Someone posts a sound. Any sound, it doesn't matter. This is the root.
After a "root" file is made active, it can be modified by any user on the (semi-?) anonymous service. As long as the person modifying provides some form of documentation as to what was done with the sound (a clip of the sound(s) added must be posted alongside the changed version?) they can post their modifications. Users vote on these modifications in order to draw attention to the changes judged "best." The process repeats, as the modified sound can now be used as a root file in its own right.
In this way, largely software-development based principles such as "beta testing" and "open-source" are applied to the creation of music. It is harnessing the hyperconnected, Internet-saturated life of the modern individual into the act of creation. Anyone can do what they want with what is given to them, as well as bring their own toys to the sandbox. In theory, the highest rated files will be the democratically elected best pieces of music, leading to talented users receiving attention/opportunities/etc. It is both on the cutting edge of technology and a pure distillation of the D.I.Y. "punk" ethos.
Obstacles/opportunities: coding, "ownership" concepts (aka where $$ comes in), unlimited vs. only original changes b/c of licensing, etc. Naturally, I vote for unlimited freedom, but also realize that it is an unsustainable utopia. These things basically aren't even worth worrying about until I see if the experiment bears fruit in a previously established environment.
Basically, this is what it comes down to: I'm going to post some "root" sounds/beats/what have you on this blog. If you are interested in being involved in a project somewhat like what I described above, please mess around with them in any way shape or form that you want to. Just please post the results, and as much info/additional sound material that you can concerning how you reached those results. If people are interested, the project will proceed accordingly.
Thank you very much (in advance) for taking part in this experiment. <3
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
DanK Wit - The Limp Biscuit EP
2) Guns 'n' Roses - November Rain (Dank'D Outro)
3) Pearl Jam - Black (reverse Dank'd)
4) rod stewart - da ya think i'm sexy (DanK'd)
5) Alice In Chains - Rooster (Re-Danked)
6) Rod Stewart - Young Turks (Dank'd)
7) Wilson Phillips - Hold On [Sex Change Remix] (Dankt)
Mediafire
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
DanK Wit - Sgt. Pepper's Chopped & Screwed
1) Don Henley - The Boys of Summer (DanK'd) - 6:22
2) Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song (DanK'D) - 3:16
3) Bon Iver - Beth/Rest (DanK'd) - 7:05
4) Nirvana - Come As You Are (DanK'D) - 4:56
5) The Beatles - I Am the Walrus (DanK'd) - 6:11
6) Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Kandy Korn (DanK'D) - 6:34
7) Black Sabbath - Paranoid (DanK'd) - 3:53
8) Black Flag - Rise Above (DanK'd) - 3:18
9) Radiohead - Paranoid Android (DanK'd) - 8:38
10) The Beatles - Rain (DanK'd) - 4:06
11) Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson & Clover (DanK'd) - 7:23
12) The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows (DanK'd) - 4:00
13) Pixies - Cactus (DanK'd) - 3:05
14) The Beatles - A Day In The Life (DanK'd) - 7:06
Download
Monday, November 28, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Alias Captain Beefheart: A Tribute to a Maverick Hero (SEVERELY INCOMPLETE?)
Part One: Frownland
#58. Out of the 500 albums judged most essential, by Rolling Stone magazine, in the year of our lord 2003. At the time, as someone who had gotten into music later than most but was bitten hard by the drive to collect and hear (mostly collect at the time) as much as my poor brain would allow, this list became upon publication a canonical means by which I would become a Music Authority. Naive then of corporate payola, hierarchy, stubbornness, racism, ignorance, or any number of other factors that essentially made this list a de facto "Baby Boomer Heritage" landmark, I rushed to collect the music contained therein as quickly as my partially-blocked Soulseek connection and college freshman funds would allow. Certainly there were no extant albums more important than those by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones that almost entirely made up the Top Twenty. Surely the smattering of jazz albums included, which I already knew were Great because I had been told they were Great hundreds of times before, weren't a pathetic attempt to make a "rockist" bias seem less absolute. Certainly the hip hop albums listed weren't a largely ill-informed and obvious attempt to remain current. OF COURSE albums such as Elephant by the White Stripes (#386) and A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay (#465), which had barely been released long enough to tear the shrink wrap off the jewel case, deserved to be judged as better than The Smiths' self-titled debut (#473), Gang of Four's Entertainment (#482), and Husker Du's New Day Rising (#487), all landmarks in their respective fields. And I'm not even going to consider the glaring omissions, which are too numerous to even begin to list here, in this limited space on this vast internet. Rolling Stone had spoken, and their guidance would eventually grant me the Authority that I so very needed in order to be confident enough to make pithy comments that would make bespectacled, bearded male PBR guzzlers in dive bars either nod in knowing amazement or scoff in bewildered derision.
