Get Your Bootleg On

“Get Your Bootleg On” – or GYBO5 as it is now – is one of the very best sites on the web for amateur bootlegs and mash-ups. I say amateur in the sense that people aren’t getting paid for their submissions; in fact that standard of submissions is generally very high. THere are a number of users whose work makes it onto TV and radio shows.

http://www.gybo5.com/

There’s a lot more to creating a good mash-up than simply matching an acapella to an instrumental. It’s easy to take two sources of approximately the same tempo and match them together – and trust me, the road to creating a good mash-up is littered with the bodies of those who have tried and failed – but it takes skill to get the timing and phrasing right; it takes a good ear to make sure there are no key clashes; and it takes a great deal of imagination to produce something really unexpected. Click on the link below to see what I mean:

Bobby Martini : Queen / Leona Lewis : \”Bleeding Gaga\”

They run competitions and challenges, to (for example) concentrate on a single song or artist and produce the best mash-up you can. At the time of writing the challenge is to mash-up The Cure, and there are bootlegs that see them mixed with Axwell, Katy Perry, Hard-Fi, Kanye West, Rihanna, Diana Ross, Stereophonics and The Clash, amongst others.

GYBO is a great site, professionally run and presented, and home to people who are dedicated to their craft (and conscientous with it – check out the terms and conditions). Well worth a look!

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Discogs

No music website would be complete without a mention of the holy grail that is Discogs.com (http://www.discogs.com/):

Discogs.com

If you ever thought that the Guiness Book of Hit Singles was useful, then this site will make you forget all about it. You can search thousands of artists and song titles; get mini-biographies; you can find what tracks have been produced by a particular person or remixed by a certain DJ; get catalogue numbers for each record; you can even find out what compilation albums it appeared on! Have a look at some of these links and you ‘ll see what I mean:

• This is tha artist page for Madonna http://www.discogs.com/artist/Madonna
• This is the release page for the European release of her single “What It Feels Like For A Girl” http://www.discogs.com/release/35526

Music Sites – DJ Doc Rok

Or, to give it its full title, DJ Doc Rok’s Scandalous Emporium of (un)Wholesome Goodness. Fellow WordPress blogger Doc Rok is an American DJ and producer who specialises in mash-ups, and whose work has been seen on MTV and VH1. There’s a great deal of his work available to download from hs site.

Dj Doc Rok's Scandalous Emporium of (un)Wholesome Goodness

I originally read about his 50 Cent mash-up album “50 Cent’s Goldies Oldies – 50 Cent vs. The Fifties“, which fuses 50 Cent’s mumbling with beats from famous songs from the 1950’s. It’s something you really need to hear to believe. Another standout for me is the “American Zeppelin” project, which does a similar thing with Led Zeppelin and Jay-Z.

But when really piqued my interest where his long-form “Epic Mixes“, which bring together dance, roc, pop and hip-hop in much the same way as my own “Shenanigans” series. I like that people are being experimental, trying to bring all these disparate types of music together to create something very different and unexpected. You should try “Epic Mix Volume 2” which is my favourite, and features tracks from (amongst others) Depeche Mode, Nirvana, The Ting Tings, Run DMC, Katie Perry, Rage Against The Machine, Blur, Outkast, Britney Spears, Fatboy Slim, The Dandy Warhols, and Frankie Valli!

All of these ‘favourite blogs’ have a link on the right side of this page so you don’t need to find the original post to look them up. Please check Doc Rok out very soon!