Berlin Mitte Institut + Florian Meindl + SoundCloud = Wow.
A big hello from this non-heated and rowdy flat near Queens Rd. Peckham, on this non-stop rainy London day. So, the Berlin Mitte Institut für Bessere Elektronische Musik (the Berlin Mitte Institute) got together with Florian Meindl for a four hour long WebTV show to produce a track. We got together with the host Jan Kühn aka Fresh Meat and asked him about this interesting project.The Berlin Mitte Institut seeks to produce radio and WebTV shows that touches upon new things. The radio landscape in the techno scene mainly focuses on dj mixes, or inviting big names to your radio show. In the end,
everybody does the same: One more radio show or dj mix to listen to and download. But we want to take the new democratising technologies a bit further and produce content, which has not been done before and also of special cultural value. You can see this on our shows. We broadcast live track productions, as well as focusing on topics that are normally not covered by the usual techno press. We also produce shows explaining the correlations of booking agencies and the techno scene, along with shows that pin points the relationship between the techno scene and its distributors.
Our next show will be a live broadcast from a Berlin club featuring 8 live interviews, which will be put together as a Youtube Doku playlist. We will interview people from professions go more unnoticed (waiters, technicians, runners, bouncer, night manager etc.), yet are vital to the the club functioning as a whole. We always try to connect the promotion of our guests through our channels with the connection to interesting topics that under the surface concern the techno scene.
We sometimes also produce label (eg. Minus, Bpitch, Get Physical) shows in-between, as this is good way of outreach forbigger audiences. Last year we had a Stil vor Talent showcase with Florian and quickly found out, that we have common interests: Techno and social media. I hit him up asking, if he wants to do this live production show. From one show (creating a loop) we made a second one (arranging the loop) and since the public response is so good, we added a remix competition to involve the users even more, create a productive dialogue between fans and us. We also planned to make a live mastering show sometime soon with a special mastering studio here in Berlin.
The production process lasted two shows–all together eight hours, four
hours per show. We produced in our living room studio on a mac, special monitor speakers and a good soundcard. The listers and viewers were always live with us, following what Florian does and take part in the process via chat. All shows, including the final track, are hosted on SoundCloud, so that other people can listen to, share and download the show to their mobile music players and follow it after the live show has happened.
We host our recordings on SoundCloud, to make them accessible to everybody, who could not follow the live show. People can listen to it, share and download it to there mobile music players or computers. We also use the groups function now for the remix contest. Soundcloud basically is the central archive, that our fans use to listen to our shows whenever and wherever they like.
Interested in doing a remix? Here are the rules (all taken from the BMI website):
- Start: 22.02.2010, end: 22.03.2010 12pm CET. Until 5th of April 2010 we will decide for the two winners
- You produce a remix (Wikipedia) using the material Florian provides with the material from his track – it must be noticable, that it is a remix of Florian’s track.
- On the 22nd of February we will release the remixing files here on the blog
- Once finished, upload your track to the extra created Soundcloud group (Disable downloading, do not upload your remixes anywhere else. We will approve them to the group and add them on the blog!)
- Label the track as follows:
BMI_Techno_Seminar_(Remixer_Name_Remix_Name_Style) - In the comment field of the Soundcloud link, answer the following questions:
- Which hardware / software did you use for the production ?
- Which parts of Florian’s original did you use and how did you use it ?
- In producing the general structure and aesthetic of the track, what were your main sources of inspiration ?
- How did you break with these inspirations to be more original ?
- Which parts of your remix do you like most and why ?
- PS: You are very welcome to answer these questions in a short video instead. Video quality doesn’t matter, use your (build-in) webcam etc. You attach this video to your uploaded track on Soundcloud and post the link into the track description.
All sent remixes will be posted on the bottom of this posting, so that everybody can listen to them. Maybe we even implement a rating tool, will see.
The remix files may only be used for the remix competition, copyright is held by FLASH Recordings (Florian Meindl). The rights of the other used sound material must be with the remixer.
Bump it.