The Making of a Mashup: Aurally Volume 1 - By Scott Abel, The Audio Wrangler

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, aka The Audio Wrangler

What do you get when you cross Pink Floyd with Christina Aquilera? How about a little Elvis with your Public Enemy? Or some Cher on top of This Mortal Coil? Although it may sound a little frightening, pairing musical groups and vocalists together in unorthodox ways can yield some pretty incredible audio sensations.

Known commonly as mashups (or bastards), these bootleg musical creations are user-generated derivative works created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental version of another. This technique makes it possible to create a new music product by combining, for instance, the a cappella version of “Hurt” by Christina Aquilera with the instrumental “Is there anybody out there?” by Pink Floyd. The result, when done well, yields a beautiful new audio product – in this example, a mashup entitled “Is There Anybody Hurt There?” by the mashup artist Okiokinl.

I use music mashups in conference presentations, workshops, and during consulting assignments, to teach my clients (organizations struggling to get a grip on the documents, web pages, marketing brochures, and other information products they produce) about content reuse, XML authoring, component content management, and content personalization. I use music mashups as an example because it’s the easiest way to help people understand these concepts and it’s something most — if not all — humans have experience with in one way or another.

How do you make a music mashup?

There are various ways to make a music mashup based on two songs. They can be created digitally on a personal computer using software designed to facilitate the mixing of music files together such as Apple Garage Band, which allows user to mix and record music from multiple sources. Music mixing software — of which there are many varieties at varying price points — provides a granular level of control that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain using traditional music mixing methods.

Numark iDJ2 iPod Mixing Board

Mashups can also be created using a more traditional remixing approach. This method requires two turntables (or two CD players), a dj mixing board (a type of audio control panel that provides the dj control of what music is being played, its volume, bass, treble, midrange, as well as its tempo, calculated in beats per minute or bpm), headphones, and a recording device like a CD burner. Inexpensive modern mixing boards like the Numark iDJ2 provide an iPod interface, allowing you to mix music directly from your iPod (without the need for CD players, turntables or other music inputs) onto the recording device.

More complex mashups may involve a hybrid approach that utilizes a variety of approaches and may even incorporate other techniques including live vocals, music, and spoken voice.

How I created my mashup compilation

Aurally Volume 1 - A bouillabaisse of sound, jam-packed with songs you may recognize, but in new and unexpected ways. A downtempo mashup continuous mix by DJ Scott Abel.

Aurally Volume 1 is a mashup compilation – a series of mashups (created by other artists) that I weaved together using the Numark iDJ2 mixing board, a home stereo system (amplifier, CD recorder, speakers), a video iPod, a MacBook Pro, and a series of carefully selected mp3 files (the mashups).

The art of selecting, sequencing and mixing the tracks together to create the final product is what I enjoy when making a compilation. It’s an art form that relies on timing, feelings and emotions, as much as musical knowledge and technical ability. It’s not something everyone can do well. In fact, the mashup databases are littered with good examples of bad mashups. Here’s an example. It’s called “Bringing Back Sexy Knights” (Justin Timberlake vs Knight Rider Theme Remixed) by DJ Skip .

To create my compilation, I first determined the theme (or flavor) of the mix. I decided to deviate from my comfort zone. Usually, I tend to create hiNRG, continuously mixed dance compilations, which involve a technique known as beat-matching. But this time around I decided on a downtempo vibe — a collection of mellow songs, with the occasional uptempo track included for good measure. The goal of a downtempo mix is to create a listening experience by weaving the tracks together in a way that is both interesting and musically pleasing.

