zircon

http://www.myspace.com/denoisia These guys are the shit. I was just introduced a few days ago - they do drum n bass, breaks, big beat, and house. They tour and DJ all around the world and also release music online and through record labels. Seriously, just check out their stuff. I particularly like "Gutterpump" and "Exodus".

ALRIGHT!!!!!!! This song is radical. It started as part of an assignment for my Songwriting class, where we listened to a bunch of "sexy love songs" and had to write our own. I don't know much about sexy love, but I do know about geek love, so hey... write what you know! My inspiration of course was Jill, and many of the lyrics are basically personalized, with a few embellishments here and there. The result? ROMance I know I'm not a great vocalist, and this is actually after autotuning, chorusing, background vocoding etc... but hey, it's all in the spirit of fun. No hatin' - or I'll sing on more. Anyway, enjoy, and feel free to leave some comments! --- LYRICS: (ROBOT VOICE) Male: Hello q-t. Those are some big monitors you have there. Female: Oh do you like them. I just had them upgradedyesterday. (VERSE) We're at the arcade We're playing Time Crisis II, yeah And I keep on losing lives Cause I'm in love with you I sold my PC to get you A nintendo Wii And all that I want to hear is You'll go out with me (CHORUS) I spent six whole days In a row pirating The software that I used to write this And I hope you will know That the torrents were slow But I'd do anything to get you, girl (ROBOT VOICE) Male: Female within proximity. Calculating romantic data. Processing. Processing. Found. (VERSE) I remember when you asked me to Co-host your podcast We edited audio all night And had a blast We should go outside But I've got allergies all year And plus it's more fun To just watch Voyager in here (CHORUS)

The problem with the internet and democratization of the process is that while you have 50x more music, the majority of it is crappy, and it makes it harder for people that are actually good to push through. In fact, this encourages the record label mentality - that you need to spend exorbitant amounts of money on marketing/promo/airplay to get noticed.

Stylus RMX is extremely comprehensive. It has dirty hip hop stuff, acoustic stuff, breakbeat, strictly electronic, ethnic, filmscore, and so on. It's a swiss army knife, and very few collections match that kind of the versatility. The closest thing I can think of would be Drums Overkill; http://www.bigfishaudio.com/4DCGI/detail.html?1352

I've always wanted some sort of touch-screen technology for music sequencing. If each of my fingers acted like the mouse cursor in FL Studio, I could write music significantly faster. I'd be able to write down an entire riff or melody in seconds.

Hey, we actually have an Otakon thread already. Post there - it would be great to see you again! http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9481 BTW in response to your question I don't think we will be able to do a panel or presentation about actually creating remixes, but I do believe we might be doing some live remixes based on what the audience requests. You know, some improv stuff. And of course if you have any mixing questions I would be happy to answer them at the con itself. Bring a laptop!

Man, I was going to print up some zircon t-shirts. You know what would be dope? I'll get an sgx shirt, you get a zircon one, and we wear each other's.

If you're looking to sequence your own drums, no. It's basically a highly complex drum LOOP player with tons of effects, auto-variation, a massive, high-quality library with built in fills/variations/layers, editing features, and so on and so forth. Sure, it has menus of oneshot sounds, but you won't find 50-layer kick samples or auto-alternating L/R snares in it. I do believe it to be nearly an essential plugin though. I use it ALL the time.

BUMP - don't forget this!

pixietricks and I saw this last night. We both agreed it was enjoyable.

Yell at; djpretzel, Spekkosaurus (+ Mustin, Fishy, me, etc - all involved in OWA collab), SnappleMan, Reuben Kee, Sixto, JigginJonT, Hy Bound.

"Compulsory" is a scary word, and looks bad taken out of context. Did you know that whenever you create and distribute a song, anyone can get a "compulsory mechanical license? from you to cover your song and then sell their own copy, paying you a mere 9.1 cents per song per copy? This concept predates the RIAA, I might add. In other words, in the US, we allow people to play and use music under statutory laws without permission. This is a concept that greatly benefits the public. Imagine if a cover band had to ask the original band for permission to use their songs for all performances and all records. It would be a legal and financial mess. Likewise, no radio station (terrestrial or otherwise) would have the legal resources to chase after all the song and sound recording copyright owners to get their permission to broadcast songs. No, that would be stupid. It makes more sense to allow people to broadcast and transmit this copyrighted material (making it available to the public). Except, if they do so, they must pay some sort of fee, to compensate the artists whose songs are being played. The amount of the fee is the issue of contention here. I was actually unaware that you didn't have to directly register with SE for them to collect on your behalf. Nonetheless, this doesn't really affect my point. As stated on the SE site itself, as an artist, you can negotiate your own terms with any broadcaster you want. Thus, if X station wants to play me, I can say to SE "Don't collect from these guys, please."

Hey, props to bgc for telling me about Garageband to begin with. Hopefully I'll move up the charts there. Kanthos; You're officially a convert. BTW if I ever do a live show (which I'm hoping to), live sax on Throwdown is a great idea. I suggest you check out BT's album "ESCM" followed by "Emotional Technology" for more excellent electronic music. Other standouts include Daft Punk's "Homework", Prodigy's "Fat of the Land", Crystal Method's "Vegas", Fatboy Slim's "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" and Chemical Brothers "Dig Your Own Hole". All of these are influences of mine. Everyone else; thanks for all the comments! I really appreciate it - and if you liked the album, please tell anyone you know who enjoys electronic music about it! Word of mouth is my best method of promotion and I rely on it right now. Also, feel free to friend me on MySpace.

