You have to give credit where credit is due, and I am cracking up and happily pointing all eyes to fartlord’s new song:
You know you’re GOOD when you can take random samples and not only line them up into a great song, but also make them RHYME. Hilarious.
If any of you love LiveJournal and Splice as much as I do, you’re going to love this:
You can now embed your Splice songs right into your Livejournal.
It hasn’t been possible until now to embed content unless it was from a whitelisted site, such as YouTube. However, thanks to their new media embeds, you can bring your favorite Splice songs to your stories and share them with your friends. It’s really easy.
First, open the song you want and look for this section, located on the bottom right of your page, and copy the code in the Player Tag box:
Then, start a new entry in your LJ. Click the new “Embed Media” button at the top of the entry box, and then post your Splice code in the window that appears:
That’s it! This is great.. there are so many excellent music communities there that I’m sure you’ll find some new ears for your songs. Also, did you know that you can add the Splice feed to your friend’s list? It’s a great way to keep up with our contests, stories and news! Rock on, LJers.
I got some mail today about SheStory.tv. SheStory is “a new online magazine inspired to cover stories of women in history and women working today who are the embodiment of spirit and passion”. We think that’s cool. What’s especially cool is that they’ve used some sounds that I uploaded and made as the theme for their video casts. Their recent story about jewelry maker and entrepreneur Kate Pokorny uses samples from my song The Missing Beat. How fun!
I love seeing Splice music used in video. Rig has done really well with this, having had his samples used in several stories at
I was reading gurdonark’s blog this morning and learned that his song Mourning Pluto was featured in matzumotto’s film called Time Sees and Hears, which was recently featured in the Kosmorama Film Stunt competition. (You can watch it here on YouTube.) The film also features music from kasda.
I love seeing so much creativity happening involving Splice. If you’re using music from Splice in your project, I want to hear about it! It’s my favorite thing to blog about and I’m always happy to plug your site or project if you’re working with our users to make it sound good.
It’s springtime and the sun is shining here in Chicago and everyone I know is doing a little Spring Cleaning. On Splice, we’ve been hustling hard to tidy up loose ends on the upcoming release, and I can tell everyone here is excited to be preparing for it’s launch. It’s seems like such a short time ago that we launched our initial release, and I’m still amazed at how we’ve grown. I found an email the other day where I was reporting to someone that we “already have 318 users!” Hahaaaa! We’ve grown tremendously since we’ve been here, because our users keep bringing great content which inspires other people.
Someone who has been with us for a very long time is jordanespionage. You have probably seen his work on the site, and he was kind enough to let us do a feature about him which you can read here. Jordan has a band called Common Man Down, and I’ve been enjoying their take on industrial. I mentioned to Jordan that the samples he’s been uploading to Splice are really great, and he offered to let us remix a Common Man Down song for a contest. He went through for us and split up their song Purge into tasty bite-sized morsels, and you can find the Splice version of it here:
You can hear the complete version of this song on the Common Man Down myspace page.
We’d love to hear your version. Here are the rules:
1. Remix Purge using the Splice sequencer. Your remix can be any flavor you like. (That’s the point, after all, isn’t it?)
2. Your remix must contain at least three of the sounds from the original.
3. Tag your remix with “REMIXPURGE” to be automatically entered.
Entries are due in by Midnight CST, Sunday April 29th, 2007.
Special thanks to Common Man Down for sharing their sounds with Splice. Be sure to drop by the Common Man Down myspace page to hear the full version of Purge and, of course, to tell them thank you.
Wendell just sent me this little gem. Who would have thought that adding a clown costume could do so much for a classic piece of music….
I’m actually pretty glad we extended the deadline for Remix Anonymix, because I got this great entry from Ograstamon that wouldn’t have been eligible otherwise. You guys submitted some really great entries, and I was having trouble choosing among them, but when I played this one, I just got goosebumps, which is always a sure sign of a winner. Personally, I’m usually pretty down on sirens, but given the subject of the Martin Luther King Jr. speech in the sample from rig, they’re actually appropriate. A great choice of samples for a great song. Listen:
We’re going to send Ograstamon an M602 Powered Audio System from our excellent sponsor Altec Lansing. Be sure to have a listen to all of the entries, though - there were a couple of others in there that were quite good, like this one from Fenix, with vocals courtesy of Groovebox:
And of course, the biggest thank you of all goes to Anonymix, without whom there would have been no contest at all. Thank you so much for taking the spotlight for us and helping inspire others to make some great music.
Have you met Groovebox yet? He has been making great music on Splice since he won our very first contest with his epic hit Partyboy, still easily the funniest thing to ever come out of this website. He’s been at it again lately, putting up so many great sounds that I don’t even know where to begin. We love what he’s doing here, and we know that you do, too, so we’re celebrating Groovebox this week with his very own contest. Here’s a little taste of some of his recent songs:
See what I mean?
The rules are simple:
1. Make a song in Splice that uses at least three of Groovebox’s delicious sounds
2. Tag your song with remixgroovebox to be automatically entered in the contest.
Entries due by midnight CST on Sunday.
Rig sent me an interesting video from Dick Dale, The King of Surf Guitar.
He has an excellent point about remaining independant. Any musician will tell you that when you write a song, it comes from your heart and your guts - an audible reflection of your own experiences and emotions. It’s astounding how many artists can’t even play their own music without getting the OK from someone in a suit first. I had the exquisite pleasure of sitting front row center at a Joni Mitchell concert a few years back, and at one point, she started to tell us the story of how she didn’t even own the rights for Blue. I remember watching her literally choking back tears as she recounted tales of music just for the sake of contractual obligation. Other artists have made similiar statements; I remember John Mellencamp’s Rough Harvest album, which completed his contract with Mercury, had a big stamp on the disc itself which I believe said “fulfilled.” And who can forget how Prince used to write Slave on his face at all his shows? It was his way of pointing out that because he doesn’t own any of the rights to his own music, he was really more like the slave machine in a studio, which creates copies of songs from the master recordings.
The battle between artists and their labels has been very interesting to watch as the internet gives musicians more and more venues to promote themselves without going through a label. I don’t know a band that doesn’t have a MySpace page these days, and with good reason: MySpace has more users than Mexico has people. It’s like having an entirely new country to market to - the 11th biggest on earth if it actually existed.
We think Creative Commons licensing takes this one step further, by easily allowing artists to control what rights they keep and what rights they share, for all of their works. I think that in music it’s especially important to share - think how many people have covered just the songs of Robert Johnson, or how many recordings there are of Joni’s “River”. Think of all the samples that make it into your favorite hip hop songs. There are entire genres of music spawned out of single samples. Creative Commons licenses make it possible for artists to allow this kind of positive re-use of their music, without giving up the originals.
For a long time now, Splice has supported the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows people to re-use your music however they would like, as long as they are crediting you on their final product. The feedback we’ve been getting from artists and Splicers alike is that while you love this feature, you would sometimes like to be slightly more restrictive in how people can use your music, particularly in it’s allowed uses commercially. We want everyone - even professional musicians - to feel comfortable sharing their work in this venue. Splice is a great place to promote your band and let your fans get involved in your music. We’re aiming to keep it that way. We took this under careful consideration while planning the new version of Splice. Coming soon to a computer near you will be more choices in how to share your music with others, so that you can do it with confidence.
That’s just how we roll.
Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you know that we’re extending the deadline for the Remix Anonymix contest until Midnight on Sunday the 15th. My computer was down all week this week, and it didn’t seem fair to give you only three days to work on a new contest. We know that good music has to brew.
Enjoy your bonus time. I’m excited to see the results on Monday morning!