In conjunction with Mininova, Simon Iddol has re-released the entire WHA!? bootleg series. See his post about it here or jump right on to Mininova and start downloading (part 1 and part 2). If you are wondering what the heck WHA!? is, wonder no more: it’s a collection of some of the finest mashups and bootlegs from the scene’s best producers. Definitely worth downloading.
If you’ve spent any time in Ableton Live, you are likely familiar with “warp markers” and how they are used to mark beats in an audio file. Using these markers, Ableton can time stretch or compress an audio clip to keep it in sync with a master project tempo. It’s a very neat feature, and one of the main reasons I started using Ableton Live in the first place.
Aligning all clips to a master project tempo works great for composing electronic music, but when you’re working with a rock track of varying tempo, you might not want to impose such exacting tempo quantization to your audio clips. Luckily, Ableton can use the warp markers from a specific audio clip (ie. your live drummer clip) as a real-time control for the master project tempo. In other words, as the clip markers of your rock track indicate a speed-up or slow-down in clip tempo, Ableton will automatically warp other clips in the project to that same tempo.
If you’re anything like me, you often find yourself with a large pile of MP3 files scattered about in your download directory that need to be moved into the iTunes library. Normally this involves highlighting and manually dragging these files into iTunes. Read on for my quick tip on how to automate this repetitive task.
Radiohead is making the stems to Nude (off their In Rainbows album) available for download on iTunes. Purchase the stems before April 8th and Apple will throw in an accompanying GarageBand file for the track.
Ironically, while the song itself is 99 cents, the 5 stems are also 99 cents each! How is it that the sum of the parts (the song) is less expensive than the individual parts packaged separately? And why do they charge for remix stems to begin with? Shouldn’t they be giving these away for free in hopes that people will create the next genius remix, thus creating free hype and buzz for the band?
Don’t get me wrong — I applaud bands like Radiohead that are willing to experiment with new distribution and pricing models for their music. I just think that charging $5 for the stems to a single track is a bit greedy, especially if the point is to galvanize some sort of fan remix effort. In the end, I feel like this is just another effort to squeeze more money out of an album at the expense of their most dedicated fan base.
Anyways, I’ll stop my bitching and conclude on a positive note: the tracks aren’t wrapped in DRM and instead distributed in iTunes Plus format (256 kbps AAC encoding, no DRM). They got that part right at least!
BTW, Ramdom Thoughts is coming up on show #100. Scotty is actively soliciting exclusive mashups for his centennial anniversary, so if you’re a mashup producer and you have something to contribute, get in contact with him.
