I Love My Calendar Girl

calendargirl

The remix as promotion. I came across a great example of this via the ccMixter website, which is a Creative Commons project site that allows you to use, re-use, and remix vocals, instrumental music, and other sound samples into new compositions. All this with the benefit of a Creative Commons license. It’s an interesting site to explore, with a wide range of musical flavors.

So who is Calendar Girl? Well, let me first tell you the story of the discovery. At the ccMixter site I followed the “editors picks” link to a song called “May (apeskinny mix).” For some reason, before I played the song, I noticed a section on the page labeled “Uses samples from:” and clicked on “May“. It was an acappella vocal with a light jazzy feel. So here is the vocal of “May”, and this inspires this version, the “apeskinny mix”. Other versions with widely varying styles are available, or you’re certainly free to create your own version. You are free to mix it up, as long as you give attribution to calendargirl and you keep it non-commercial, as the Creative Commons license states.

Calendar Girl can be found at her Calendar Songs website, where her goal is to write a song a month (she started in October of 2006), and have people write music for the vocal, and then create an album of twelve songs. Certainly a cool idea, and enabled only by the power of Creative Commons. If you care to further delve into the personality of Calendar Girl, she has a “disco alter-ego” that is part of Freeform Five (though I only counted four). She also has a YouTube presence.

May (apeskinny mix) is a hauntingly groovy song. What makes this composition process even cooler is the ability to comment with the artists. Imagine it. Social music creation.

Hey, I’m thinking of starting a band. So you live in London and you live in Hong Kong? No problem!

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