Sound and light artist, guitarist, Max patcher, and all-around sonically-fascinating guy Christopher Willits has opened up his “Tiger Flower Circle Sun” record on Ghostly to remixing. Halfway through the project, we talk to Chris about what’s going on – and what the results so far sound like. And we share, from earlier this fall, a composition in which you can recharge.

The project begins not with stems, but with samples, the raw materials on which the album was based. Christopher walks CDM through the audio highlights, one sample at a time. Along the way – as with all these samples – you begin to appreciate the process by which Christopher makes his decisions, how he moves from samples like pieces of wood to the finished structure. And of course, by opening these up to remixing, you have an opportunity to hear the work differently in his finished, released form, as well as to find your own, distinct decision-making process. It’s perhaps obvious in a remix project, but what this does is to allow the sounds a life separate from the fixed set of decisions that produced the album.

And that can even change Christopher’s own view of the work, he says. He tells us:

I think it’s fun to play the set like an album. I’ve heard these pieces so many times that it’s really refreshing to me to hear them alone. Now I hear the pieces differently.

That was actually one of the thoughts behind sharing all of these sounds, so people can hear the layers, and if they wish, tune their ears to the subtleties and intention I wanted to create in the mixes.

You can find the remix project at:
http://willits-sample-library-vol1.herokuapp.com/

“The stuff i’ve heard so far is AMAZING,” Christopher tells us. “I can’t wait to feature the best of the best. We’ll be releasing a free comp on [Christopher's experimetal label] Overlap and Ghostly will feature my favorite remix on a free comp, too.” Winning remixes get Ableton and SoundCloud prizes.

Let’s hear a few words from Christopher about the sounds he’s produced.

A Tour of the Sounds

A lot of the samples are about variation of common materials, so there’s plenty to explore. Christopher tells us that just one sample – like this guitar solo – can take on very different meanings with different processing, heard in two variations.

Guitar process solo1-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

Guitar process solo2-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

This tone is created from a custom-made Big Muff > BOSS distortion > Fender Twin with a couple power tubes removed for low volume and max distortion. This is a trick that ted from Flipper showed me around that time, and it created the exact orange laser beam i was hearing in my imagination.

Guitar solo long noise-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

Guitar solo-Plant Body-Willits-120 by Willits

The whole piece “Plant Body” came from this guitar improvisation. With releases like “Folding and the Tea” and “Seven Machines for Summer,”

I set the process to be only the guitar recordings. With this release, I gave myself a new set of constraints and permissions, allowing my imagination to add whatever comes up for me. No judgement on which one is better to me, they are just different. There are infinite possibilities within any process I determine, yet discerning the process that resonates with my true intention is what creates the shapes and forms and colors that feel like love.

Guitar process4 fold-Plant Body-Willits-120 by Willits

The drum samples come from:

…my great friend Jeff Pierre – one of the best drummer I’ve ever worked with, and the youngest, as well. All of Jeff’s takes were one take; this sample is shortened from the original length, but you get the idea.

Drum2-The Hands Connect To The Heart-Jeff Pierre-Willits-120 by Willits

Drums distorted1-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Jeff Pierre-Willits-120 by Willits

I just love the lightness and feel of this sound — like the funkiest insects in the jungle, getting down.

Perc1-The Hands Connect To The Heart-Willits-120 by Willits

Someone please make a disco track out of this.

Synth arp-The Heart Connects To The Head-Willits-120 by Willits

Me and my friend Reiko were messing with patterns; then we would find a loop. We were laughing so hard as we were playing this stuff.

Perc-Intend-Evolve-Willits-120 by Willits

Check your volume for this one — probably should have exported it at a lower volume for this set! The heat of this, the crushed distortion, is from a technique called input flipping on the SSL. This is an input flip with the preamps cranked, with odd harmonics.

Ryan (Ryan Kleeman) and I just about lost it when we first input flipped like this for a distorted sound. It became a theme in a sense that resonated with this orange laser beam electromagnetic sound that much of the work stems from.

