Remix acapellas and samples from ccMixter

Over the past decade there has been a massive surge in emerging musician numbers. This has been particularly evident in the arena of musical collaboration, largely brought about by the rise and rise of our good friend the Internet.

Now anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can learn how to record or create their own song, and not only that - but also collaborate on musical projects with any number of willing musicians, singers, MCs around the World. This is a beautiful thing - think back only 15 years, and this would have been virtually impossible to do without massive amounts of traveling and/or expenses.

One very cool thing which has emerged out of this Internet driven musicial revolution is the Creative Commons license based remix community. For those who aren't already aware of these sites, or if you'd just interested in some more background info, read on.

ccMixter is a perfect example of a Creative Commons remix community. At it's core is the principle that collaboration between musicians is a great thing, and in order to foster this, they provide a platform for artists to share their own legal samples with the ccMixter community, under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Whether that requires that it be used in non-commercial, or requires Attribution, share-alike, and so on. You can read more about Creative Commons licenses.

This means that all the members of ccMixter can create, share, modify, and reshare samples - whether they're legal acapellas, or instrument melodies, or synth stabs - whatever. The creator of each sample specifies when they upload it, whether their sample can be used legally without any attribution link, or whether they require a link to their ccMixter page wherever it is used.

Ultimately this allows the community to collaborate with all sorts of musicians, and then share the resulting songs with both the ccMixter community, and others - such as MakeTunes own community.

We've had several tunes uploaded by various members here, who have used samples from ccMixter, including some beautiful female vocal tracks and a whole range of other instrumentation.

A few examples of MakeTunes members using ccMixter acapellas are:
Ed - Amped Up
Que Pena / Tanto Faz (Illusive Mind Mashup) by Itnocab vs Tamy
Frank Marquis - Pequennas Alas feat. Silviao

Not only do emerging artists provide samples for remixing, but some forward thinking established artists such as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy provide some of their own samples and vocals for use in remixes. Which is pretty cool of them. It's certainly a positive attitude to take, and could really help build on peoples passion for the creation of original music, to see commercial artists taking part in this sort of scene as well, without any monetary gain for themselves.

Here is the ccMixter FAQ which may answer more of your questions.

Feel free to share your thoughts below on the ccMixter idea, or your experiences with remixing using these types of samples.