To create my continuous mashup mix compilation, I performed the following tasks:

1. Scanned online mashup databases for mashups
2. Listened to each mashup and downloaded those that were candidates for inclusion in the compilation into iTunes
3. Recorded metadata about each mashup I planned to use. (Note: I recorded this metadata in iTunes, but you could do it in a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper). Metadata included:
   • Name of mashup artist/dj who created the mashup
   • Name of mashup (usually a combination of the original song titles repurposed to create a new mashed up title)
   • Titles of the original songs and artists included in the mashup
   • The total length of the mashup in minutes and seconds
4. Created a draft line-up (the order in which each mashup would be included in the mix); I use a piece of paper for this, but you could use a spreadsheet or a text document to accomplish the same goal
5. Played each mashup, paying special attention to the beginning and ending of each mashup in order to identify places where the mashup had a natural break, or a change of tempo, that might make a good place to introduce the next mashup in the mix — aka seque
6. Recorded the exact time (in minutes and seconds) of the seque on my draft line-up
7. Fired up the mixing board and my iPod
8. Rehearsed the mashup following the draft line-up, making changes to the segues and switching the order of the mashups in the line-up until I was happy with the final product
9. Created the final line-up
10. Recorded the final mashup compilation mix (as documented in the final line-up) onto compact disc
11. Copied the compilation file (an .mp4 file) to iTunes
12. Listened to the entire compilation
13. Satisfied with the end result, I used iTunes to convert the .mp4 file to .mp3

Finding mashups

Finding the mashups to include on a compilation is a time-consuming process. I searched music libraries, peer-to-peer networks, music industry blogs, Facebook and MySpace pages, and websites dedicated to cataloging and writing about mashups. I downloaded hundreds of mashups – a more difficult and time-consuming task than you might imagine. Some sites provide an ability for you to download a mashup with one click. Others require you to right-click, then select a destination for the file. And still others trick you into thinking you’re going to download the file with a single click, but they really are trying to get you to register for (and often purchase) a service. To add to the frustration, many sites are advertising-based. They display a series of never-ending pop up ads, some of which start off by playing bandwidth hogging video that sometimes causes your browser to crash, forcing you to start all over again.

Once I accumulated a large selection of mashup files, I began the screening process. This is perhaps the most time-consuming part of making a solid compilation as it requires you to listen to each track and determine if you have an interest in keeping it, or whether you should delete it. If you’re like me, you can get wrapped up in the music and lose track of time, so it’s best to try and stay focused on the task at hand.

The Ingredients in Aurally: Volume 1

Here’s a listing of the mashups I included in my compilation (including the metadata described above):

1. “Strictly Safe From Rock-n-Roll” by Apollo Zero
   • Ingredients: Bent “Strictly Bongo”, Britney Spears “I Love Rock-n-Roll”, Christina Aquilera “Beautiful”, Paris Hilton “Nothing in this World”, Simple Minds “Belfast Child”, Massive Attack “Safe From Harm”, K-Tel Records “Dance Lesson Intro”.
2. “Turn Up The Club Ghetto” by Okiokinl
   • Ingredients: Elvis Presley “The Ghetto”, Public Enemy “Bring the Noise/Terminator X”, and DJ Rob “Clubbed to Death”.
3. “Is There Anybody Hurt There?” by Okiokinl
   • Ingredients: Christina Aquilera ”Hurt” and Pink Floyd “Is There Anybody Out There?”.
4. “Safari Love” by Loo & Placido
   • Ingredients: The Beatles “Because the World is Round”, Aretha Franklin “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”, The Pixies “Where is My Mind?” and Elton John “I Want Love”.
5. “You Won’t See You’re All That I Need” by DJ Nite
   • Ingredients: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel “You’re All I Need to Get By” and The Beatles “You Won’t See Me”.
6. “If This Isn’t Numb” by Ministry of Mashed Sound
   • Ingredients: The Pet Shop Boys “Numb” and Jennifer Hudson “If This Isn’t Love”.
7. “Apologize Life” by Winkar Lopez
   • Ingredients: One Republic featuring Timbaland “Apologize” and Julie McKnight “Diamond Life”.
8. “Jude’ll Fix It” by Phil Retrospector
   • Ingredients: The Beatles “With a Little Help From My Friends”, Jim Sturgess “Hey Jude” and Coldplay “Fix You”.
9. “Walk on By ‘Cuz I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” by Matt Bland
   • Ingredients: Dione Warwick “Walk on By” and Duffy “Stepping Stone”.
10. “Sunshine on My Foolish Ocean” by Apollo Zero
    • Ingredients: John Denver “Sunshine on My Shoulder”, This Mortal Coil “Song to the Siren”, Sheena Easton “Foolish Heart”, Cyndi Lauper “Come on Home”, Dolly Parton “God’s Coloring Book
11. “Funk That Shit: Believe in Glorybox” by Funk That Shit Productions
    • Ingredients: Cher ”Believe” and Portishead “Glory Box”.
12. “Bootiful Prudence” by Autopilot
    • Ingredients: The Beatles “Dear Prudence” and Christina Aquilera “Beautiful”.
13. “Nancy Gets Banged” by Phil Retrospector
    • Ingredients: Nancy Sinatra “Bang Bang” and Ryuichi Sakamoto “Railroad Man”.

