Tag: links

  • Why there are only 12 songs in most albums

    I noticed this question on ask.com: Why are there only 12 songs in most albums? Of course I tried to create an account there to answer the question, but since it failed, here’s my researched answer to that question.

    Most record deals from major labels require the artist to record an x amount of “albums”. The record deal usually clearly defines “an album” as being a musical recording that is 40 to 50 minutes long. You can see an example of it here (in the first clause) and here (paragraph 2d). Since most pop-songs are between 3 and 4 minutes, it has become an industry standard that this means about 12 songs (4 x 12 = 48 minutes).

    Artists that have more than 12 songs usually have short ‘in between’ or ‘intro’-tracks that are just between 30 seconds to 90 seconds, but often you’ll notice the total running time of the album is still between 40 and 50 minutes, like the contract specifies.

    The line that specifies it has to be 40 to 50 minutes prevents an artist by getting off easy by recording a 20 minute ‘album’, but also prevents the artist from recording an epic work that lasts 80 minutes, that the record company could have sold as two albums.

    So why 40 to 50 minutes? There’s no limit on how large a modern digital release can be. A cd can hold 74 minutes and in some cases 80 minutes of sound. There’s even an anecdote that the cd is 74 minutes long, because Sony executive Norio Ohga felt that the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony should fit exactly on one disc.

    But before the cd there was the vinyl LP which can hold only 22 minutes of recording on two sides, so a total of 44 minutes. The LP was the industry standard for the longest possible recording that would fit on one disc for 30 years from it’s introduction in 1948 until roughly the 1980s when the CD was introduced. As such the ‘album’ become synonymous with a 44 minute recording, even when the CD was introduced. In the beginning this was because ‘albums’ still had to be released on both LP and CD. CD’s did some times get bonus tracks, also to lure people to buy the more expensive CD.

    But over the years, the recording industry simply held onto the ‘standard’ 44 minutes and simply loosened the definition to somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes. Or like usually … 12 tracks.

  • Bon Jovi vs. Van Velzen

    I’ve talked about clone songs before. Sometimes it’s obvious a clone song tries to rip off the original, but sometimes you can wonder whether it is meant as a tribute to the composers favourite music or simply that they didn’t even realise they were using a melody of their favourite artist. In the case of Shine a Little Light by Dutch artist Van Velzen it might be the latter. The song’s vocal line strikes a remarkable resemblance with Raise Your Hands by Bon Jovi. The most obvious clue there was no ill intention when writing the song is that in 2008 Van Velzen performed as the opening act for Bon Jovi (source in Dutch) when he performed in The Netherlands.

    Homage or Fromage? You decide:

  • Google’s Moog doodle

    Swwweeeeet! Check out the classic Moog Google coded and put up on their front page for Bob Moog‘s birthday! Wish he was still around to see that.

    If you’re late for the party, you can find the synth on Google’s Doodle page.

  • Site moved to new server

    I moved the site to a new server! B-sting.com has been kindly hosted by Jocelyn of Sugarcube.net for a few years, but since I got my own server at Pretty Hate Machine (not-related to the NIN album), I moved all my sites there. This one has been last to move, because migrating WordPress was a new challenge to me.

    Yesterday the booking form for a gig couldn’t be filled in and e-mail sent to any address on the domain wouldn’t arrive for a few hours. Woops! But that’s fixed now.

    Now that that’s out of the way, maybe I should get back to what I was planning to do, namely get EP02 out that I promised in my New Years post? About that: three tracks are pretty much done and might need a bit of tinkering before I’m completely satisfied. Then there’s also the issue of track 4. Every EP needs at last 4 tracks.

    So right now the main obstacle is to create track 4. Granted I have plenty of half-assed ideas and experiments lying about, but stomping an actual track out of it is easier said than done. Wish me luck!

  • Brushy One String

    Never fool yourself into thinking that extra, expensive high-tech production tools are a necessity to make a great music. Or worse that when you use these tools, a song is therefore great. I’ve personally seen musicians blowing money and obsess over recording and fine-tuning a certain guitar-section to its optimal sound quality, while the arrangement was hardly stood out in the song.

    A great song by passionate musician is a great song, no matter how you play it or what quality its recorded in. Brushy One String proves this point by displaying his vocal talents by just accompanying himself on a cheap, crappy-sounding, one-string guitar:

    He reminds me of local legend street-musician Carlos. He plays at the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam day in day out and always with a smile.

  • Call 911 now!

    See, just cause I don’t post regularly about samples any more, doesn’t mean I’m not interested in it any more (double negative!).

    Lately I’ve been playing Skrillex’s First of the Year (Equinox) a lot. Twice in that song you can hear the sample Call 911 NOW! I was pretty sure that probably came from a film, but was unsure which one. So I looked it up and the internet answered me, nope, it’s from this YouTube-clip of some angry/crazy woman shouting at skater kids. Thanks internet for educating me.

  • Carl Orff – O Fortuna

    This is the last Origin of Samples post for now. It gave me great pleasure digging through the history of sampling, even discovering a few new things myself. Hopefully I can pick it up some time in the future, but for now I’ll be focussing my energy on my own music. More about that next week! For now let’s end with something epic:

    Classical composer Carl Orff”s masterpiece Carmina Burana, composed between 1935 and 1936, contains the most familiar movement of his work which has been used countless times in popular culture: O Fortuna. In music this often meant just playing it before a show to make the entrance of the artist more glorious.

    Sampling didn’t really happen until the early 90’s when KMFDM used bits of it in Liebeslied (1990) . The most infamous samplings of O Fortuna happened simultaneously in 1991 however.

