RaveDJ – AI Music Mashup Maker | Hacker News Reader

RaveDJ – AI Music Mashup Maker

rave.dj

87 pointsZeroCool2u54 comments

There has been past discussion of RaveDJ, but it has improved significantly since then.

In college, I would frequent the Mashups room on turntable.fm and use it as background music for studying, so I was pretty excited to see this.

I spent more time than I'd care to admit when I found it creating new mashups and also comparing/contrasting them to some of my favorite human created mashups.

Here's an example of one I actually enjoyed. (Note: Ads will autoplay prior to playback) https://rave.dj/G7AS9HjKvBK6Nw

If you'd like to compare and contrast with some mashups created by humans, I'd encourage you to check out The White Panda, Super Mash Bros, 5 & A Dime, 3LAU, and Kapslap. Fair warning, a lot of this material may only be available on YouTube or SoundCloud.

Finally, I know some of the people that created RaveDJ are on HN and if they happen to see this, a technical write-up of how RaveDJ works would be of great interest to me, and others I'm sure, if you have time.

If you want more (man-made) mashups, I've been maintaining a list of personal favorites here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dr3iKHVFYGeddLuPfhrm...

Do you have a shared youtube playlist?, google docs is a great way to harvest creds and other nefarious things.

Just open the doc in incognito mode.

I'm still traumatised, thrilled, damaged and very excited by this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP0mVv0OsCA which you described as "I once played this for my friend and she forced me to turn it off because her heart was racing like she was having a panic attack"

Don't forget Girl Talk and The Legion of Doom.

Also don't forget the greatest mashup of all time, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vGywjbuCU

I submit these for your consideration for greatest mashup of all time, which one though?

Marvin Gaye vs. The Pixies - Get It On My Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLrzo8MT2VQ

Marvin Gaye vs. The Verve: Ain't That Perculiar / Bitter Sweet Symphony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ-YXgoIs8k

Classical Music Mashup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DayjwRDcs44

Jefferson Airplane vs. Fatboy Slim - Somebody To Praise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBtI_sUuL58

Marvin Gaye vs. The Pixies comes close. :)

These were a treat thanks. I hadn't heard any of them before.

I've always had a soft spot for Marvin Gaye vs Radiohead mashup - Sexual High:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqYasuJTkik

Technically I think this is the greatest mashup of all time, although it is mashing up preacher and famous tune rather than two separate tunes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXek5d2ocw

Fantastic, saved.

Not a purely musical mashup, but one of my all-time favorite youtube videos features a mashup song with the beatles, joan jett etc and clips of the 250 top imdb movies in 2 1/2 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0x9HtYgVqA

I do not want to know how long that took to create.

^ This is mind-blowing. In return, I would like to share this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46eaeAfeqw

You also didn't bring up Neil Cicierega's discography, which surprises me.

Helter Skelter mashup is my preferred one over originals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VhW67Ya8jo

Many WaxAudio mashups are top-tier, such as: Bee Gees + ACDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrlWWrSwaB8 Stevie Wonder + Metallica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyvxHL5hLfE

You Must've Been a Beautiful Baby (Bing Crosby) + The Beautiful People (Marilyn Manson) = https://rave.dj/pMtbBq6XQA3Dzg

I'm waiting for it to finish "What a Wonderful World" x "Black Hole Sun"

The first 20 seconds are great and the rest is better than what I was expecting. Post the other one too please.

Seriously cool. With a little knowledge of key matching, you could make some seriously interesting mixes!

"Wonderful world sun (acoustic)" didnt turn out so good unfortunately:

https://rave.dj/W82-TookjbQvkg

I've spent a lot of time talking about art with art friends. At this point, we've all seem to agree on three different aspects of art:

1. Non-random uniqueness / creativity. Even is something is lame, originality alone can constitute art. (e.g. weird, uncomfortable stuff)

2. Story. The context or meaning behind a thing can take something done before and make it new again. (e.g I made a rubber band ball for my ex-lover...)

3. Skill. Something can be totally derivative and bland, but if it's really hard to do.. the act of doing becomes the art. (e.g. high-quality muzak)

One thing not in this list is "familiarity." Even though familiarity is most humans favorite thing. Familiarity is actually a major aspect of what defines popular media.

I find that mash-ups lean really hard on the positive connotations of familiarity.

also subverted familiarity.

My favorite example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P5IS0gwWI (loosers paradise)

This one is seemingly pretty strong in all three of the things mentioned.

subverted familiarity = originality

the skill is super impressive

and while I don't know the story behind this, it could very well be quite meaningful

I am not sure I agree with: subverted familiarity = originality, but I guess in the context of your original post, I see what you're saying. Maybe subverted expectation would have been a better way to express what I meant.

true. there are artists who just kind of "do the opposite of normal," which is pretty derivative.

For the uniqueness/familiarity trade-off, see also the Wundt Curve.

E.g. https://pure.port.ac.uk/ws/files/8060373/COXj_2017_cright_MD...

It's surprisingly decent if you pick songs that are already somewhat compatible. It's understandably terrible at deciding when to bring up vocals of either song (often having both playing at once) but I could see something like this working to help get some ideas if you already had something in mind.

For example, I put in two songs that I've actually mashed up manually. It wasn't nearly something you could consider "complete" or even "good" but it gives an idea of how it might work.

Can't help but remember LCD Soundsystem + Miles Davis duet from 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEtJw7pfLk

Blew my mind back than as it still does today

This is a cool project! What's the formula for figuring out if something will blend well (as a human)? I failed several times...

The closest I got was "Dreams Nation Army" (Sweat Dreams & Seven Nation Army) https://rave.dj/bS7DTzUs_kvFMQ - Sounds okay.