Selecting the mashups to go on a compilation generally means finding a dozen or so songs that go well together. This is the tricky part. It involves understanding the emotional and dramatic impact of music, it’s tone, tempo, style, vibe, and flavor. These are not things you can easily learn. I think, like being able to sing, paint, sculpt or draw, it’s something you either have inside you — or you don’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn the techniques used by djs, mashup artists and remixers. They can come in handy for a variety for purposes.

Elapsed time to create this compilation…well, we won’t go into that. Let’s just say, it was days, not hours. Your mileage may vary. It’s a creative endeavor that involves lots of emotional judgements that are hard to describe. Suffice it to say that artists can’t be rushed when they are practicing their craft. Sometimes it comes to you quickly and other times, it’s a painful process — a trial and error experiment.

Aurally: Volume 1

Here’s the final product. Give it a listen. Then, let me know what you think by leaving a comment at the end of this article. If you like what you hear, join my DJ Scott Abel (The Audio Wrangler) fan page on Facebook where you can listen to and download my other mashup mixes.

In future articles, I’ll discuss how to make an original mashup, how to use social networks to promote your mashups (and get to the top of the charts), and I’ll interview some of the most famous mashup artists. Until then, enjoy the music. ]]> http://thecontentwrangler.com/2010/02/11/the-making-of-a-mashup-compilation-aurally-volume-1/feed/ 0 http://thecontentwrangler.com/2010/02/11/interview-joe-gollner/ http://thecontentwrangler.com/2010/02/11/interview-joe-gollner/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:43:51 +0000 scottabel http://thecontentwrangler.com/?p=4001 Interview with Joe Gollner by Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler: Joe, thanks for agreeing to chat with us today. Tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry.

Joe Gollner, Content Philospher

Over the years, I have been entangled in a bizarrely large number of projects and in sectors as far afield as aerospace and education, health care and telecommunications, academic publishing and oil engineering. I formed an XML solution integration company in 1998; sold that company to Stilo International in 2004; and chaired, for many years, the XML World series of conferences. So you could say I have been immersed in the content business for a long time –- so long that perhaps it is time to change my title again, this time to the “Content Philosopher”.

The Content Wrangler: Tell us a little about your firm, the markets you serve, and the products and services you offer.

Joe Gollner: Currently, I am assuming new responsibilities for Stilo International as the Chief Solutions Architect (Intelligent Content Technologies) and my specific role is to initiate and lead solutions projects for customers who need to elevate the IQ of their content and the associated content processes and information products. These efforts dovetail naturally with the technology products side of Stilo, with the venerable OmniMark content processing platform being the foundational offering. Go to almost any large scale content environment that you would be tempted to identify as an example of intelligent content at work and there is a better than even chance you will find OmniMark at work as well. Specifically, OmniMark is used to build conversion, enrichment, validation and publishing processes that bring intelligence to the vast stores of content. OmniMark is used to put in place publishing processes that make something of that new found intelligence.

At Stilo, we use this technology to build highly sophisticated content management and publishing environments. It turns out that we can also build new services that organizations will be increasingly able to access “in the cloud” (or in their environments, if they so choose) – with these being cases where these customers can leverage the power of OmniMark without necessarily jumping in with both feet and mastering what is admittedly a highly specialized field.

For the last couple of years, we have been working on an on-demand conversion portal, known as Migrate, and after collaborating with a number of organizations a new release is fast approaching.

New for 2010, I am also dedicating a larger portion of my time to research and publishing, with a book in the works that focuses, resolutely, on the subject of “intelligent content”. Under my research and publishing agenda, I am approaching the question of “intelligent content” from a number of angles and identifying design patterns that have, over the many projects in my history, seemed to produce the best results. These efforts will lead to a book, as mentioned, but I also expect it will produce some new methodological tools, learning resources, and even, looking further downstream, technology components. These activities are being organized under Gnostyx Research. Most recently on the publishing front, I contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book on Information Management Best Practices which I see is getting some good press at KMWorld.

The Content Wrangler: Intelligent Content is a hot topic today, but many people don’t understand what it is or why it matters. From your perspective, what is intelligent content? What makes it so smart? And, why do organizations need it?

Joe Gollner: I might be the last person you want to ask that question. Not because I don’t have an answer – but because I have too many answers. In fact I have been circling the question of “what is intelligent content” on my blog including a recent post that resurrected some of the memories from Intelligent Content 2009 (very positive memories) and that looks forward to this year’s event.

In essence, the definition I put forward last year in my whitepaper, The Emergence of Intelligent Content, still holds water, I believe:

“Intelligence refers to the ability to acquire and apply knowledge (normally a quality attributed to people but not exclusively), or to a collection of information of value in a particular context (OED). Content can be considered intelligent when it expresses, in an open way, the full meaning underlying a communication such that the data, information and knowledge being expressed can be easily accessed and effectively leveraged by both people and the software applications that support them.”

There is quite a bit packed into this definition. In practical terms, intelligent content is about upping our game in the content business – identifying the content that is the most important to a given business, ensuring that this content is created, managed and leveraged in the smartest way possible, and putting in place the mechanisms whereby these high-value assets and services can evolve in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Chef Gordon Ramsay sees that the right dish is delivered to each customer — prepared, just they way they asked for it.

At Intelligent Content 2010, I will be speaking about Intelligent Content Management. I explain how this content kitchen needs to be organized and how it needs to work. In an effort to make the subject both accessible and entertaining, I am leveraging the motif of a famous spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to address the three sides to intelligent content and the management demands that arise around each and, more importantly, around their integration. I am now thinking that there maybe a little Chef Ramsay involved as well.

The Content Wrangler: Creating intelligent content certainly seems like a good idea. Can you share with us a few examples of how intelligent content can help an organization to be faster, leaner, make more money, reduce expenses, reduce risk, or serve its clients better?

Joe Gollner: On the subject of examples, I could go on forever. I will touch on a couple. Before I do, I want to stress that creating intelligent content and integrating it into business processes and offerings of an organization can be very hard work. I am bald for a reason. I mention this not to put anyone off but only to remind people to start small and evolve their “intelligent content capabilities” incrementally. For reasons that I will go into in Palm Springs, where intelligent content is involved the “big leap forward” might well be your last.

In the chapter I contributed to “Information Management Best Practices: Volume 1″, I recount a case study where we dug deeply and greedily into the various benefits that intelligent content can deliver. And this was done on a relatively large scale so what benefits were realized translated to some very big numbers. Perhaps the most important benefit, at least in terms of returning concrete financial savings and fundamentally improving the quality of the information services being provided, was the dramatic reduction of content redundancy.

Content in most organizations exists in a state of unbridled redundancy. If there is one version of a warning statement being managed and translated there will likely be a hundred. In this case, there were often thousands of identical components being managed and translated in parallel. Eliminating this redundancy, making it leaner, saved over a $100 million dollars a year in this one example. And the dollars saved were not the only story. By eliminating the content redundancy the number of documentation errors was dramatically reduced. By eliminating the content redundancy and raising the intelligence of the managed content components, a fundamental change could be introduced that would see content processes fully integrated with the system engineering processes that were continually modifying the equipment platforms the documentation needed to describe.

My favorite anecdote from this case study pertains to the publication of a large parts manual which historically took 18 months to republish. This manual, in being managed the old not-so-intelligent way, was, as you can imagine, almost completely useless because it was always a couple of years out-of-date. When questions arose, the mechanics would typically phone headquarters to ask the equipment lifecycle management office about what parts they should use or order. Once the content was rendered “intelligent”, the republishing of this manual went from taking 18 months to 18 minutes. And the people responsible for providing up-to-date parts information to the field units joked that the 18 minutes coincided with the amount of time they spent on coffee break, because their process produced an online reference tool that was “continually up-to-date” automatically. That’s intelligent content in action.