Synth arp noise-The Heart Connects To The Head-Willits-120 by Willits

You can also hear it here- and a few other places on the record, to a less extreme degree. There is something about this texture that has a cleaning function to me. Washes things off, away, cleans the ears out. Resets your space.

Branches Into Flowers-Willits by Willits

“Could hear many more strings and horns in this piece.”

Guitar2-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“Love this floating feeling.”
Guitar lasers-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“This pattern makes me want to get down.”
Perc distorted1-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“Love this kind of generative sound.”
Subconscious Transmission-Willits-120 by Willits

Two samples that were not used in “Light into Branches.” Made the baritone thing in one mode of listening, came back and asked myself, why did I put a baritone guitar solo in the middle of this song? Did I really think that’s what it needed, or did I just want to play my baritone along with this song for fun? The answer was the latter. But here it is anyway.

The ambient layers sample was to create more depth of field in the mix, have it floating behind at a low volume, but it was not doing was I wanted it to, so I cut it out.

Baritone solo unused-Light Into Branches-baritone-Willits-75ish by Willits

Guitar layers unused-Light Into Branches Willits-75ish by Willits

Videos

From the original record release:

More information:
http://ghostly.com/releases/tiger-flower-circle-sun

Soak in a Sound Bath

Another release from this year revealing Willits’ musical approach, “GOLD” is an ambient piece in you can inhabit, in which you can restore yourself, according to its maker:

GOLD is a 24 minute and 17 second sound bath / ambient piece to soak into. Listen, relax and recharge. This harmonic weaving of sound was created with the vibration of affinity, love.

Made with voice, processed guitar, and a low-frequency oscillation out of a Nord Lead synth, Christopher actually encourages people to share how they “used’ the piece and how they made it felt, a kind of design experiment for spiritual being in sound. Have a listen or pay-what-you-will on Bandcamp:

Read up on what he has to say about this release:
New Release – GOLD [Sound + Light - Chris' blog]

Infinite

It seems only appropriate to close with this reflection from Christopher:

After working on this project, I’m realizing so tangibly what I’ve always known — that any mix is a sonic photograph of vibrational affinity, and even with a grounded intention behind any mix, and a very clear outline for a process in which you allow that intention to emerge, there are infinite possibilities of expression. Infinite. It is so beautiful.

It’s the soul of YouTube. Or at least, YouTube soul, mashed together.

In case you haven’t already seen this making its rounds, an epic collection of instructional and jazzy video clips get mushed together into a colossal, remixed funk band. What’s lovely about this is that the results don’t sound like a mash up: they sound like these clips somehow sprang to life and joined a soul band, playing live. And then the Theremin arrives.

You watch one video. And then you find there are seven more. ThruYou is a complete YouTube video album, complete with glitched bits of interface artifacts around. And according to the creator, nothing here is faked; that is, “what you see is what you hear.”

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

thru-you.com
Watch the original Bernard Purdie Drum Shuffle and more goodies at http://www.youtube.com/user/kutiman

The creator of this is Kutiman, an Israeli funk musician and producer. How cool is he? This cool:

It turns out the Internet hasn’t totally sucked our Soul.

It’s campy horror sounds, remixed into digital music — the perfect way to celebrate the holiday! From our friend TRASH_AUDIO’s Surachai, who’s on the compilation:

We have teamed up with Cock Rock Disco to compile a horrific compilation of the very best campy 80′s horror movies ever made, remixed by some of the greatest digital grind, metal, breakcore, and electro artists from around the world. Artists including Silon Fist, Terminal 11, Vytear , The Teknoist, Sgure, Toecutter, Duran Duran Duran, Eustachian, Bong-Ra, Captain Ahab, Surachai, Dead Noise, DJ Floorclearer, Droon.
Enjoy the ride into hell, because this will be your last!

