Overview
In the 21st century, the modes of music creation and distribution changed quickly and drastically. With the advent of the internet, file sharing, and affordable music production software, aspiring musicians could create their music at home without a huge or expensive recording studio, and they could distribute their music online via free downloads or YouTube videos. These new means of creation and distribution furthered the careers of many musicians. At the same time, traditional mediums such as television remained important ways for musicians to be recognized. As we will see in this lesson, although the means of discovery and creation have changed, the ultimate goals of fame, recording contracts, and respect have remained the same for many musicians in the 21st century.
Objectives
- Recall the significance of American Idol and the role it plays in both American popular culture and in the careers of the musicians who perform on it
- Examine how YouTube has offered opportunities for musicians to be “discovered”
- Define the term “mash-up”
- Identify several significant examples of “mash-up”
- Recall the significance of The Grey Album and its relationship to art and to copyright law
The Mash-Up
With the advent of relatively inexpensive digital audio editing software, it became easier and more affordable for people to create music digitally. Using software programs such as Cubase and Wavelab, aspiring producers could create music on their personal computers with relative ease. They no longer needed an entire recording studio to create music. Instead, all they needed was a laptop, an internet connection, and some digital audio production software.
In many cases, these "laptop DJs" distributed their musical creations online for free rather than releasing them commercially. In most cases, online distribution has made it simple and inexpensive for producers to find audiences for their music. However, this has not been the case for some, as we will see with The Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse.
One of the most popular types of music that laptop DJs created in the early part of the 21st century was called a mash-upwhen an artist combines samples from at least two different songs to create a new track or to undermine the seriousness of the source tracks. The earliest types of mash-ups combined the vocal line from one song with the instrumental track of another song in what is often termed an "A vs. B" mash-up. "Smells Like Teen Booty" (2002) by 2 Many DJs (also known as Soulwax) samples the guitar, bass, and drums of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ♫ (1991) and then adds the vocal line from Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious ♫" (2001). These A vs. B types of mash-ups often aimed to undermine the seriousness of either or both source tracks by easily interchanging the music's components. Mash-ups such as "Smells Like Teen Booty" tried to erase the lines between "high" and "low" popular music, treating the music of revered artists with the same amount of respect as the music of artists perceived to be more frivolous.
As the 2000s progressed, many producers moved away from simply matching the vocal line of one track to the instrumental line of another track. Now, they engaged in an intricate process whereby they combined sampled fragments from dozens or hundreds of different songs into a single new track. The vocal line might be borrowed intact from a source, or it might also be created with fragments. A mash-up track by Girl Talk often contains samples of singing, rapping, and instrumental sounds from dozens of different songs that span decades. For example, in the first thirty seconds of Girl Talk's" Like This ♫" (2008), fragments of music by Beyoncé, LL Cool J, the Bangles, En Vogue, Hall and Oates, the Jackson 5, and the Beastie Boys, among others, are sampled and recombined into a song that is simultaneously chaotic and logical. Another particularly notable example of this type of mash-up is DJ Earworm's annual release entitled "United State of Pop." Every year since 2007, DJ Earworm has created a mash-up of the top 25 Billboard songs from that year.
"I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people."
