A long time ago, in a song far away, I met a man named Rig, who told me the bone chilling story of Kenny Reynolds…. Ok, actually, I’ve never met Rig and he never actually told me who Kenny Reynolds is, but this mystery man has become something of a celebrity in these here parts of the internet. It started with this song:

It was so catchy, that it was remixed by a lot of people. Of course, our resident fartlord had a great spin on it, here:

Which was then remixed by jey2:

Kenny Reynolds recently made his triumphant return in this number here:

We’re not sure who Kenny Reynolds is, but the rumors swirl about the site constantly. I heard he lost two fingers in an alligator wrestling match and eats small children for lunch. I tried to google him, but all I found out was that he must ride a really cool bike.

Who do you think Kenny Reynolds is? We want to know. For the contest this week, make a song about Kenny Reynolds. Tell us the rumors you’ve heard about him: Is he a hitman for the mafia? A vampire returned from the dead? Just someone’s weird old uncle? What are we all watching out for?

The Rules ™:
1. Your song should say Kenny Reynolds in it.
2. Your song should be made in Splice.
3. Tag your entry with “WATCHOUTCHILDREN”
4. Entries should be submitted by midnight CST on March 26th.

Songs will be judged based on creativity and delicious rumor-making prowess. As always, songs with copyrighted materials will be disqualified, and we will send Kenny Reynolds to your house to get you.

We had so many great entries in the Rock the Bach contest that I thought I’d throw something slightly more challenging at you guys this week. Well, maybe challenging isn’t the right word…. how about more fun? It’s hard to remix things when they’re in different keys and tempos, so I’ve made you a little present: I put together a small set of mellowed out space loops that all go together easily in pretty much any combination. Listen:

(Don’t make fun of my l33t loop-making skills. I’m learning, too!)

For the contest this week, I want to hear how you might remix this song. Like most things I make, it’s a little on the quiet side, but if you’re not an ambient fan, feel free to throw some beats under it.

To qualify for the contest, your song should
1. Use at least three of the loops from Solar You (The Mellow Down Remix).
2. Be tagged with solaryoucontest.

The winner is going to take home an M602 Powered Audio System from Altec Lansing. This thing is great! You stick your iPod in it and then commence dancing around your kitchen to your downloaded Splice songs. It’s fun, trust me. Bring your friends.

That’s it! The usual rules about not using copyrighted works still apply, obviously. Contest entries are due by Midnight CST on March 18th.

Naturally, as easily as you can sample classical music and crank it up into a techno song, you can do the reverse, as shown here in this funny video, where a student writes a fugue based off the theme from Britney Spears’ Oops, I did it again. If you can get past the talking, the payoff is worth it.

I had a few people who didn’t know the song I “sampled” for the contest this week, so I went looking for video. Guess what I found? This really cool animation that shows you what the piano roll looks like! When you learn to play an instrument, they spend much of that time teaching you patterns. You learn the patterns of a major scale, or a minor scale, or in a chord progression… even forming chords happens in patterns. But then you learn more about patterns - how you can move them up and suddenly, they turn your song into another key, with a different mood, or how you can put three or four patterns in a row to form a bassline.

Again, people have been doing this literally for centuries now… but these days, we have software that helps with it. If you make music in a program like FL Studio or something like it, you create something called a piano roll, where you tell the computer which notes go where, and how long they last for. This is actually just like an old player piano, or a music box, which basically work the same way. If you were to put Toccata and Fugue in D minor into one of these piano rolls (like I did for this little tiny section we’re remixing this week), it looks like this video I’ve found. I think it’s fascinating to watch how often the same pattern gets used over and over - just sometimes in a different place, or maybe even flipped upside down. Watch it and see if you can spot our sample, which comes in about 1:20 or so:

And THAT is just cool. He has a few more in there, so be sure to check them out.

