Peter Gabriel Remixes, Colbert Report Green Screen

October 19th, 2006

Technology This is a cool idea from Peter Gabriel, a Shock the Monkey remix contest on his website. Basically, he’s posted the musical elements from his song Shock the Monkey and letting people mess with them. The results are then posted on the website and open to comments and ratings. The assumption is obviously that the cream will float to the top, but along the way you get to listen to the musical creativity.

This opening up of content to the technological masses is similar to Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert and his Green Screen Challenge. The comedian filmed himself in front of a green screen acting like a moron with a light-saber, fighting an imaginary space monster, and invited the internet community to have their way with it. A lot of truly original and funny stuff emerged, most of it related to Star Wars, but my personal favorite is the Radioactive Martina Hingis, simply because it makes no sense. How do you come up with this stuff?

Anyhow, this opening up of traditionally old-media to the capabilities of anybody with a computer is a great idea. The companies get free publicity, lots of traffic to their sites, and original content that a team of Hollywood guys would charge a lot of money to create.

Meanwhile, in the eyes all the average users, the original company gets a few “they get it” points. I hope we see more of these media experiements.

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Dave 2 years ago 1 point
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Wasn't there some big name band a couple of years back that effectively released their recording tracks in Garageband format or something? If I remember right, folks went to town and got to mess around and tweak the raw audio files, which was pretty cool at the time. Name of the song and band escapes me though.

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http://www.fanpop.com

webomatica 2 years ago 1 point
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Maybe you're thinking of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, who did the Garage Band thing for one of his singles.

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tunequest 2 years ago 1 point
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The earliest occurrence of this phenomenon, that I can recall, was by Beck in 1999. He made available in AIFF format all the loops for his song "Mixed Bizness" for a remix contest. The winning song was to be released as a b-side to a future single, but I never heard if that actually happened.

Similarly, when D.C.-based band The Dismemberment Plan announced its retirement, it made loops to a large number of songs available for downloading. The band's final album consisted of 12 fan-submitted remixes and reconstructions.

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http://www.tunequest.org

webomatica 2 years ago 1 point
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tunquest, gee, I never heard of the Beck single. I should try to find that since I'm an on/off Beck fan.

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