I owe you all an apology for the empty void in your lives over the past month or so. And one day you will get that apology.
This is long (duh), so I've broken the post up into a couple different categories, based on the level of interest you might have in this project. Read the options below and then scroll down accordingly:
The best and always preferred way to listen to this mix is on a long car drive (to hear it all the way through without interruption), WITH THE VOLUME UP.
I'll wait for you to get back.
[...]
However, if you really don't give a shit, press play now:
Now,
Scroll to Option A if:
You saw a link to this on Facebook, wondered what the hell Cory Allyn (who you haven't seen or heard from since 5th grade) is up to, and have no particular interest in the particulars themselves.
Scroll to Option B if:
You often click on Cory's links when he posts them online, find the music vaguely interesting, but find him or herself wishing on a regular basis that someone would tell Cory he's just not good enough to compete with the big leagues and he should not quit his day job.
Scroll to Option C if:
It sounds pretty cool, you like supporting a friend, and you'll put up with about a paragraph of his fanatical bullshit before returning to checking everyone's status.
Scroll to Option D if:
Your jaw drops to the floor upon hearing the first 30 seconds. How in God's name did he do that??? races through your mind. I want to know (basically) every detail and nuance that went into the production of this!!!! That and you have a rough understanding of audio applications.
Now on to the options:
OPTION A:
I took a bunch of songs I liked, put them into an audio program, and then rearranged them and layered them on top of each other to form one big long track. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.
OPTION B:
You may very well be right, but go to hell. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.
OPTION C:
The main mix, listed below, was actually a CD that I made for Elise a while back, when I was trying to introduce her to dance music. I tried to pick songs that were really straddling the line between pop and house, because I know she wasn't going to get excited about 10 minute long songs (that I enjoy by the way) that take 6 minutes to go anywhere. It turned into one of her favorite mixes (I've probably made her nearly two dozen), and I didn't change any of the sequencing when I started this project. It turned out really cool, and there are a lot of fun little details that you might not notice the first time, so I would hope this mix is a grower for those with enough patience. The inspiration for this mix pretty much comes from Daft Punk's Alive 2007 CD, both in style and execution.
OPTION D:
All of these songs were imported into Ableton, where I then quantized them. In simpler terms, I lined them up to Ableton's idea of a musical bar. Once the songs were locked into that template (and some of them took up to 45 minutes to do, especially the acapellas because there isn't a steady beat behind them to match up to), Ableton allows you to alter the audio file to any tempo and still have it be on beat. What that really means is that I could take two songs that are different original speeds, change them both to the same tempo, and they would still line up perfectly on top of each other.
Ableton also automatically regulates the pitch of every track that is quantized, no matter the tempo, so unlike a turntable, where if you make the record go slower the pitch gets lower, I could slow or speed up the tempo of a song and it would still be in the same pitch. Of course you can manually adjust the pitch of any audio as well, which I did most noticeably with "Green Light" to make it in key with other audio I was mixing under it.
All the above stuff was the really time-consuming part. After that, it was really just a matter of copy and pasting bars of music in different places, trying to retain the best parts of each song while still making a cohesive piece of music. The little pieces of flair on the end involved the Beat Repeat effect in Ableton, which created most of the stuttering noises you'll hear.
Here is the playlist as it was originally created for Elise:
MGMT - Electric Feel (Justice Remix)
MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
Uffie - Pop the Glock
The Eternals - Wrath of Zeus (Original Mix)
Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire
Prince - Erotic City
Lo-Fi-Fnk - Want U
Hot Chip - And I Was a Boy From School
John Legend - Green Light (feat. Andre 3000) (Diplo's Dade County 1988 Mix)
Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Hear Mars Club Mix)
Ratatat - Shempi
Digitalism - Zdarlight
Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned (Justice Remix)
Adele - Cold Shoulder (Basement Jaxx Classic Remix Edit)
Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix)
The following are, in chronological order, additional songs that were added to the mix. Most were drum breaks layered on top of main songs, a few were acappellas and one or two were used fairly extensively in mixing. (*) Any song with an asterisk next to it is from the French music label Crydamoure, which has an exhaustingly awesome collection of artists and tracks, almost all of which have been released exclusively as 12" singles.
Hot Chip - Over and Over
Kanye West - Stronger (A-Trak Remix)
Disco Italiano - Chella'lla
(*) DJ Sneak - Intergalactik Disko
(*) The Eternals - Wrath of Zeus (Zeusappella)
The Incredible Bongo Band - Apache
Audio Two - Top Billin'
Melvin Bliss - Substitution
Lil Wayne - A Milli
(*) Le Knight Club - Santa Claus
(*) Le Knight Club - Gator
(*) Crydajam - If You Give Me The Love I Want
Parris Mitchell - Ghetto Shout Out!! (feat. Wax Master)
Kanye West - Love Lockdown
Major Lazer - Hold the Line (feat. Mr. Lexxx & Santigold)
(*) Le Knight Club - Holiday on Ice
Daft Punk - Revolution 909
(*) Sedat - Feel Inside
Daft Punk - Oh Yeah
(*) Archigram - Carnaval
Alan Braxe - Vertigo
Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
A-Trak - Call That Girl Margherita (from his mix Dirty South Dance, I don't know what song he's mixing)
MSTRKRFT - Bounce (feat. NORE) (A-Trak Remix)
The Encore
The last part of my mix might sound familiar to some people because its a complete reconstruction of Daft Punk's Alive 2007 encore. The only version you can get your hands on is (obviously) a live version from their tour. This version is not live, which is not some sort of studio wizardry where I was able to lower the audience noise in the background, but I have in fact found each of the different samples the French duo used and recreated the encore, and at least for the first half I did it pretty faithfully (and might I say impressively).
While it might scream blasphemy (and that would be my reaction coming across something like this), I decided that about halfway through the mix, after the peak climax of the Together bass dropping, I could one up those French fuckers. And I think I have. I would hope anyone who had the good fortune to attend one of these shows two years ago would agree with me that if the encore had played out the way I've constructed it, it would have been absolute mayhem.
These are the pieces encompassing the last 11 minutes:
Daft Punk - Human After All ('Guy-Man After All' Justice Remix)
Archigram - Carnaval
Daft Punk - Revolution 909
Daft Punk - The Prime Time of Your Life (Para One Remix)
Disco Italiano - Chella'lla
Together - Together
Sedat - Feel Inside
Daft Punk - One More Time
? - ?????
Here is the encore as a separate track, in case anyone is just interested in hearing that.
And here is the original Daft Punk track, live from the first show on their Alive 2007 tour in Bercy, France:
Finally, here is a compressed folder containing all the original tracks. Different people will have different levels of involvement with my mix; in some cases people might not know any of the original songs before listening to my mix. In that case, it would be understandably hard to differentiate between the original work and what I've done to it. To be fair, that could make for an equally enjoyable (albeit different) listening experience, but in the end listening to the songs in their original form really highlights the amount of effort (this mix took me about three weeks to complete, and at times I was working on it for four or five hours each day) that I put into this damn thing.
Over and above all, just have fun with it. It's music and it's meant to be enjoyed, so do so. Oh and please comment; it's the very least you could do.
TO DOWNLOAD ANY OF THE SONGS YOU'RE STREAMING, JUST CLICK ON THE CORRESPONDING "DIVSHARE" ICON AND IT WILL TAKE YOU TO THE CORRECT PAGE.