Happy Halloween – Free Compilation [TRASH_AUDIO]

Here’s another mix — thanks, Kempton!
http://kemptonmooney.com/audio.html

I can’t say anything this song doesn’t say brilliantly. Comedian Adam Buxton takes on the Radiohead remix contest with his own entry, which cuts through the hype brings a bit of wit to TV incidental music and remixing alike. And, really, how often do you get to say "Radiohead" and "rap" in the same sentence? Take my mechanical rights, please!

See, there, I said something. It wasn’t very good. Just so listen to the song and thank me later, okay?

See also Adam Buxton’s sketch for BBC3′s Rush Hour which cleans up NWA to "Help Da Police." Thanks, Jaymis!

When is it legally permissible to sample and reuse content? What’s in the public domain? And what is this Creative Commons thing about?

These questions are perpetually important to anyone in digital media, but there have been a number of resources I’ve come across just in the last few days that may be friendly to those curious about these questions.

Fair Use

Seesmic, the video community, has started a discussion with LA-based entertainment lawyer Michael Donaldson about copyright and the oft-misunderstood Fair Use provisions of US copyright law.

Here’s a teaser video; follow through and the Seesmic community asks questions about what the law means:

Mr. Donaldson has also written up a PDF report on fair use and online video. While it’s video-based, it’s worth a look for musicians, as well.

Via wire to the ear

Public Domain

Public Domain covers works that can be used and distributed freely, without restriction. Lifehacker points (via Ars Technica) to an online tool created by the American Library Association:

http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

Digital Sliderule Makes Copyright Law Dead Simple [Lifehacker.com]

Now, "dead simple" to me would be a wild exaageration — you’ll see that various amendments to US law have allowed all sorts of complex loopholes to keep works out of the public domain. But it does make things more visual — even if it requires that you know whether a copyright has been renewed. Notably, the early history of recorded music is rapidly approaching public domain — that is, assuming labels don’t successfully lobby the US Congress to provide new exceptions.

Those of you outside the US, of course, have different laws, though you are subject to US laws wherever you are, if you’re sampling works that have a copyright in the United States.

Confused by Fair Use (which seems to boil down to nearly nothing) and Public Domain (which seems only to cover really ancient work)? That’s the reason the Creative Commons organization has created their alternative licenses, for artists who want their work to be more freely accessible, or those who want to sample and remix works more freely.

Creative Commons

Before making use of Creative Commons, there is a lot to understand. Later today, we’ll talk a little about the back-and-forth between Creative Commons and writer and publisher organization ASCAP, getting into some of the debate over licenses and the subtleties of the licenses. Wherever you stand and whatever your needs as an artist, it’s good to at least get the pitch and see what you think of it.

Here’s "Wanna Work Together?" from 2006, by CC. It’s part education, part propaganda — but it is a good introduction to the basic idea behind the concept, and what it means.

For some, Share and Share Alike is a political and ethical issue, linked to patent law and free / libre / open source code. Here’s a video (sorry, poorly recorded) from O’Reilly’s Ignite presentations. The challenge of Ignite is you have 5 minutes and 20, self-advancing slides, so if she sounds unusually worked up, the time pressure may have something to do with it! (I’m giving one of these this month — more on that soon.) But it does illustrate some of the ethics and philosophy behind the "Commons" idea. There are people who will disagree with some of these ideas — even including people who make use of Creative Commons licenses. That’s a matter for further discussion, though. At the very least, I think Sarah does a good job of encapsulating her ideas in a short amount of time.

Did they get it right?

Here’s the important question — do these tools and videos get their facts straight? Are there other details they miss? Have you seen better explanations in video? Let us know.

small.cat, aka Roald Blijleven, has done what I think is a brilliant remix of the Dance Tracks Digital / Dirtybird remix contest track “Dum.” I heard it as satirical, deconstructing the stems into something quite different. I actually laughed out loud at a couple of spots. I realize of course, that mistaking satire is a sore spot at the moment. But I enjoyed it, anyway. And I mean that in the best possible way – I think the musical result is really satisfying.

