Remix Culture Today pt.3 (The Conclusion of the history lesson)

Things I am not going to get to in this series (though I will probably revisit them later)
You should check this stuff out...
Blend DJ Culture (I am talking DJ's using 4-track recorders to create mashups long before mashup was a term).
Dancehall/Hiphop (A New York based phenomenom that combined Dancehall and Hiphop spearheaded by people like KRS-1, Mad Lion, Dougie Fresh with Lil' Vicious, Jamalski etc.)
Lil Jon's Dynamic Duo remix of Capelton's Tour
And last but not least Italian Disco.

All of this stuff played a big part in setting the foundation for today's Mashup scene whether they realize it or not (at least some of us realize it)...but I can't cover it all...

Anyway let's get back to bizness....

Melodies (as in a song which is made up of several popular songs played in succession) were made popular in the Big Band period.
By the Disco period tape editing had progressed to the point that Melodies were bieng created in studios by expert engineers editing multiple songs together into "mega mixes"
here is how tape editing is done:

Looks like fun no? I actually learned how to do this when I was a tiny kid back in 94...basically the wider the angle at the cut the longer the fade in/out. Anyway back to the story....
Eventually an engineer known as Double Dee meets a DJ named Stienski and the art of editing music together was never the same again...I'll let Stienski tell the story.

Here are Double Dee and Stienski's original recordings bieng recreated by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist and Stienski himself:

Along came the modern sampler

Inspired by Double Dee and Stienski the bootleg scene in the UK was born.
Probably the most famous DJ's in this scene were Coldcut, whose success gave rise to Ninjatune



Of course their colloboration with Hexstatic and their ground-breaking video DJing software also paved the way for today's VJ's as well....
The natural progression to all of this was more than just another "mega-mix" eventually The sampler became its own instrument, not just a backing instrument as it had become in Hiphop music, enter DJ Shadow:

Computers have replaced samplers...and DJ technology and technique has progressed but the approach remains the same. Take multiple songs and turn them into one, new, and coherent song that is greater than the sum of its pieces.

One Love