Posts tagged with music

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February 3, 2009 — Mickey M

A Guided Tour of Mashups

Welcome, thank you for your interest in mashups and for joining me today.

Allow me to take you on a strong down Mashup Lane. Please note the internet below our feet, the crumbling ideals of copyright law behind us and the numerous clubs and DJs on our left and right sides. Up ahead you will see a new future of music interpretation. Hold on please!

DJs make mashups by combining music from two or more songs to make some new, derivative, arguably quite creative work. Since these seem to go against the core of copyright law as it is enforced the mashups generally are not sold but played by DJs at clubs and distributed online. Exceptions to this norm include Girl Talk and Big D and the Kids Table.

While many musical architects draw from other tracks and reuse beats and musical segments, mashup creation tends to emphasize the recognizability of the songs used. An effective mashup will create an ‘ah-ha’ moment of sorts, or a subtle smirk, as the songs taken out of context become more than they were alone. That sense of synergy makes mashup listening a very entertaining and rewarding pasttime, and thus my collection has grown steadily as I pursue even more DJs and compilations.

The next stop on our tour up ahead will be the collection complex. Many mashups are distributed as albums instead of individual tracks, often with a theme. DJ Danger Mouse created The Grey Album by combining Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles The Beatles, known frequently as The White Album. Taking great liberties with Green Day, the mashup team Dead Grey made American Idiot into American Edit. Each holiday season a team of DJs create Santastic, a mashup album full of Christmas-themed creations.

In San Francisco Adrian & the Mysterious D have been hosting mashup nights at clubs in San Francisco, currently at the DNA Lounge. Their site also collects mashups monthly and releases the best of the year in a collection each December. For the beginning connoisseur I highly recommend the content at Bootie and the annual collections.

When you have had a chance to visit more neighborhoods in Mashuptown you will start to develop a personal taste. I’d like to take this chance, before the end of our tour, to share with you some of my favorite sites.