Collage, Hannah Hoch
Phillip Torrone posted a request for info on making mash ups that could be spread to the masses. I wrote up a short guide called Mashin 101:
Mashin 101
" Amongst the Dadaists and scholars, there seems to be some debate on where the term for photomontage actually sprang from.
Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch claim that while vacationing on the Baltic coast in 1918, they noticed in many people's houses, framed lithographs of a soldier in front of a background of barracks. The odd thing was, there was a photographic portrait of a loved one's head pasted on top of the annonymous soldier's face. This was believed to make the image more of a personal momento. Both saw that this technique could be carried further by simply cutting up photographs and piecing them together. Thereby not only creating a new way of constructing an image, but a new way to "talk" through images."
-B. Walker
1. The most important element of a mash-up is an unexpected combination of musics. To be able to do that, you should know your music as well as possible. Nirvana + Destiny's Child is great, but also is just skimming the surface of possibilities. So besides pop music, which is powerful because most people will recognize it, one should do some crate diggin in the hip hop tradition. Keep your mind open. Going deeper, one day for the hell of it, you will combine Public Enemy with thrift store regulars Herb Alpert and his Tijuana brass. The mash up is just a renaissance of the art of mixing unexpected songs together that goes back at least to the Fearless Four using Kraftwerk's "Man Machine" on Rockin' it.
2. Once you have a bunch of songs you'd like to experiment with, you need to play them simultaneously to see if the key, tempo, and mood work together. The original way to do this would be on 2 turntables, which is a good way to go because "happy accidents" will occur. The common way to preview these songs would be to rip them to digital files (usually .wavs or .aiffs) and load them into one of many software packages (ACID, Live, etc) that will automatically sync up your songs without changing their pitches. One approach is to take the acapella (voice only) track from song A and mix it with the Rhythm track (and possibly some vocals) from song B. You need to choose a tempo for your song. Usually people stay near the original tempo of the rhythm track, but feel free to experiment. As a very rough guide, here are some sample tempos and the styles of music they are associated with: 80-100 bpm: Hip hop; 100-120 bpm: House, Garage, 120-140: Techno, 140-160: DnB, and 160-180: Gabba. Since mash ups span the range of popular (and unpopular!) music, they are not restricted to any tempo.
3. Now you've got a cool, chin-scratching- but- head-nodding mix developing. You could stop here and create what a dj friend of mine used to call an 'instant remix'. However, if you'd like to push it further, you can start playing with the structure of each track, breaking it down into whatever level of detail you wish. Example: does the vocal have to play back the same way as the original? Or can you shuffle the phrases around to create new meanings (a favorite battle dj technique)? Can you tweak the rhythm track, emphasizing some parts and cutting out others? There are a host of basic dj techniques here that will help you create a sophisticated mix. Some of these include looping, dropping elements in and out of the mix, changing the equalization to create more bass or treble, and creating tension with buildups, where the rhythm works up to a fever pitch, and then you drop the whole track back in. Listen to various djs and producers from any genre and try to figure out how they put their tracks together. Some names: DJ Dangermouse, DJ Shadow, Soulwax, Strictly Kev, Coldcut.
4. Finally, you've got a mash up that sounds good. Again, you can stop here, or you can add further bits of audio to the mix: vocal samples, noises, anything you can imagine. Time to save it out as an mp3 or as a cd-quality audio file, and share with your friends!
5. Although some may see mash-ups as a fad, they come out of a long tradition of art and music of the 20th century. I highly recommend a listen to Strictly Kev's "Raiding the 20th Century: A History of the Cut up" which is a funky lesson on where it all started. Some of the parents of the cut up are the artists like Max Ernst and Hannah Hoch, writers like William Burroughs, novelty records of the 50s, and musicians like Bambaata and Flash. Here's a brief list of stuff that should have you cutting it up in no time.
Records:
Strictly Kev: Raiding the 20th Century: A History of the Cut up
The Grey Album : Beatles + Jay-Z mash up created controversy
Soulwax: 2 Many Djs the best known mash up team.
Double D and Steinski: The Lessons :The first really complex edit tracks, done on tape.
The Kleptones: A Night at the Hip-Hopera: The queen album remixed
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing: expressing more depth through sampling
De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising, a sample paradise.
The Ultimate Breaks and Beats series- Classic source of sampled songs, used to this day
Software:
Live
Acid
Websites:
Raiding the 20th century mp3
2manydjs
MTV Ultimate Mash ups
Salon
Books:
The Holy Book of Hip Hop- comprehensive list of samples
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