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posted by CoolHand on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the his-remix-is-on-our-list dept.

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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  • (Score: 1) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2016, @05:12AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday October 21 2016, @05:12AM (#417114)

    I'm assuming you'd want the granularity of a mike on each voice/instrument (at least). It would seem that this would limit things, yes. I've no professional experience with audio, though I did setup concerts at my college back-in-the-day, and even mixed a concert once. Things have changed a lot since then.
    Update: my D/L connection just timed out and got dropped. May have to hold off trying it for myself for a while.

    I'm somewhat involved in the audio world, both live and studio, and other than the UI changing with digital mixers, it's all pretty much the same, so you're an old pro and you'd fit right in. I usually prefer analog boards for one-off mixes- digital takes much longer to set up, but you do have much more functionality, and in a smaller space. I'm getting used to them anyway. It is nice to save settings if you work with a repeating band/show.

    I was able to download it. Interesting project. I'm not sure why they do "stems" but maybe to make it easier for people to work with, or to reduce butchery? I think the Smoke and Mirrors "stems" are pretty much the main tracks. If you watch the video, the backing vocals were done with 4 singers and 1 mic, the drums are synth output, etc. Not sure why they split out the stereo into 2 mono .wav but it reminds me of older Mac days- I forget the file format but you'd have to export stuff to 2 mono files, then recombine them into a .wav.

  • (Score: 1) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2016, @05:16AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday October 21 2016, @05:16AM (#417116)

    Not sure why they split out the stereo into 2 mono .wav but it reminds me of older Mac days- I forget the file format but you'd have to export stuff to 2 mono files, then recombine them into a .wav.

    Adding to this: it occurred to me that you might want to process L & R tracks differently, for whatever reason, just for creative effect, like different compression/EQ/whatever plugins, so that's why the separate mono files.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday October 21 2016, @12:45PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 21 2016, @12:45PM (#417212) Journal

      Perhaps using mono left/right tracks is to facilitate pan — apparent left/right location of source on the "stage"? Although with stereo, one presumably has access to separate left/right audio, as well. In other words, it could just be an artifact of the software they were using, as the GP poster suggested.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2016, @04:07PM

        by RS3 (6367) on Friday October 21 2016, @04:07PM (#417295)

        In most, if not all DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software you always have a stereo pan control on each track, whether it's a mono or stereo source track. If you're doing surround/Dolby 5.1, etc., final output then you'll have a virtual joystick (where the pan would be) so even more output options. And you can always split a stereo source track into 2 mono. I can imagine doing different EQ and other effects on each of the L and R tracks to get an interesting stereo image. I'm going to try it with this project and I'll post it somewhere if I make anything presentable. Of course by then this discussion will probably be closed.

        I remember seeing a similar project a few years ago. They had a contest and picked a winner, runner-up, etc. By "remix" I thought they just meant re-mix the tracks, but people added their own instruments, vocals, etc., and radically changed the song. Not what I would have done, but impressive and inspiring creativity.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICS2AuGLtOo/ [youtube.com]

        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday October 21 2016, @04:37PM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 21 2016, @04:37PM (#417307) Journal

          I very much appreciate the feedback and your expertise! I never got into that part of the audio world. (Sigh; maybe in a different life.)

          Running a board during a concert was an experience I'll never forget. But that is like turning the knobs on a home stereo compared to what you are describing.

          I hope you have fun and look forward to hearing what you come up with!

          Should you decide to post any of your remixes, I ask you to remember the "SMOKE AND MIRRORS REMIX TERMS AND CONDITIONS that were on the STEMS download page [musicmarketingreview.com].

          DISCLAIMER: I've had conversations with one of the participants, but I am not involved with this project in any way. I just want them to receive their due.

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
          • (Score: 1) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2016, @05:50PM

            by RS3 (6367) on Friday October 21 2016, @05:50PM (#417337)

            Thanks martyb! I'm brimming with mostly useless information. Yes, of course I will abide by the rules of the terms and conditions. I had saved their terms page before downloading the .zip and I agree with it. It's pretty awesome. I'm a hacker guitarist and 100% on the side of musicians. My involvement in audio is only for the musicians and listeners.

            I think you should get involved with audio! For recording there are dozens of great softwares. All the top pros use Pro Tools. That mentality bothers me- the concept that you're an idiot if you use anything else. But you have to buy and maintain an iLock and license- big $ and no good for a very occasional hacker like me. I own a Digital Performer license, which is lifetime, no iLock or other locks, and as far as I know, unlimited # tracks. With Pro Tools you pay even more $ to go over 32 tracks. I don't know nor care about the details- I just know some real recording engineers. For you I would suggest Audacity for some things, but also try Reaper- it is, IMHO, the single best piece of software on Earth- not just DAW but everything. When you see how small the .exe and .dlls are (all written in Assembly) you'll understand. It comes with a mind-numbing array of plugins. I only use it for quick stuff- I'm just more used to Performer. Get into it now so you can set up the 1st recording studio on Mars. ;)