    At the early peak of house music two Belgian producers sampled O Fortuna, had the songs played in clubs and decided to release it. Their bombastic track O Fortuna was released in 1991 under their recording name Apotheosis. Right in the same week, a group that called themselves Fortuna feat. Satenig released their song O Fortuna. The song was much more mellow and radio-friendly and didn’t use a sample from any recording, but clearly replayed the tunes from Carl Orff’s version.

    By this time the heirs of the deceased Carl Orff had gotten wind of this and sued. They managed to ban both tracks in the week that they were released. This meant that the cd-singles were on the shelves still on Saturday, but by Monday were all gone. I know, because I managed to snatch up a copy of the Apotheosis version the Saturday after it was announced the songs would be banned.

    The tracks entered the Dutch charts at #4 and #1 that week and then the week after dropped out of the charts completely, which had never happened before. The radio stations couldn’t play the songs (even though Fortuna feat. Satenig had made a different version with different note progression).

    Interestingly though, even though the songs still aren’t released, the original O Fortuna was sampled countless times after that. You can see the list on WhoSampled.com, but here’s some notable examples. Enigma used it twice in the track Modern Crusaders (1999) and more prominently in Gravity of Love (1999).

    In hiphop where the ego’s match the grandeur of the song perfectly, it was sampled by Nas ft. Puff Daddy in Hate Me Now (1999), by Cam’ron in Get’Em Girls (2004), Stack Bundles in Ya Dig (2006) and many others after that.

    Dance music, despite two dance tracks being banned because of the sampling, kept on using it too. Most were samples in gabber/hardcore: Chosen Few in 2006, DJ Wicked in 2000 (who actually sampled the Apotheosis track!), DJ Outblast in 2001. Even a rather more radio-friendly non-hardcore dance track O Fortuna by Hypster seems okay in 2011.

    Probably the most interesting dance version post-Apotheosis is the Anthem for the huge dance party Sensation White 2004 (annually held in a stadium) by The Rush. Though it doesn’t sample anything directly, it’s obvious what the inspiration for the track is.

    And of course there’s a few odd ones out. Ministry used it in their anti-Bush song No W in 2004. Clan of Xymox got away with sampling it in 2006 in Be My Friend. BOB released a song called O Fortuna in 2008, with different lyrics but a familiar melody. No one was sued.

    So if you plan on covering or sampling Carl Orff, apparently it’s okay if you clear the rights or make sure his heirs don’t find out about it. And with that advise I’ll end this column for now. Hit it it Carl!

  • 40 Noises That Built Pop

    The Word posted an excellent list of 40 Noises That Built Pop. Essentially it backs up the argument made in Everything is a Remix I talked about last week: some genres lean heavily on the same noises. Though strictly speaking it’s not sampling, how could you ever hear a dubstep song without that distinct wubwubwub, gospel (or seventies rock) without a leslie speaker or gabber without a distorted Roland 909 kick. We all imitate, alter and progress music.

  • Siouxsie and the Banshees – Happy House

    In 1980 Siouxsie and the Banshees released the song Happy House as a single. As irony has, a decade later it’s melody would be used to produce a big commercial house music hit.

    The distinguishing riff from the opening first pops up in the 1990 track Neue Dimensionen by Techno Bert. Despite the German title (and lyrics), the producers behind it were Italian and the track was released on an Italian label. My guess is that’s how Italian producer Gianfranco Bortolotti got wind of it.

    Bortolotti was the man behind Euro-dance group Capella. While he had released singles before under the name it wasn’t till the release of U Got 2 Know in 1992 that Capella scored its first massive hit throughout Europe and beyond … with the same tune from Happy House. Later Capella would get sued over this and lost.

    Spacework disregarded the melody and sampled the vocals from the original Happy House in the track Happy House in 1993, as a clever reference the the house scene that was booming at the time.

    In 2000 Mindless Self Indulgence also sampled the intro directly in their song Bitches (of which there’s a hilarious Pokemon video mashup btw). The original Happy House also got a make-over in the 2004 remix of Happy House by SFB.

    Whosampled.com also lists the bassline in Calvin Harris’ Acceptable in the 80’s from 2007 as being an interpolation of Happy House. The 2009 song Dressed to Kill by Preston however hardly hides it’s original. The Weeknd also sampled it in the song Glass Table Girls in 2011. On top of those there were also covers by Ginger Ale (2002), Celluloide(2003) and Shindu (2011).

  • Peter Allen – I go to Rio

    A few weeks back, Coldplay was in the news for yet again ‘borrowing’ some one else’s music for a song. This time though, they were honest about it and even secured the rights to do so. Their song Every Teardrop is a Waterfall takes its opening from Peter Allen’s song I go to Rio (1977).  Coldplay is not the first to sample it though.

    Apart from a French cover in 1977 by Claude François and a cover by Pablo Cruise in 1978, nobody touched the song for over a decade. In 1990 however a multitude of songs pop up, all titled Ritmo de la Noche. All of them sample I go to Rio and clearly one of them was the original and the other songs did a cover version of it.

    The people at whosampled.com did some research and figured out the first released version was by Chocolate. It had several dance remixes on the single. Also in 1990 it got released by Mystic. And by Lorca (which was probably one of the more famous versions). And by The Sacados. Oh and in 2004 Safri Duo did their own version too. It was an instant hit, though you can question by who.

    I love how all the commenters on Youtube for the different versions of Ritmo de la Nocha-versions complain about Coldplay ripping of that song while actually almost all of them are a cover from the Chocolate-version and that song samples I go to Rio. Irony.