jwz++

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the real problem is the word 'mash-up'. that phrase makes it sound like someone took a shit on the music, which is most likely true.

it's a god damned remix!

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Worse, it's a god damned medley.

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i had total web zen when i podcasted that DRM-free mash-up in my blog... i flickr'ed the creative commons licensed pics from the meetup about it, so look for a torrent in my zine soon. disney world.

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This is the "Mission Statement" of weblogs. If you could harness the synergy into a freeform outside-the-box integrated business plan that is enterprise scalable, you could take it to a VC. Two points.

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i sit on the board of losercorp research and development, so you're welcome to paypal me some seed money.

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Banned phrase detected!

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Are you kidding, this baby's off the chart!

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i want to blow my radio up when live 105 does the six mix...hollaback girl mixed with radio clash is just annoying.

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I haven't willingly listened to radio in almost eight years. Perhaps you've heard of this invention called a CD player? They can play MP3s now too!

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i have one...it's just that i have to share a car with two dominant women who torment me on the way home from work.

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When it gets really bad, just think: Some people pay for that.

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Try something like this. Note that the output's a square wave, so it's going to be very rich in harmonics - the output's power will be distributed across every harmonic from the fundamental frequency up. (Or is it every odd-numbered one?)

Try it, but if it throws off nearby cell phones too, you might want to add a lowpass filter...

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Awesome! Electronics don't get any more elegant, simple, or illegal than that. 100 MHz crystals are not rare as the linked page suggests -- they are common and cost $0.20 typically. I must try this.

A full-fledged oscilator gives approximate square waves (with odd-only harmonics) but raw quartz with a simple DC bias doesn't.

Overdriven quartz is half a sinusoid and half essentially flat. Anything above about 50 MHz from quartz is driven from overtones alone, which has an even sloppier waveform, which must be how it knocks out the enitre FM band. And cellphones, too? I wonder how. Do you know this from first-hand experience?

And they say crystals don't actually bring peace and harmony.

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And you like it.

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CDs are for music, radios are for NPR.

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If by annoying you mean "absolutely awesome." Mashups require a real sense of humor to appreciate, which jwz isn't really known for. They tend to be a lot more about "fun to listen to" than about being "quality music", and some are certainly better than others.

I recommend checking out mixes by Shir Khan, who's a lot better than Party Ben (which is who does Sixx Mixx, though I love him too).

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No, wait, don't tell me. Your record collection is largely Weird Al Yankovic, Peter Shikele, and Doctor Demento productions.

Novelty records vs. Good Music aside, jwz's objection to the fad seems to be that the "fun to listen to" aspects of these tracks last for only about the first few bars. After the first part, your reaction tends to be "okay, okay, I GET IT ALREADY!"

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My objection to the fad is that people seem to be oblivious to the fact that it was interesting for approximately the same amount of time when the technique was invented twenty years ago.

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Turntable mixing is more than 30 years old.

Sonic Foundry (now owned by Sony) put out the first version of "Acid" in 1997.

Mashups are almost exclusively created via digital editing software like Acid, then a button-jockey presses play and OMG, 2 Songs (pre-recorded) At Once!!!!

There are the moments of Brilliance out there, but mostly it's overplayed-pop-swill-of-the-moment played with overplayed-pop-swill-from-10-to-20-years-ago. For a moment of brilliance, I point to Ausoween, which predates the term "mashup" by many years. But I may be biassed, because I had pretty much the same idea concerning those two songs years ago, but lacked access to good high-end digital editing software like Pro Tools.

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See, that song would be the canonical example of "clever once". It's not even that good a mix; after the first switch, most of it is just a muddy mess.

AND, it has the inexcusable fucking side effect that any time someone writes "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" on the request list, the DJ translates that to "Ausoween" instead. Because that's. You know. Funnier. Or gother. Or something.

When's the last time you've heard the original in a club? It's like it doesn't even exist any more.

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that Ausoween remix is, um, interesting...
have never heard it played before, they always play the orininal here in england

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You're not going to find much in the way of "club music" (or western music for that matter) that is so complex that you can't figure it out in the course of a few bars or a few songs. There are a million four-piece bands that play their music in more-or-less the same way, and are totally predictable, but that doesn't mean they're not good music. Speaking specifically of mashups, the example used here is really not the best -- there are other tracks that mix bits of four or five others as opposed to just two, which are a lot more interesting than Nelly vs. Lynrd Skynrd.

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I'll just mark you down for "yes" on the Doctor Demento collection then, shall I?

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Not so much. I'll mark you down for "yes" on the "prefers insults to arguments" column.

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That's pretty much what you'll find 'round here. Get used to it, it's only livejournal.

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"quality music" is generally a prerequisite for achieving "fun to listen to" without the aid of mind-altering substances. Actually, even with them.

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True, but only when you're taking yourself or the music way too seriously.

Relax, it's only music.

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I imagine, on top of what's noted above, you also find anime "music videos" awesome and original, too.

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Hey! Some of those are fun! :-)

(But yes, Sturgeon's Law, blah blah blah)

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Smash-Up Derby does it the right way.... as you know from first-hand experience.

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Smash Up Derby are fun, but Storm and the Balls are ten thousand times better.

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Lazyweb, what is a mash-up?

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Ah, like that Real Slim Shady/Oops I Did It Again thing from the 90s.

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yes but this is THE YEAR TWO THOULSAND, where things aren't called by regular names!

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THE YEAR TWO THOULSAND?!? I've been thrown back in time! I must warn people about 9-Eleven and the war! And maipulate the stock market! And buy some New Coke! And go to a bar!

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Reads, remembers he liked that Slim Shady remix.

Downloads a bunch of others from links in the Wikipedia article.

Realises that most of them are really shite.

Regains a new thankfulness for the delete key.

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perhaps a mash-up of "Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharpe and "Get up (sexmachine)" by James Brown would create a vortex of Irony so great that it would cause the entire Mash-up world to implode in on itself?

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Apparently it exists somewhere already, as this world is already so fuX0red as to defy logical interpretation.

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Mash-ups are the aural equivalent of forwarded email jokes.

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"Mash ups" are what the "DJ's" I grew up listening to did in the early 80's. They called it "mixing"

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It was stated earlier but I simply can't take a mash-up very seriously at_all to be honest. People seem to think two bad songs make one good one but to each there own. The only time a mash-up seems proper is on a bad radio show or at club where people have consumed enough booze to knock an elephant over.

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so uncool, uh?

as an aesthetic relation to William Burroughs, hell, mash-ups do better than most things floating round the aether these day

Look at the overall picture rather than the intermediate one which you seemed to be tuned to. Fragments joined to make a greater whole - that was point, no? You frame quotidien so that it becomes so.

Is your taste that much better? I guess not.

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I call clever "mash-ups" by the more dignified "versus" tag.
Ones like the ricockulously fun "Closer to Wannabe" -- NIN v. Spice Girls and the seamlessly made "Intergalactic Guerilla Radio" -- Beastie Boys v. Rage Against the Machine, both of which sit happily on the music drive of my 'puter.

I call shitty ones "somebody with PCDJ and too much time on their hands."

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Nobody liked DJ Danger Mouse's mash-up?

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I kinda like mashups. If they're not that bad. And I love DangerMouse.

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