The Content Wrangler: Are there any examples you can point to of intelligent content on the web?

Joe Gollner: As another example of intelligent content in action, and this one being accessible online, I would point to HP printer products division and the support resources they supply to customers. My good friend, Rahel Bailie, president of Intentional Design, gave a great talk last year where she explicitly used HP support environment as an interactive illustration of several things being done well. As usual, I acted up in the presentation – this time blushing, fanning myself and getting all misty because she was showcasing one of my customers.

A couple of years ago my team had done a substantial amount of work for HP renovating the intelligent content infrastructure that underlies these online support services. Now our work was made infinitely easier by two factors – one was that HP really did have their proverbial act together and the other was that the previous integrator who had designed the initial system (many years before) had done a spectacularly good job. How often does that happen? And, how often does one integrator say that of another’s work?

The Content Wrangler: Do you know of any useful online resources you think our readers might find useful in understanding intelligent content?

Joe Gollner: In terms of where to look for more information, I would first point readers to the Intelligent Content 2010 conference. Somewhat unabashedly I would point people to my blog posts on this topic and specifically those falling under the xContent category. I also contend that my whitepaper on this topic remains a pretty good place to start.

The Content Wrangler: Thanks for taking time out of your hectic schedule to chat with us about intelligent content. We really appreciate it.

Joe Gollner: I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Palm Springs at Intelligent Content 2010. I am especially looking forward to any debates that might break out –- as they did last year.

Watch the video and let us know what you think.

And, consider attending the Mark Logic 2010 User Conference, May 4-6, 2010 in San Francisco.

The Content Wrangler: Hello, Gabor. Tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry.

Gabor: I am a Chemical Engineer by training. I became fascinated with software a little over 10 years into my career, before I made the switch to the software industry. To me, building software solutions is still pretty much engineering, and my approach is to build solutions block by block.

Gabor Fari, Microsoft Life Sciences

The Content Wrangler: Where do you work? Tell us a little about your firm, the markets you serve, and the products and services you offer.


Gabor: I work for Microsoft on our Life Sciences team. I am the driver behind the Intelligent Content Framework (ICF) initiative. The idea is to implement a people-ready approach to structured content authoring and dynamic publishing, using the Microsoft tools that many people use everyday, i.e. Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office.


The Content Wrangler: Intelligent Content is a hot topic today, but many people don’t understand what it is or why it matters. From your perspective, what is intelligent content? What makes it so smart? And, why do organizations need it?


Gabor: That is a great question. I have read a lot of definitions about Intelligent Content. I think Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner have the best definition of Intelligent Content, and it would be redundant to quote them here. Another way to look at it: Intelligent Content is where we need to move to, in the Era of Dumb Content.


[Editor's note: See "What is Intelligent Content?" by Ann Rockley and "The Emergence of Intelligent Content" by Joe Gollner.]


The Content Wrangler: Creating intelligent content certainly seems like a good idea. Can you share with us a few examples of how intelligent content can help an organization to be faster, leaner, make more money, reduce expenses, reduce risk, or serve it’s clients better?

Intelligent Content Practices and Technologies can help new drugs get to market faster and save lives, Fari says.

Alan J Porter

[This post is the first in a planned series of articles that examine how the traditional book industry could benefit from adopting XML.]

Yesterday I posted on Twitter a couple of figures from the Association of American Publishers report of November 2009 book sales. The good news was that sales overall had in fact increased by 10.9%, but what really stood out was that in November of last year the sales of eBooks exploded showing a 199.9% increase and that they now account for about 2.5% of the revenue generated by book publishing. When you consider that most eBooks are cheaper than their paper equivalents, then the market share based on actual sales numbers is going to be even higher.

Sales of the electronic version have out paced hard copy sales 4:1

All this sounds great doesn’t it? – On the surface it is, BUT it could be so much more.