And bonus points for doing a remix in Reason for a contest sponsored by Ableton with an included Live set. (Hey, I think you should use whatever music tool makes you happy.) Roald writes:

well i have finished my remix. did it in Reason. it was quite a pain to prepare everything, as the samples they provide were not just notes but full melodies and stuff. so i put them all in Audacity and cut everything up to size to load in Redrum and NNXT. it’s on the website right now, so take a listen. if you do not believe i just created the world’s greatest new hip sweaty-ass jiggling track, let me know. because i can’t think of a single reason not to like it.

It worked for me. My ass is sweating. (Wait a minute – I think label founder Claude VonStroke wanted the track sweating, and ass jiggling. No matter.)

Naturally, the spirit of remixing is coming up with something different than what you started with, so I look forward to hearing what else readers have in store, here and elsewhere.

It’s amazing that, even today, relatively few artists release stems when they want to encourage remixes. A new remix contest with The Martin Brothers’ new track “Dum,” on the Dirtybird label, goes further, by providing not only individual stems, but a full-blown Ableton Live set, completely with warping parameters and even some plug-in inserts. That should mean just about anyone can pick up the track and start remixing – and, of course, Live is a big hit with the remix scene. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this, but coming from Dancetracks Digital, which has made a big impact with its Live-ready downloads, you can expect a friendly set to get you started.

Of course, this is likely to create some truly awful remixes, since it’s actually so easy to do it’s even easier to do something terrible. (That includes me, having fiddled with the set for a few minutes. I’ll have to get back to it to do something not bad.) On the other hand, by taking some of the drudge work out of the task and making it really easy to do a mediocre mix, I think this could – ironically – make it even more clear when a remix is done right and stands out above the crowd.

Interestingly, roughly the same week Ableton are backing DTD and Martin Bros., Digidesign is pushing its new Transfuser product – an electronica and remix-friendly instrument for Pro Tools – with The Crystal Method and Remix Magazine. They are offering stems, but they’re not pre-loading a Transfuser set as DTD is doing with Ableton Live:

Remixing Pro Tools: The Crystal Method Contest

You know who Chemical Brothers and The Crystal Method are. But the cast of characters in the “Dum” contest is worth watching.

Dancetracks Digital has attracted the likes of Danny Tenaglia and Francois K as a kind of boutique alternative to online heavyweight Beatport. The label, Dirtybird, is the creation of DJ Claude VonStroke and has put out his “Who’s Afraid of Detroit?” as well as the debut “Deep Throat.” The latter sold 11,000 copies, which wouldn’t mean anything — except that that’s 21st Century sales of vinyl. The label knows something about how what works on the dance floor, so appropriately enough label founder warns would-be contest participants, “Please don’t bother turning in your big room electro house remix. I want to hear some sweaty ass-jiggling tracks.”

I think I’m going to start admonishing readers to come up with “sweaty nerd, pocket protector-busting I.D.M.”

The track is clever stuff … particularly once the brothers start scat-singing into the mic (hence “Dum.”) But you think you can make it better? That’s the idea. Here’s a sample:

"Dum" Track Excerpt

Possible rewards: exposure (embed-ready players containing submitted remix tracks, and a label looking for new talent), software, music gear, swag, downloads, and even a mixing and mastering session here in NYC.

CDM is working with DTD on the contest, so I hope to provide some insight into the remix scene, Ableton Live, and how labels like Dirtybird tick. Stay tuned.

Dirtybird Remix Contest

And yes, unfortunately, this isn’t Creative Commons-licensed. With the exception of a few, CC-specific labels, even independent labels haven’t yet embraced open licenses. The challenges and opportunities there are a topic for another story.