I had a lot of fun with the beatbox contest - there were lots of great submissions and it made it pretty hard to pick a winner. (This is often the case with our contests.. one day, I will surely have to post a tie-breaker.) But in the end, one entry really stood out to us. It was this one:

The reason we went with this submission is because it’s very much in the spirit of Splice. Amatta not only used the sequencer to record his beatboxing, he used it again to remix his sounds into a song made entirely of his own voice. We dig it.

And so, congratulations, Amatta! Splice and Altec Lansing are going to send you an FX5051 5.1 Surround Sound System, so you can turn it up nice and loud and share the audio love.

And as always, thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. Every one of you is awesome and we are glad you joined us!

Johann Sebastian Bach

I played piano for 23 years and am an often confessed classical music dork, so I am happy to announce that this year is probably the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. (We might have missed it by a couple of years.. nobody really knows, but we’re close.) To celebrate this momentous occasion, this week’s contest is to Rock the Bach.

Oh, you think I’m joking.

Well, I’m not. For one, making a loop like this is something I am good at and Splice is about sharing your talents. For two, sampling classical music has a LONG history in pop… I mean, who can forget Peter Murphy’s A Fifth of Beethoven, featured so prominently in Saturday Night Fever? And Sting had a song called Russians in the 80s that was based off themes from a Prokofiev composition. Not enough? How about Tubthumbing from Ye Olde Chumbawamba, which quotes Jeremiah Clarke’s Prince of Denmark’s March.? And of course, Nas uses a sample from Beethoven’s ever-so-popular Fur Elise in his song I can.

The point is that we’ve been sampling each other’s music for a long time. Maybe they just do it because Bach’s been dead for 250 years and can’t sue them for the distribution rights, but I like to think that it’s because the music written then still holds meaning for us now. I have a lot to say about this, so come see me again this week, but for now, I present to you our contest. Here is a Bach sample from the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, that I’ve made you, deeded to the Creative Commons and is ready for the remix rumpus:

Hard to believe that good ol’ Johann wrote it almost THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. So step right up and let’s show the old-timers how it works these days, and with any luck we’ll have good old JSB turning at a steady 500RPM in his grave.

The Rules:
1. Make any song you like, in any style, doing whatever it is that makes you happiest and you’re best at.
2. Your song must use this loop.
3. Your song has to be sequenced in the Splice sequencer - don’t upload entire MP3s!!
4. Tag your song with ROCKTHEBACH to be automatically entered to win the impossibly thin and magically delicious IM500 portable speaker system from Altec Lansing.

So now that you’re all fired up and want to beatbox just like good old MJ there, you might be wondering where to start. I found some great beatbox tutorials over at beatbox.tv. I had actually seen them ages ago and have been looking everywhere for them so I could share them with you.

Some Splicers have recommended some others that they like, such as HumanBeatBox.com, Beatboxing.com, and GotSpit.com (which seems to be a bit outdated but has a lot of good tips in it.)

Got tricks of your own? Share them! You can post here or in the forum and help out the people in your virtual neighborhood here. We’ve got some good beatboxing going on already - I found tons on the site tonight. Good work!

I never knew that Michael Jackson was such a good beatboxer! I was little in the 80’s, so that’s my excuse. But really - check out this video I found of him with Oprah from way back in the day:

edit!: Wendell informs me that this video was from the mid-nineties, actually, so… shows what I know! Can I regain any cred if I do the zombie dance from Thriller? I think I’ve watched that video 300 times, so this is somewhat feasible.

We can’t let Beatbox week roll by without sharing this video. It’s not proper beatbox, but it IS “proper” creative mashing up, AND it happens to be something you could very easily make on Splice. Now, how about that?

My Gramma used to tell me to make sure I always took care of people who took care of me, and even some who didn’t. Our user TallTechson has always been really stellar about participating in Splice, and even won the Airtone Remix contest we had a couple of weeks ago. He’s asked me to spotlight him here for a bit and it’s my pleasure to do so.

Right this very minute, he’s trying to win a record deal with Epic and needs your vote! Go stick your head in over there and give him the thumbs up! It only took me a minute to do it.

Still need convincing? Look:

How fun is that?? Now, go vote already!!