When I look at my book on the Kindle, or on my iPhone, I am frankly disappointed in it. The reason? eBooks and eBook readers today are little more than simple electronic page turners.

eBooks and eBook readers today are little more than simple electronic page turners.

And it’s not only non-fiction where I see these sort of enhancements, imagine reading your favorite novelist, and when a character mentions a location being able to click through to the Google street view, or when they eat at a nice restaurant being able to access the recipe. Ever wanted to know exactly how to make the type of vodka martini that is best served shaken, not stirred? It could be just a click away.

There is no technical reason why this sort of interactive book couldn’t be done today.

As well as being an author of books on various aspects of pop-culture that are published in the traditional model, I’ve also been active in the technical publishing industry for more years than I care to count.

Where eBooks and platforms like the Kindle, the Nook, etc. are now is where the technical documentation industry was 15 years ago – simple electronic page turners.

But take a look at what large engineering companies, the military, and others are doing with their technical documentation today – they are delivering IETMS (Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals), books with links in the text that can jump you to the related part on an illustration, call up part numbers (even do the automatic ordering of that part for you), or call up animations, video and a whole plethora of supporting information.

Technical publications, training, and service departments have been using XML technologies for years to streamline content production processes and to create multiple information products from a single source of content.

With XML you can not only format the text to look how you want, without having to rewrite or reformat the source each time, but you can use it to automatically generate navigation aids like table of contents, lists of items in the content, indexes, plus all the hyperlinking that adds real value.

Over the last few years I’ve offered to write a few books using XML markup, but the publishers have always politely declined, preferring to stick to a system they know. A process that has changed little since the days of the typewriter – yes the tools have changed, but the process is still fundamentally the same; largely because traditional publishers still see the physical book as the product, and not the content.

But today content is king, and we need to make that content available across all platforms, and to be able to add value to it, and that means mark-up.

[In the next post I’ll compare the differences in the workflow between traditional publishing and technical publishing and look at how the cost of moving to XML is a lot less than most publishers believe.]

About the Author

Alan J. Porter a 20 year veteran of the corporate communications industry is founder of 4Js Group LLC a consulting and services company that specializes in combining creative talent with business expertise to help companies tell their story. He is also the regular writer of the monthly Disney*Pixar “World of CARS” comic book series.

His latest book, “WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit” will be published by XML Press in May 2010.

Blog: THE CONTENT POOL http://4jsgroup.blogspot.com
Email: ajp@4jsgroup.com
Phone: 512-968-7362
Twitter: @4jsgroup

Dev Ganesan, President and CEO, Aptara

“It’s both surprising and ironic that trade publishers, in particular, have yet to adopt XML-first or XML-centric workflows,” said Fred Ciporen.

• Faster time-to-market
• Indefinite extension of products’ shelf-life
• Greater and more nimble responsiveness to competitive threats and new business opportunities
• Cost savings through more efficient utilization of human and financial resources
• Ability to automatically combine and deliver various types of content on-demand
• Flexibility in preparing content in new formats (Web, mobile, social media, eBook) for inclusion in fast-growing third party eBook distribution networks like Amazon.com, iTunes, app stores
• Ability to quickly develop enhanced and engaging interactive reading experiences that are not possible with print-based products

Regardless of publisher type, there’s no avoiding today’s bottom line: in order to compete in the digital age, publishers must design a process that allows them to sustainably profit from digital content distribution.


Although eBook challenges may be new, thankfully their solution already exists. The Trade industry is well armed with proven multi-channel, content-centered publishing approaches that deliver sizable, real cost savings and increased margins.


It’s time for Trade publishers to take a fresh look at XML-first workflows. It is the best and only content strategy designed for the present and the future – while establishing a solid foundation on which to profitably operate a publishing business in the digital economy.


[This article was originally published by TeleRead, and is reprinted with permission of the author.]


About the Author
Dev Ganesan is the President and CEO of Aptara, a digital e-book conversion and digital publishing company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia.

Join us at SDL Innovate 2010: Strategies for Delivering Content and Products to Global Markets in Santa Clara, CA – February 9-10. Learn about localization, translation, internationalization, structured content, global multi-channel marketing, and attend half a dozen sessions dedicated to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Join us. It’s free! We like free.