But seriously. Who the hell is this Beefheart guy? And what the fuck is this stuff that he's trying to pass off as music?
Was this some kind of joke?
Part 2: The Dust Blows Forward 'n' the Dust Blows Back
I didn't get it. But I would try. And try I would. If Rolling Stone said that Trout Mask Replica was essential, then obviously I was the one who was incorrect.
So I went about trying to "correct" myself. The "noise" that came from my speakers when Trout Mask Replica's mp3 files were double-clicked seemed like abhorrent tonal vomit initially, so I checked out friendlier entry points such as the weirdo Nuggets contained on Safe as Milk and the stomping, fuzz-bass'd "Diddy Wah Diddy" instead. It was easy to assume that the psychedelic atmosphere from whence these earlier recordings had come had gotten out of hand eventually and created the bizarro fish-scaled double album that so intimidated me, and that psychedelic drugs were necessary to craft some sense out of it. In the meantime, I correctly judged that name-dropping the Captain and his wares in the right company, complete with knowing grin, would gain me a lot of credence with the music fans I wanted to gain the company of. So I yukked it up, treating this "unlistenable classic" as an inside joke or "admirable" picture frame that most people claiming to be fans still think of it as. I had transferred from a lame-o Catholic college to the bustling University of Pittsburgh after my freshman year, and with lightning-fast internet and Obsessive-Compulsive collector tendencies I eventually found myself in the possession of a nigh-complete Beefheart discography that barely graced my ears long enough to go in one and out the other.
Then, things started to change.
It started small. I remember most distinctly being in a noted smoky dive bar on Pittsburgh's South Side, out with a friend on his birthday and appropriately intoxicated as such. At the time, being young and snarky and pretentious and single and not realizing how common this was, we felt the urge oftentimes to assault our fellow bar-goers with such jukebox favorites as the twenty-minute two chord Velvet Underground noise jam "Sister Ray". We justified this as getting "bang for our buck," and laughed amongst ourselves as these avant-garde choices went from the speakers straight over the heads of the other patrons. This night in particular, we were feeling especially ambitious (and drunk). So we went for Trout Mask. Specifically, one of the bakes of "Hair Pie," which was an instrumental on top of merely being Beefheart. Talk about being punk rock!
Except, when the song came on, it didn't sound as askew as we'd expected. In this dank and hectic bar, it sounded right on. The mismatched guitars, the gut-bucket bass, the skittering drums, which all sounded nigh-autistic in quiet dorm rooms, seemed a perfect complement for this smoky, somewhat sinister place. We marveled at the insight.
That night, while I slept soundly on my top-bunk, my friend the birthday boy took our discovery a step further. With no small help from added chemical agencies, he found the courage to listen to Trout Mask. Straight through. And he liked it! He described it as a tremendous "tribute to the Delta blues" the next day, while I sat slack jawed, wondering just what he had been smoking that had given coherence where there had certainly been none before.
I felt, in some ways, ignorant. Here I was, thinking that it was just enough to possess this warped music and pretend that I got something out of listening to it. Was there actually supposed to be enjoyment to be had from listening to Trout Mask Replica? Matt Groening, the erstwhile creator of the Simpsons, was among those that certainly seemed to think so. He had even said that he "thought it was the greatest album (he)'d ever heard"! After only six listens! The first of which he had been as disgusted with this mutated monstrosity music as I still was! Even if Rolling Stone seemed a little stodgy and ad-heavy by then, Matt Groening certainly seemed to be a bit smarter than the average bear.
So what was I missing?