The era of artists regularly releasing stems for remixing seems imminent. In the meantime, we see occasional examples of artists who get it. Radiohead have a new feature on their tune Nude, promoted with Apple. Purchase stems of a song (that’s by stem, so you pay US$0.99 * 5 stems + 1 full song if you want everything), and you get audio via iTunes Plus. Purchase the full set, and you can also download a GarageBand / Logic Pro-compatible project with all loop, tempo, and key information embedded, as pictured at top. (Unless I’m mistaken, that’s also the ideal way to get uncompressed audio for use in other tools.)

If you happen to prefer another tool for remixing (say, one that rhymes with Mabledon Dive and is often seen running on computers from Apple), these are just DRM-free audio files, so the choice is yours. Upload the finished results to the Web, and the band will review submissions and open them to votes. There are already a number of remixes up at the moment.

NUDE RE/MIX on iTunes

Radiohead Remix Site

Hmmm, nude remixing? Brings new meaning to “bedroom producer.” Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Radiohead does specify that you can’t use these for commercial purposes; it’s too bad they didn’t choose to apply a Creative Commons non-commercial license, which would formalize essentially what they’re saying. But this is otherwise done quite nicely, nonetheless, and I hope we see more of this.

Like remixable music? Nine Inch Nails has a whole remix site, and indie label Magnatune lets you remix all their artists’ work via a Creative Commons license (though they typically don’t offer stems). Online music outlet Dance Tracks Digital goes beyond stems with full Ableton Live-ready projects, suitable for DJs. That’s just for starters; if you have other favorite remix resources, let us know.

A major highlight of the party CDM held last weekend with our friends at TRASH_AUDIO and VJKungFu.tv: a live remix of The Karate Kid. Momo the Monster mangled the video while Shane Hazelton and Stephan Vankov did music. The whole event was powered by some clever MIDI sync that managed to wrangle the gear — enough hardware that it seemed like the crew had just raided a Guitar Center — and sync up the video.

Sure, the remix may sound silly — and it was. (Deliciously so.) But the interplay between the three, punctuated by ridiculous live vocals by Shane, really put it over the top. Adding some MIDI intelligence to your digital trio could help all kinds of performances, not just this one We’ll have to get Momo to share what he did.

Momo has more over on Create Digital Motion, complete with technical details:

Karate Kid AV Remix

But this clip should give you an idea of just how live the vocals were — in a moment that captures, shall we say, the brutish masculine power of the film:

Karate Kid live remixing music performance from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Dorkbot Chicago

Any CDM-ers in the Chicagoland area are most warmly invited to this months Dorkbot at Deadtech, 3321 W. Fullerton Ave., on Wednesday at 8pm for food, drink, and brain-swelling information regarding micro-sampling and alternative musical controllers like QWERTY keyboards, game joysticks, and bicycles.

This week’s presenters will be Liz McLean-Knight and Michael Una, contributors to CDM.

See you there!

ByteMe, Perth; CDM Me, Brisbane

Australia is CDM’s second home, land of crazy creative contributors and designers, and birthplace of the CDM logo and graphic identity. And now I get to go there.

First up is an epic visualist festival in Perth, 11/30 – 12/9. (Jaymis and I arrive 12/2.)

ByteMe Festival

Okay, odds are, you aren’t anywhere near Perth, as it’s supposedly the most isolated city on the face of the Earth. But on the off chance that you are in/near Perth, you’ll definitely want to come out for this one. Visualists like Artificial Eyes and Jean Poole, not to mention festival organizers VJZoo, join a convergence of visual artists from game development to experimental film and motion graphics and special effects. I’m on a panel Wednesday night, but mostly Jaymis and I will be hanging around covering the festival and chatting with cool people. And we get to see whether our first in-person meetup creates a geek matter-antimatter temporal singularity.

12/10 – 12/14 we return to Brisbane, and odds are far likelier that you live there. There’s talk of doing some kind of music event in Brisbane. If you’re interested in helping us organize even a casual meet-up, Brisbanites, let me know. -PK