We're up to 35 completed finals - the latest being an awesome version of "Hurry, Faster!" by Fishy. Waiting on about 5-7 more mixes, same ones we've been waiting on.

bustatunez and I will be working on an itinerary. A few things we can do: * Visit the place Jill works and get some drinks (The Bubble House - serves bubble tea and other stuff) * Check the food court at the gallery, since it's cheap and affordable * BBQ in the couryard @ my apartment complex * Art Museum?

SoundExchange is not currently owned by the RIAA. The RIAA formed it, but it then became a public organization - there are members on it from many independent labels as well as major labels now. Also, SE can only collect royalties on works that have been registered with SE. In other words, you have to go to SE (as an artist) and explicitly give them the exclusive right to collect on your behalf. If you don't, they have 0 right, and are not legally able to. Thus if your station plays all underground/indie stuff, you have nothing to fear, since none of your material was registered with SE. The initial ruling (and SE itself) only impacts stations who play copyrighted music that is also registered with the organization, which is primarily going to be more mainstream stuff.

Actually, manufactured songs have been a staple of the US music industry since it began. Ever heard of tin pan alley? Dozens, hundreds of composers literally PUMPING out songs on a daliy basis for sale. This was at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, we actually got some of our greatest songs ever through this - but we also got a lot of crap. Then we had manufactured "teen idols" within a few decades. Sound familiar? How about Motown, which was nicknamed the 'hit factory'? Not to mention songwriters and duos that wrote hundreds upon hundreds of tracks for mass sale and consumption, such as Diane Warren, Gerry Goffin, and Carole King. No, there are really no new or notable trends in pop music today. It's just history repeating itself, with the added twist of more people being able to write, produce, and release music thanks to cheaper gear, faster computers, and the internet. If anything, the music scene is better than it ever has been before.

In the absence of the implementation of our (actual) new policy, you are typically requested to ask the mixer's permission - and in this case, sure, why not. Just credit me & ocremix.org. If you want you can put my website in there too. Example: Music -- "Flying Heaven" - ocremix.org zircon www.zirconstudios.com

Unfortunately, this is truly subjective. If this were put in front of a court, you would probably have musicologists listening and testifying. If you submit to OCR, you have us (musicians and listeners, but more or less "average people") evaluating it based on our thoughts. Either way, there's no set-in-stone rule. The best test is simply if you ask a group of random people, and see if they make the connection to the source material.

That's oversimplifying. Here's how digital royalties are structured (ie. for net radio airplay): * 50% goes to the holder of the sound recording copyright. If you are signed to a major label, they will probably own this. If you're an independent artist... they won't, you will hold it * 45% to the performing artist on the track - directly to them * 2.5% to background instrumentalists (studio musicians) * 2.5% to background vocalists I don't really see what is particularly unfair about this. The songwriter also receives royalties, but under a different law, so that's in a separate category. Even if you signed a crappy deal and your label ended up with the sound recording copyright, you still get 45% as the performing artist, which is definitely not bad. The average label deal only has the artist getting ~13% of album sale royalties, for comparison.

We (the site staff, including djp) are all busy people... unfortunately we can't devote all of our time to this kind of thing. But, take our word for it that we do care about the public opinion, and if we didn't we would have just implemented the policy without asking. Just sit tight...

Pretty much all of the mixers all use different software. Many do use FL and Reason - but others use Cubase, Sonar, hardware workstations, etc.

Worth noting.. at this point, no "bad" subs make it on to the site. Our standards are high enough that anything you do, even if YOU think it's crappy, will probably be quite good - and definitely enjoyable by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Like I said before I don't think it's really fair to the general public to want to rescind your stuff just because you don't like it, when so many people would enjoy it. Also consider the public outcry against the lockdowns by many people who had their favorite remixes removed. How do you think the average person would feel if (what they considered to be) a great mix was removed on the whim of a remixer who just didn't want to share it anymore because he has better stuff? Nearly every remixer on this site has grown by leaps and bounds and we all have stuff up that doesn't represent our best work, but we keep it up anyway. This would probably not be a very interesting site if people removed their stuff that was over a year old. I doubt we'd have more than a few hundred remixes. Just my opinion.

I do not agree, and I could go into a lengthy discussion, but I will be brief. Think about these things: * Grandmothers and little girls getting sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading and sharing MP3s * Sony DRM protection on CDs that made computers vulnerable to hacking * Windows Vista DRM that degrades picture quality if it thinks content is not "legitimate" * USB Dongles for programs like Cubase and Arturia synths that are expensive, bulky, inconvenient, cause computer problems, and slow down the software * New legislation in the US that would effectively shut down thousands of internet radio stations (this was barely avoided) All of these things arise from people wanting to "control" their copyrights. The attitude of people wanting to have ALL rights at ALL times, more often than not, hurts the general public and is not fair to them. For centuries, in all countries - not just the US - the purpose of copyright has been to encourage the creation and distribution of creative works by giving people a limited monopoly over them. Keyword is "limited". The purpose is NOT to give artists, writers (etc) total, permanent, exclusive control. When people do try to obtain that you get situations like those I outlined above. I am an artist myself and I can empathize with wanting control, and believe me, I am a huge defender of copyright. But to say that we should always have total control, and that the public at large should pay the price... well I just don't agree, and I think most people in the world don't either.

Fritz; Prior to this, pending (passed) legislation was going to go into effect that would basically shut down the vast majority of internet radio stations, including di.fm and sky.fm. It's a good enough solution. The main problem is simply the way royalties are structured in the US. For example we have no system in place where the producer gets compensated. No public performance license for movies shown in theatres. No compensation for recording artists via radio airplay (only songwriters).