Key and Tempo are (I think, I am far from expert / novice even) the 2 most important points to consider.

Most songs wont match so its required to pitch shift to align keys (which can also affect the tempo), and tempo because you want the beats to match up, otherwise it will sound like a mess.

Your "Dreams Nation Army" works well because 7 nation army is pretty much a copy of Sweet dreams and they fit well together.

VirtualDJ [0] allows to load multiple mp3's and can match key / tempo at the click of a button (manually or autodetect). They even built in the option to split stems using the spleeter tech [1]

[0] - https://www.virtualdj.com/ - if you want to use the spleeter tech, Win 10 is required. It can run in a VM though ;-)

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431071

for djing we can use the circle of fifths and the software “mixed in key” as a starting point:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_In_Key

and by adding beatmatching we get very nice mixes or transitions.

after a while you won’t need either of these as things will start working out by themselves.

Just a quick note... Mixed in Key is no longer necessary as both Pioneer and Serato's DJ apps include this functionality in the base, free versions.

Also, GP might want to look up the 'camelot system', which relabels keys in a simple numeric system which makes it a lot easier to determine which keys are compatible without memorizing the entire circle of fifths. Every DJ I have met or played with that keymatches labels their tracks in this fashion.

You can print this out and stick it on your wall for quick reference: https://mixedinkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CamelotWhe...

> Just a quick note... Mixed in Key is no longer necessary as both Pioneer and Serato's DJ apps include this functionality in the base, free versions.

At least in Rekordbox (Pioneer), Mixed in Key is the only way to display both the actual key and the Camelot notation. This is useful for knowing which songs can be easily brought in sync using key/pitch adjustments in software. For example, 9A and 3A are not necessarily easy to mix together, but if you know that 9A is Em and 3A is B♭m, it's only a single half-step adjustment in Rekordbox to make the latter 10A, which is usually easy to mix into 9A.

Mixed in Key and the other tools that they provide can also do more than just identifying the key of a song. I wouldn't say it's essential for a beginner, but it justifies its price for someone who uses it professionally or even semi-professionally.

Actually you hit on one of the lesser-known rules of Camelot system, that +/-7 (aka perfect 5th[edit, this is not right see below]) is mixable, though at a higher danger of clashing. Same with +/-3, at even higher risk. When I read about this the lesson was to do your transitions quickly.

This applies to track mixing as a DJ, not sure how mash-up mixes change things.

> Actually you hit on one of the lesser-known rules of Camelot system, that +/-7 (aka perfect 5th)

Er, what? A perfect fifth is +/-1. That's why it's called the Circle of Fifths. +/-7 is a minor second.

9A and 2A only contain two notes in common - the other five will all clash. It's not really mixable in most cases without using special tricks.

Ah, that's right, I had my wires crossed. The chart I made got lost in a move....

+/-7 is still mixable, as is +/- 3 (not 2). Just gotta be quick.

https://www.bestdjgear.net/camelot-wheel-tricks-to-advance-y...

It still seems to have trouble knowing what to down mix and what to filter.

That said, if you use tracks that sample other tracks, it works OK: Pressure Ice Baby - https://rave.dj/3OP4C39NUmxLwg

Mashup fans may be interested in Party Ben's legendary mixtapes, the Sixx Mixxes -> http://www.partyben.com/sixxmixx/

...and Bootie albums :) https://bootiemashup.com/mix-tapes/

You've made my day with both of these links. Thanks!

edit: sixxMixx is really appropriatly named bangers, bangers everywhere

One past thread:

Rave.dj – an artificially intelligent mash-up machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17849029 - Aug 2018 (94 comments)

Thanks for posting. There is gold in there.

Super neat site, but be aware that content disappears from there constantly. I discovered a great Jet Set Radio x Justice mashup on the site a few months ago, and it appears to be completely gone now. Make backups!

looking back on the thread posted by dang from 2018 (in this thread), some links are dead, some are still active (and some of them are amazing). I wonder if they dont get purged if they have a certain number of views /likes, or if posted by user with an account.

Lady A vs. Alan Parsons Project does well, especially the chorus parts, which are identical. https://rave.dj/_iUxT46RQ89dZA

Run DMC and the Bob James track they sampled heavily: https://rave.dj/Y6TGXT9GkgARGA

I wonder if this will finally allow me my dream of mashing "Eros Ramazzoti" with "Eiffel 65".

Edit: I think it did (https://rave.dj/wpTgRoPZmv_6yg)... but that queue must be toasted right now.

It looks like your mix didn't complete. I got an error "Sorry there was an error while building your mix"

For so long, I wanted to Mix "gnarls barkley: crazy" with "X-Press 2 Ft. David Byrne:Lazy". I made a poor attempt after hearing about "spleeter" [0] and FL Studio.

This wasnt what I had hoped for, but its also not bad (certainly better than what I could do)

https://rave.dj/Ag5i0KvOfVSmbA

[0]-https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431071

Edit: 2 things I've noticed 1) The order you add the songs is important, it looks like the 1st track choosen is more dominant. 2) If it fails to mix, try a different (less mainstream) copy of the song (i.e. not from vevo or one of them, but some random youtuber that uploaded)

I can't stop :-) https://rave.dj/O5Ld9QBXadT5-Q This should never have been made, I apologies

You could realize that dream with a free DAW and a wave editor...

No web app needed.

my wu tang/jefferson airplane mashup while appropriately titled Cream Rabbit, did not turn out so well https://rave.dj/KI0Ppkzcp5zVvA

This is awesome. I’m on my 10th mashup so far…

So much fun.

So much fun indeed, last one before bed https://rave.dj/AeBG2PWYqpIt-g

this is dope

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