Saturday, April 16, 2005

Remix the new nine inch nails single yourself...

It's only a matter of weeks before the new Nine Inch Nails album, "With Teeth," is released and being the keeno I am, I'm really looking forward to it. I've just popped by the official site and it seems that Trent Reznor has a little project he's decided to inject into the NIN internet community.

The recent single "The Hand That Feeds" has been released as a file to be used in Apple's Garageband program. This allows users to remix, enhance or even deconstruct the single. In the 70Mb download file is a readme file with this message from Reznor.

"Hello all-

For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results.

After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you'll enjoy.

What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible.

So...

You need a Macintosh and you need GarageBand 2.0. If you have a newer Mac, you already have the software. The more RAM you have the better. I did this on a PowerBook 1.67 w/ 2G RAM but it has been running on far less powerful systems.

Drag the file over to your hard disk and double click it. Hit the space bar. Listen. Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything you'd like.

I gave this to my crew and band to test out and all work effectively stopped for a while - it's fun to mess around with. I've now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation (thanks, Leo).

There are some copyright issues involved, so read the notice that pops up. Giving this away is an experiment. I'm interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are.

Have fun-
Trent Reznor
April 15, 2005"


I have to admit, I'll be interested to see what copyright issues come out of this, particularly when some punk starts trying to hock a CD of remixes he's downloaded off the net. I'll also be interested to hear the backlash when all the Windows users out there start crying foul that they can't get involved because the file is for a Mac only program. No doubt some clever and lonely soul out there will figure some sort of conversion to a Pro Tools format or something similar.

What's also interesting is that fan sites have already started organising competitions for the remixes.

Let the games begin...

nine inch nails - Current News

No comments: