Ever wonder what you can do to help make it easy and fun to remix music with other people? The best thing that you can do is to help ensure that the right kinds of samples are going into the public pool. This ensures that when you go to make a song, you don’t have to sort through lots of awful sounds that don’t mix right.

So, what kinds of sounds belong in Splice?

• Creative Commons sounds: Basically, if you didn’t make the sound yourself, you have to have permission from the original creator to upload it to Splice. You can learn more about CC licenses here, but in the end, if you’re not sure, it’s best not to upload it.
• SOUNDS, not songs: It’s almost impossible to do anything useful with a completely mixed track, so we generally don’t allow them here, even if it’s YOUR band and YOUR song. The best thing you can do if you want to share an entire song you’ve made is to break it down into different parts: The vocal line, the drums, the guitar, etc. This makes it super easy for someone who wants to do something like change the beat to do so.
• SHORT sounds: You’ve probably noticed by now that the new sequencer doesn’t like long sounds. We don’t, either, really, because long sounds are harder to remix than short ones. If you’re uploading your vocal track, for example, try to split it into smaller parts, like different verses and a chorus. You’re going to get a lot more remix action from the community by doing it that way.

Cleaning up after yourself

Did you know that in the new Splice, you can delete your own sounds and songs? The only rule is that they can’t be in use by another song on the site. So, if you’ve ever accidentally uploaded multiple copies of sounds, or dozens of Work In Progress copies of a song, or maybe even something that’s copyrighted that you uploaded as a test before you understood what CAN be here, now is a great time to go through and clean up your old files. It’s really easy. Just open the sound or song’s info page by clicking the title, and then look for the delete button on the left side.

Community Watch

Another new feature is that you can now flag someone else’s sound or song for being copyrighted or inappropriate. This brings them to our attention so that an admin can delete them if they don’t belong here. Copyrighted sounds are things like mp3s ripped from CDs or p2p sites and are usually things you’ve heard on the radio, but they can also be things like movie quotes and video game music. Inappropriate sounds are things like hate speech or anything depicting graphic violence. We don’t actually delete things just because of bad language… we’re working on a parental advisory feature that will help people avoid those when they wish to. If you see a sound that you suspect shouldn’t be on Splice, please let us know by flagging it. Just click the title of the song or sound and then look on the left (under the speaker) for “Flag as Copyrighted” and “Flag as Abusive” options.

With a little help from everyone, we can keep the sounds on Splice great for remixing. Thanks!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.