process, which is maybe why Victor said for him the process is the same for remixing as composition, he has no restrictions, am I even close Victor?

However, we don’t all always see it the same clear way. For instance, I’ve personally contributed vocals and remixes, and vocals from within remixes. It’s simple enough to understand a vocal melody, and attribute accordingly when it’s used much like any other instrument. BUT sometimes the attribution is lost when there’s a multi-generation remix….and if you remix a remix of a remix, then the trouble really starts! :) This is one of my gripes with the ccMixter, it doesn’t seem to aggregate the attribution as imho it should :

http://ccmixter.org/media/f...

…”uses samples from” indicates I’m the author. Where, strictly speaking the author of the original music was the GhostK team…and there’s a list of attribution associated which we never see unless we track back.

For those who are still following this, I took the GhostK track and remixed and did my own thing with it, altering the structure musically, adding original vocals. Then along came lethal, shockshadow, ghost_k, penston, cdk, teru - to remix again. lol :)

I’m not 100% sure how you’d fix this without a re-structure. It seems to me that attribution should be inherited by each generation so credit is never lost.

It would also be useful when uploading a remix to be able to classify your additions, allowing a remix to display essential contributors and their parts much like credits in a movie. This would get around the issue of who started what, as anyone can contribute at any time and they become part of the attribution rather than over-riding everyone else.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
State of Everyday Madness
Remix By : tacet
- - - - - - - - Attribution - - - - - - - -
Composition : GhostK, tacet
Lyrics : tacet
Samples : GhostK, tacet, Trifonic, PorchCat, MarcoRaaphorst, Wicked boy, Wicked Allstars
Previous Mix By : GhostK


You could also add others, “Production” and “Engineering”. The point is as the remixes happen the attribution grows, no credit is ever lost, fulfilling the terms and the spirit of the CC License.


I think there’s also confusion amongst the mixters, myself included as to what you can/can’t upload on the site. The situation of not being able to upload something you see as final is crazy. GhostK thought their mix WAS final until I picked it up, then look what happened!!

Please reconsider the stance of no-final-mixes, especially as parts of the structure of this site a geared towards the final mix, the Editors Picks for instance as far as I know has never featured a particularly nice recording of a saxophone.

Quote: Just because someone has been tasked with something does not mean the person asking for the task understands (or wants to understand) the lack of distinction between composing and remixing. Every composer starts ‘with a finished item’ — that is, the music swirling around in their heads are accrued over a lifetime of listening with a musician’s ear. The music in their head is directly analogous to the /samples directory on your hard drive, the latter being a physical manifestation of the former.

That wasn’t really my point, my point was and still is that when someone is given the task of remixing a commercial recording and that recording has an existing brand it’s labeled a “remix” irrespective of their contribution. You can’t argue for or against this, it’s how it is. Unfortunately, this makes things difficult when using an established term, “remix” as a “catch all” in the context of original compositions.

To put it another way, Porch Cat’s original question related to what’s a remix and what’s original, if we were to applying ccMixter rules to commercial recordings we’d end of with a box full of the same song by 100 different artists (where credit goes to the last in the chain), all derivative works of one original seed idea.

This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just different, and of course exceptionally difficult to market or sell.

Quote: No, the samples here are just cleaner and easier to work with because our users demand they be. Samples with instruments overlapping each other are hardly ever listened and very, very rarely used in remixes. The users has spoken on this very loudly. Meanwhile, even if I’m working with fully mixed bootlegs the process of putting samples together in a newly created ‘remix’ is the same process used by composers who put together snippets of music they’ve heard before to newly created ‘compositions.’

Oh, I agree. Samples which overlap are exceptionally difficult to work with, and environmental effects…uh oh! However, ccMixter currently works bottom-up. I can submit a sample, a rap, a vocal, a dripping tap, and then someone can pick that up and work with it. There’s currently no allowance for me to post up something further along the line (along with workable samples), and say “hey guys remix this!”, unless I add a token sample to my mix. Only the competitions work like this.

Quote: My overall point is that the “difference� between remixing and composing is artificial, based on tools of the trade and that the internal mental processes, the creative part is actually the same thing: creating new things based on injecting personal, emotional nuances to previous works.

I’m not disputing your points with differences mentally from our perspective, as the people who do this stuff for a living or for fun. Artificial or not, there is a pre-existing distinction between remixing and composing in the world of commercial recordings. It’s not my distinction, and I dislike it as much as you.

Quote: Attribution is another artificial construct we’ve layered onto the creative process. Again, no less messy in composition than remixing. The only difference is that we are used to and overlook the issues with attribution regarding ‘traditional’ compositions……For several reasons, some more understandable than others, musicians who use vinyl and digital samples (but not synth patches) are treated completely differently and we’ve all been trained to think of attribution and monetization of sources as some new, scary issue bedeviling the creation of music. I’m not buying it.

Irrespective of philosophical and motivational factors, in the context of Creative Commons attribution, people who have made their work available through a Creative Commons license should be attributed, there’s no room for argument, it’s a license. Irrespective of how you or I feel about it. Synth patches are sold under license too, by the manufacturers of the keyboards and sample packs, if contributed as an original sample to ccMixer they should be attributed to the contributor.

Off topic, but I just read about a guy who ccLicensed his pictures on Flickr and Microsoft used one of them on a blog without crediting him as the license stipulated. All hell broke loose.

