Future Challenge Idea: My Life In The Rush Of Posts

I recently bought the remastered Eno/Byrne "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts". They've generously made the multitracks for two of the songs "My Secret Life" and "Help Me Somebody" freely available for general malarkey and how's-your-father. Now....... I got to thinking that it might be an interesting challenge to download these multitracks and see what you come up with? You can do a straighforward remix or write something new using a few of the individual tracks or whatever you like really. Multitracks available here, but you'll have to register to access them (nothing onerous about this).
posted by MajorDundee (7 comments total)

This is an awesome idea, Major. Sign me up.

There are also Nine Inch Nails multitracks.
posted by chrchr at 4:21 PM on September 15, 2011

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 4:40 PM on September 15, 2011

My brother gave me that album for Christmas in 83 or 84 or whenever it came out I can't remember. Loved it. I still have it. Can't play my albums anymore because my Technics SL-QX200 turntable only plays out of one channel now and I'm trying to figure out why. Anyone?
posted by chococat at 7:54 PM on September 15, 2011

A word of warning. I have tried several times to upload these files onto my DAW (a Yamaha AW2400) with no success. I can get them onto my laptop ok, they play ok etc etc - but the Yam is having none of it. I've tried converting them to 16bit etc - the bastard is still refusing to play ball and is infuriatingly insisting there's "no data!". Which is bollocks. Having just thrown the 4th or 5th cd burn across the floor (USB transfer was unsuccessful so I tried cds in desperation) I'm giving up before I throw the fucking lot out of the window. If anyonewho has more technical nous (and patience) can elucidate as to why my DAW won't co-operate - it can work at 16 or 24 bit resolution - I'd be interested to know about it.
posted by MajorDundee at 7:15 AM on September 17, 2011

Hey Major, have you imported audio files onto your DAW before? Is it thinking that you are trying to import a multitrack project or a previously saved project or whatever? Or does it know that you are trying to import a wav file? ...and you are importing it as a WAV file and not an mp3, correct?

I found this info about importing audio onto your machine...it seems to suggest that from a CD it want the file to be CD Audio, rather than Data. Did you try burning the CD as a playable audio CD and then trying to import it?
I can't be much help as I'm completely unfamiliar with your DAW. Good luck, though.
posted by chococat at 9:26 AM on September 17, 2011

Thanks for that chococat. Yes to all of it. I can import the tracks as audio cd tracks, but the DAW only accepts these as stereo tracks. And I only have 24 tracks to play with, which means I can only use 12 of the stem tracks. But as I write this I realise that there's a way round that by using virtual tracks on my DAW and then doing a bit of messing about. So...yes....I can actually do it.

But it doesn't solve the mystery of why my DAW seems not to recognise the WAV files I'm trying to upload to it via USB. That's something I've done before with no problems - this for instance uses the bass and drums from The Doobie Brothers' "Long Train Runnin'" and I wrote a completely new superstructure on top of that foundation (which is something I'm very keen to repeat - quite challenging but very satisfying if it works).

I can only surmise that there's something unusual in the WAV files that's not about bit depth but about bit rate or something verily that passeth all Dundee understanding for ever and ever. In other words - I can't be arsed to fuck around with computery stuff and would rather watch paint dry.
posted by MajorDundee at 12:10 PM on September 17, 2011

This is a smashing challenge idea.

Peter Gabriel also made the "Shock The Monkey" tracks available some time ago. Those are a hoot.
posted by mintcake! at 12:18 PM on September 24, 2011