#58. Out of the 500 albums judged most essential, by Rolling Stone magazine, in the year of our lord 2003. At the time, as someone who had gotten into music later than most but was bitten hard by the drive to collect and hear (mostly collect at the time) as much as my poor brain would allow, this list became upon publication a canonical means by which I would become a Music Authority. Naive then of corporate payola, hierarchy, stubbornness, racism, ignorance, or any number of other factors that essentially made this list a de facto "Baby Boomer Heritage" landmark, I rushed to collect the music contained therein as quickly as my partially-blocked Soulseek connection and college freshman funds would allow. Certainly there were no extant albums more important than those by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones that almost entirely made up the Top Twenty. Surely the smattering of jazz albums included, which I already knew were Great because I had been told they were Great hundreds of times before, weren't a pathetic attempt to make a "rockist" bias seem less absolute. Certainly the hip hop albums listed weren't a largely ill-informed and obvious attempt to remain current. OF COURSE albums such as Elephant by the White Stripes (#386) and A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay (#465), which had barely been released long enough to tear the shrink wrap off the jewel case, deserved to be judged as better than The Smiths' self-titled debut (#473), Gang of Four's Entertainment (#482), and Husker Du's New Day Rising (#487), all landmarks in their respective fields. And I'm not even going to consider the glaring omissions, which are too numerous to even begin to list here, in this limited space on this vast internet. Rolling Stone had spoken, and their guidance would eventually grant me the Authority that I so very needed in order to be confident enough to make pithy comments that would make bespectacled, bearded male PBR guzzlers in dive bars either nod in knowing amazement or scoff in bewildered derision.
But seriously. Who the hell is this Beefheart guy? And what the fuck is this stuff that he's trying to pass off as music?
Was this some kind of joke?
Part 2: The Dust Blows Forward 'n' the Dust Blows Back
I didn't get it. But I would try. And try I would. If Rolling Stone said that Trout Mask Replica was essential, then obviously I was the one who was incorrect.
So I went about trying to "correct" myself. The "noise" that came from my speakers when Trout Mask Replica's mp3 files were double-clicked seemed like abhorrent tonal vomit initially, so I checked out friendlier entry points such as the weirdo Nuggets contained on Safe as Milk and the stomping, fuzz-bass'd "Diddy Wah Diddy" instead. It was easy to assume that the psychedelic atmosphere from whence these earlier recordings had come had gotten out of hand eventually and created the bizarro fish-scaled double album that so intimidated me, and that psychedelic drugs were necessary to craft some sense out of it. In the meantime, I correctly judged that name-dropping the Captain and his wares in the right company, complete with knowing grin, would gain me a lot of credence with the music fans I wanted to gain the company of. So I yukked it up, treating this "unlistenable classic" as an inside joke or "admirable" picture frame that most people claiming to be fans still think of it as. I had transferred from a lame-o Catholic college to the bustling University of Pittsburgh after my freshman year, and with lightning-fast internet and Obsessive-Compulsive collector tendencies I eventually found myself in the possession of a nigh-complete Beefheart discography that barely graced my ears long enough to go in one and out the other.
Then, things started to change.
Except, when the song came on, it didn't sound as askew as we'd expected. In this dank and hectic bar, it sounded right on. The mismatched guitars, the gut-bucket bass, the skittering drums, which all sounded nigh-autistic in quiet dorm rooms, seemed a perfect complement for this smoky, somewhat sinister place. We marveled at the insight.
That night, while I slept soundly on my top-bunk, my friend the birthday boy took our discovery a step further. With no small help from added chemical agencies, he found the courage to listen to Trout Mask. Straight through. And he liked it! He described it as a tremendous "tribute to the Delta blues" the next day, while I sat slack jawed, wondering just what he had been smoking that had given coherence where there had certainly been none before.
I felt, in some ways, ignorant. Here I was, thinking that it was just enough to possess this warped music and pretend that I got something out of listening to it. Was there actually supposed to be enjoyment to be had from listening to Trout Mask Replica? Matt Groening, the erstwhile creator of the Simpsons, was among those that certainly seemed to think so. He had even said that he "thought it was the greatest album (he)'d ever heard"! After only six listens! The first of which he had been as disgusted with this mutated monstrosity music as I still was! Even if Rolling Stone seemed a little stodgy and ad-heavy by then, Matt Groening certainly seemed to be a bit smarter than the average bear.
So what was I missing?
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