Female Toronto rapper/producer releases FOSS mixtape on GitHub | Hacker News Reader

Female Toronto rapper/producer releases FOSS mixtape on GitHub

github.com

25 pointslostgame28 comments

I'm not a fan of needing a name/gender in the title, because I think having a FOSS mixtape is interesting enough to the readers on HN.

That said, I really like this mixtape - I'll be downloading it and adding it to my current rotation.

I actually removed the age from the title - honestly I'm kind of proud of the fact that I'm a female producer - there's not a lot of us, and I want to see it more. ^_^

I don't mind. I think with musicians more than most art this kind of context can be interesting and meaningful.

I just wish they had include her name with that context: Nicole 'Nikki' Grace. They deserve the publicity.

Edit: Reading further, I've discovered that she posted this herself and chose to omit her own name from the title.

I'm a very active and visible member of the LGTBQ community here in Toronto, and I do have issues of personal public awareness I'm trying to get over and accept as part of a reality if this my career path. :)

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/nikkigracetoronto/sets/boundaries

I gave it a listen. It's way better than what I was expecting it to be.

Awe, thanks! I mostly produce for other people and rarely make music for myself. I figured, what the hey, this could be fun.

What GPL means here?

This paragraph in README also baffles me:

> 'Can I Use [insert thing here]?'

> As long as the material is not copyrighted - e.g. the samples themselves - I encourage you to take whatever you can use from this project, however you can, for your own works - including for-profit works - once again - as long as no copyrighted content is used.

Seems like it's not just engineers who have trouble with documentation. That sentence isn't remotely comprehensible.

I'm personally having troubles with understanding what to do about the licensing around this thing.

What I'm trying to say, is you can use whatever of my own content you'd like - but obviously samples like 'Lolita Ya Ya' by Nelson Riddle are copyrighted works, and, while the transformations I've applied to the samples and the lack of profit probably clear me, the actual audio files containing the copyrighted samples are only up there because the songs sound often very incomplete without them.

Since I'm making no profit off of this whatsoever, and am, in fact, trying to give away a lot of my work to the community, I'm kinda just hoping I won't get a C&D for the samples. :P

Translating the hyphens to parentheses may help - hyphenation is often used to represent spoken English when it contains several fragments chained into a paragraph such as this.

> As long as the material is not copyrighted (e.g. the samples themselves) I encourage you to take whatever you can use from this project, however you can, for your own works (including for-profit works). Once again - as long as no copyrighted content is used.

If you don't mind, I'm actually going to modify the GitHub's description to match yours. I'm an artist and a coder, not a linguist. ;)

Unfortunately, even with the clarified wording this explanation doesn’t say what I think it’s intended to. All the material in the repo is under copyright. A work licensed under the GPL is still under copyright, and the granting and enforcement of the GPL (mainly the requirement that derivative works are released under the GPL) is only possible because of that copyright. To not be bound by copyright, the copyright must be waived, and it’s still not entirely clear if/how that is possible (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_t...).

I don’t intend to alter or speak on behalf of the artist, who is responding to HN comments elsethread, but simply to present a useful before/after translation tactic for parsing complex hyphenated paragraphs.

Oh uh sure I don’t mind! I hope I did it justice

I see OP used Logic Pro X, which for the educational purposes on the README makes sense (targeting a wider audience), but for me it feels like a misleading title. That said, I am happy to see not-hobbyist producers releasing content like this.

For those interested in music production with FOSS tools, I highly recommend checking out Ardour and Unfa's videos with session files and all you need to get started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgw7mNBEZlQ

Oh! I did provide uncompressed audio and/or MIDI - I was considering putting together Audacity projects but to be honest I'd just rather give away what I genuinely did.

That is a great initiative, and I wish more producers release more content like this, my remark was due to expectations related to the "FOSS mixtape" title.

That said you should use what is best for your workflow (not for the sake of it being FOSS).

Although Ardour is perhaps almost there in terms of maturity, LV2 plugins (open source format) are not anywhere close. You can still use VSTs and AU in the windows/mac versions IIRC.

There is kinda community around releasing music with available session files with FOSS tools, although not many as polished as yours (see [1]).

1: https://libremusicproduction.com/music

I absolutely depend on Logic, it's fantastic library of software instruments with EXS24, and I've used it for so long, it's second nature to me. :)

I also love the side benefit of being able to express ideas on my iPad or iPhone using GarageBand, and the ability to open those ideas and refine them later in Logic is fantastic. There is no workflow, within my lifetime, that I can see replacing it, for myself, personally, anyways. ^_^

I love the idea but leaving out original stuff like the vocals and instead depending on copyrighted material is kind of... not what I would describe as open source. But anyway, many thanks! A lot more people should do this

Well, I mean, they're my own vocals. I chose not to include them because I'm kinda super self conscious. :3

As for the samples, well, yeah, I mean, if I get a C&D I'll have to remove them, of course.

Do you mean that the mixtape is not 100% FOSS? As in, only parts of it are? This would kind of make the README a bit clearer.

I'm conflicted between "is this another abuse of the term open source?" and "oh cool it's gpl!"

Where is your Toronto Raptors anthem?

Ahaha, honestly, it's literally a WIP - my label mates and I just couldn't help ourselves :P

️

she aint no Awkwafina

I don't know you you mean that, but I think it is the case that Awkwafina doesn't produce, she's more a rapper/writer (and now comedian/actress too).

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