Quote: If by ‘lost’ you mean you have to click once on an explicit link (identified by the name of the piece and the source’s author) then I guess what you’re asking for is a user interface change or alternative view, perhaps a ‘tree’ view of the attribution. Sorry if this sounds defensive but I hardly think this indicates that something is fundamentally broken on ccMixter. As far as I can tell your bottom line complaint is that you have click (once) to find the source’s source. um, noted.

No need to be defensive or not, and no need to be sorry mate, these are only my opinions take them or leave them. I appreciate everyone has their opinion and I commend all you’ve done so far with ccMixter. We all hate tricky questions, though sometimes they inspire and move things forward, they’re not tricky fer nurthin ;)

I think a “tree” view of the attribution may well be a solution to at least satisfy the license terms, that was my main concern, satisfy that and you’re just left with dealing with egos.

Quote: It would also be useful when uploading a remix to be able to classify your additions…no credit is ever lost, fulfilling the terms and the spirit of the CC License. People, including ironically enough yourself later in your post, complain the process is already too complicated and I’m not eager to make the posting process more complex.

I don’t remember saying the process was too complex? Sorry, I actually think you’ve done a good job in clarifying a lot of the issues I had with it a while back. The “final mix” thing isn’t a complexity issue, it’s a different issue entirely. Maybe it simply needs clairfying for people in the FAQ section?

Q. I have a track which I’ve worked on for 2 months and it’s almost finished, I’d like some help mixing and remixing it, I’m happy to upload all of the tracks seperately along with an example of the current mix. It’s an entirely original work. What should I do next?

A. ???

Quote: the Editors Picks for instance as far as I know has never featured a particularly nice recording of a saxophone.

Ed picks are specifically for showcasing complete, podcast/radio ready complete pieces of music. If your sample (including nice recording of a saxophone) are included in one of the MixStar Sample Packs consider it ed picked.

ok, fair enough. Maybe another one for the FAQ or for the footer of the Ed pick page?

The podcast/radio reference is a good point, shouldn’t the media downloads include a license and attribution (the full tree) hmm?

re: Distinctions made in the commercial world between remix or not:

Jumping through an arbitrary terminology hoop to make the boss happy is, you’re right, part of every day life.

I’m advising musicians to keep these arbitrary marketing artifacts out of the creative process.

So if indeed Porchcat is asking: “What does ‘remix’ mean in the commercial world?” my answer is “Nothing” If you are hired to do a ‘remix’ you still have to front-load the job with a discussion as to what they, specifically, mean. (If you’ve ever been hired to do a “jazz” gig you know exactly what I’m talking about.)

re: Distinctions made at ccM between remix or not:

The choice of the term ‘remix’ at ccM has nothing at all to do with the previous discussion.

We chose ‘remix’ because there are 5 letters in it and therefore fits on the menus and tabs.


re: Distinctions made between what is attribution and what isn’t:

That is more a question of licensing, as in: what constitutes proper attribution and is discussed at some length here with lawyers and such.

At ccM we follow the instructions as given to us by the law staff at CC (the folks that wrote the licenses) and they tell me we satisfy the terms of the license so I’m prone to take their word for it.

Each and every MP3 is stamped with the URL to the track’s page, which in turn has direct links to the sources in the ‘human readable’ HTML and in the ‘machine’ code RDF/XML for bots and search engines to read. At ccM we’ve taken the extra step to add a ‘featuring’ field that we stamp directly into the TITLE tag of the MP3 which is often very prominently displayed in media players.

Again, at the risk of sounding defensive (and prickly at the notion that attribution is ‘lost’), I’ve downloaded a lot of music from around the web and nothing I’ve seen comes close to this level of care in attribution.

Discussions at the metadata list are devoted to finding universal ways of putting even more information, not only into music, but into all forms of media. I’m guessing ccM will be the first to implement whatever this group decides.

Quote: I have a track which I’ve worked…

If you want it remixed then upload the individual tracks here, either as an ZIP archive or using ‘Manage Files’ after an initial upload to upload the individual tracks.

Quote: I don’t remember saying the process was too complex?

That’s correct, you used the term ‘confusing’ and I conflated.

Quote: The “final mix” thing isn’t a complexity issue, it’s a different issue entirely. Maybe it simply needs clarifying for people in the FAQ section?

From the ‘About’ link on every page on the site see “I’m a songwriter, is there anything here for me?” and “How can I tell if my original music is ripe for remixing?”, in the Help section of the forums see What About Original Material with translations in 4 languages.

Quote: Maybe another one for the FAQ or for the footer of the Ed pick page?

On the front page of the site for over a year now we point “Remixers” at the samples page (which features the MixStar packs) and “Podcasters, directors and music lovers” at the Ed Picks page.

as i’d consider myself both a songwriter and a remix producer, i’d say the distinction is pretty arbitrary and subjective, and shouldn’t cloud the art form.

i’ve been writing and recording original music much longer than i’ve been remixing, yet most of what i do these days are “remixes”, but to me, a remix by the nature of the word implies re-arranging an original mix, which at least for me on ccmixter, rarely if ever happens. the majority of the time, i’m working with a random set of samples with a like-minded bpm in a consistent key and build my arrangement just as if i was putting together an original song, it’s just that i have a virtual band instead. i go through the same creative process with arrangement, instrumentation, and production. using samples has freed me from the restrictions of the instruments in my studio and the inabilty to play others. before i had a bbgun and now i have an arsenal. so samples to me are like instruments in a song, or pieces of my musical puzzle.

so for me anyways, i’d say “remixes” can be “songs”, but not all remixes are songs.

i think what we do here deserves better than being labeled just a song. or a remix.

it’s web music 2.0