SFD:

SFD Music Sampler

This music sampler is being put together by the group in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: 2013/Canada/Kitchener/Kwartzlab

"Booty Boy and Serious Girl" by Jet Peks

From the album "Funk Me,Whatta Groovy Trip!!!" .

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/65458

Jet Peks is a Ukranian DJ who mashes up samples and danceable drumbeats. This tracks incorporates lots of different sounds, and flows together so well you won't notice.

"Woodstock Blues" by the Bayou Trio

From the album "I Remember August"

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/92184

Pretty much what it says on the tin. This track runs a little long for my taste, but it is mellow and easy on the ears.

"Perdue" by Overvince

From the album "Etincelle"

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a51351/etincelle

This is classical folk guitar. I like it. I wish I knew more about classical folk guitar to tell you more about its strengths.

"The Absolute" by Anitek

Froom the album "Anitek Instrumentals, vol 1"

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/album/64662/

This is another mashup track. I like the combination of saxophone melody and drum track underlay. Anitek's schtick starts to wear over the course of an entire album, but each track is pretty good individually.

"That's a plenty" by the Adovabadan Jazz Band

From the album "Adovabadan Jazz Band..."

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/it/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/album/75233/

Italian ragtimey piano jazz. I love the energy of this piece. I almost included "The Entertainer" on this sampler, but there are other ragtimey jazz pieces that are not quite as cliched. This album includes quite a few of them.

"Hero of Light" by DEADBEATBLAST

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://archive.org/download/Best_of_8_Bit_Collective-2006-2011/Best_of_8_Bit_Collective-2006-2011.tar/Best_of_8_Bit_Collective_%288bc%29_%5B06-2006_to_06-2011%5D%2FDEADBEATBLAST%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Light.mp3

Chiptunes are this weird genre of music where artists constrain themselves to producing music from old video game consoles (often Nintendo Gameboys). The 8-bit collective site was a great repository of chiptunes, all licenced under BY-NC-SA licences. Sadly, this site went dead in 2011. But since the tracks were redistributable, many of them were uploaded to archive.org: http://archive.org/details/Best_of_8_Bit_Collective-2006-2011

Although not quite a pure chiptune, the voice samples on this track add a lot to its flavour. This tune flows well, has a nice melody, and is just about the right length. As a bonus, DEADBEATBLAST is a local artist who has organized chiptune-related events in the community.

"Effigy - Rough" by Jophish

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: [attachment:Jophish--EffigyRough.mp3]

Another chiptune track from 8bc.org. The main melody of this one is deceptively simple, but for some reason it catches my ear every time I listen to it. I especially like the section three minutes into the track, when the pace slows a little.

This track was not preserved in the archive.org dump of 8bc.org, because it had not received enough upvotes. But since it was released under a Creative Commons licence, I am hosting it here. (Unfortunately, there is no evidence of this licence in the MP3 metadata of the track.)

"I'm Ready to Fly" by StrangeZero

Album: Future is a Choice You Make

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/album/83070/

I found this album while browsing the the Software Freedom Day FreeCultureDisc wikipage, another attempt to compile free culture for redistribution. I find this kind of dreamy electronic music a good listening choice while programming or writing; it is not so lyric-heavy that I get distracted from my task, but the occasional whispery lyric engages me when my productivity lulls. I like the funky baseline in the second section of this track.

"Scheherazade Symphonic Suite for Orchestra Op.35 - 02 - II. Lento" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Licence: Public domain

Available from: https://musopen.org/music/1394/nikolai-rimsky-korsakov/scheherazade-symphonic-suite-for-orchestra-op35/

Classical music is one of the many, many things I am ignorant of in this world. Like other schoolchildren, I went on field trips to the symphony. I can recognise some famous classical pieces, such as the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. But mostly I am ignorant.

Largely thanks to musopen.com, I am dipping my little pinky toe into the genre. The Scheherazade Symphonic Suite is one of my first adventures in downloading a title I had never heard of before, by a composer I had never heard of before. (However, he also wrote Flight of the Bumblebee, which I had heard of.) Thus far, my experience has been positive.

Unfortunately (?), this recording was mixed at a lower volume level than most of the other music on this sampler, so you will either have to use the equalizer function in your music player, or turn up the volume.

"1812 Overture" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Performed by: Skidmore College Orchestra

Licence: Public Domain

Available from: https://musopen.org/music/190/pyotr-ilyich-tchaikovsky/1812-overture/

Maybe including Tchaikovsky on a music sampler is cliche, but I don't care. Not only do I like Tchaikovsky, but this recording by the Skidmore College Orchestra illustrates an important point: orchestras and musical groups already perform this music. By releasing their live recordings under free-culture-friendly licences, they enrich the commons for relatively little additional work. The Skidmore College Orchestra has released a number of works on musopen.com, and while the recording quality is not perfect, it tends to be good enough to be enjoyable. There is an argument to be made that this undermines proprietary commercial recordings, and that argument has merit. On the other hand, ignorant people like me get the opportunity to listen to a lot more classical music this way. Maybe more importantly, musopen.com releases sheet music into the public domain as well as recordings. This is a good combination: aspiring artists can use the recordings to assist in their interpretation of the sheet music.

"Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 - 01 - I. Molto Allegro" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Performed by: Czech National Symphony Orchestra

Album: Musopen Kickstarter Project

Licence: Public Domain

Available from: https://musopen.org/music/1577/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart/symphony-no-40-in-g-minor-k-550/

Many of us have heard this one before, but maybe that is the point. What is interesting about this track (and the entire album, which is also [available on archive.org|http://ia700703.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/34/items/musopen-dvd/Musopen-DVD.zip]) is that Musopen.com funded this recording via a rather successful Kickstarter campaign. Crowdfunding is not a panacea for free culture or free software, but sometimes it works: people pay up front so that a work of free culture or free software can be created, and then it is released to the world. Unlike so many other free culture works, the artists get some financial compensation for their efforts.

As of this writing (September 2013), Musopen.com is running another Kickstarter campaign, this time to record the complete works of Frederic Chopin. [LINK] If you would like to support free culture in a concrete way, you could do worse than contributing to these kinds of crowdfunding campaigns.

"Japan" by SAMSHARA

Album: Omega

Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Available from: http://www.jamendo.com/album/60323/

I like the contrast between the sharp plucked tones of the main melody and the soft wash of sound in the "chorus". Overall I find the track calming.


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SFD: MusicSamplerSFD2013 (last edited 2013-09-20 20:14:43 by 205)