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martyb writes:

Start with legendary singer/songwriter/producer John Oates (of Hall & Oates) and then add in a two-hour collaboration to write a new song with eight people — on stage in front of a live audience. Then release the song's stems royalty-free into the public domain and encourage anyone to remix it.

Billboard has a nice writeup on the original composition: John Oates Presents Berklee College of Music Collaboration Project 'Smoke and Mirrors':

As half of one of the greatest duos in pop history, John Oates is certainly no stranger to collaboration when it comes to songwriting and recording. But despite his half-century's worth of experience in the music industry, he says he's never been in involved in anything like new song "Smoke & Mirrors" before, whose studio video Billboard is premiering today.

"It was totally unique," he says of the endeavor. "We wrote a song in two hours with eight people. It was a very unique, cool thing to do."

The eight people he refers to are students of the Berklee College of Music, where Oates served as the Herb Alpert Visitng[sic] Professor for a 2015-16 residency. During his second year at the school, the "She's Gone" singer-songwriter devised (along with music business/management associate professor Stephanie Kellar) to work with that group on a new song, which they would write together in the space of a two-hour session, in front of a live audience.

"We had a long table set up, and we had teams of two people working on each facet of the composition," Oates explains. "And I was kind of the ring master, you know, I bounced around." Different pairs of students (collectively referred to as "WritersBloc") were assigned different responsibilities -- track, lyrics, topline melody -- while their professor helped out as needed, and a studio audience observed. "It was just this sense of 'Let's see what we can do, let's see if we can create a song from scratch, in this kind of collaborative environment,'" Oates says.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer recalls being taken aback by how well the project came together. "To be honest from you, I was shocked from the very beginning that it was actually working," he admits. "It could have gone south really quickly... but everyone seemed to be able to relate." Oates explains that once the song's groove was in place, everything fell in step from there. "They came up with a certain feel, a certain tempo, which then began to dictate how the rest of the writers were going to attack the song and bring it to the next level."

Having the song's title in place also helped move the process along. "We had the title "Smoke and Mirrors," and [I said], 'That's a cool, evocative title, but it could go in any direction you want. It could literally be about smoke and mirrors, or it could be a metaphor for a relationship for whatever,'" Oates recalls. "And in the end, it did turn into a metaphor for an emotional relationship... once we locked into that, it really moved quickly."

Writing the song was only the beginning; now John Oates invites anyone to remix it:

[Continues...]

The first step was writing and recording a new song, titled "Smoke & Mirrors", which premiered last week on Billboard. The follow-up now finds Oates giving away the stems of the track, released royalty-free in the public domain, for any DJ to remix it as he or she sees fit.

The song's assets can be downloaded here. Oates is asking that remixes be uploaded to YouTube or Soundcloud with the hashtag #smokeandmirrorsremix in the title, so a complete playlist can be compiled.

"Pop songwriting today is largely done by committee," Oates says of his experience working with Berklee group WritersBloc. "We had two writers on beats, two on chords, two on melody, and two on lyrics. Each duo had a laptop, midi controller, and headphones, and sent their .wav files to a cloud service. The files were downloaded to the engineer's master laptop running ProTools and mixed on the fly so everyone could hear each other. It worked remarkably well."

"Smoke & Mirrors" features vocals by Amy & The Engine's Amy Allen, and was mixed and mastered at Boston studio The Record Company.

I can't help but notice similarities between this and the free software movement. Is this the start of a new trend in music writing and publishing? Are there any Soylentils who will take a try at their own remix?

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