Creative Ed Tech
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Templates
  • Game Shows
  • Listicles
  • Trainings

My "force myself to write and be creative" Blog

Code Monkey: A story about remixing and sharing

4/21/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
I can't believe it that it's been 10 years to the month that the song "Code Monkey" came out? 

Wait, have you not heard of the song "Code Monkey" by Jonathon Coulton?

Well my friends, let me tell you a story!

First the term Code Monkey:
"term for a computer programmer, sometimes considered an insulting or derogatory oversimplification of their skill set"

But before the story, you should hear the song. 

Listen here first then come back

You should be able to tell after hearing this song that this fits into a genre called "geek rock" qute nicely. It's a fun tune, easy to sing along to and tells a story of a dissolutioned computer programmer. The song was released in 2006 by Jonathon Coulton who had been a computer programmer in his past. 

Now the reason why I am sharing this song is not that I, like the singer, has a love for all things geeky, but its because I used it to engage students in my web design classes for years when we talked about remixing and creating a culture of sharing on the web. 

​The story goes that there was a ​ "Code Monkey Remix" contest in late 2006 that ran for a month. Contestants were able to download the source files for the song and remix them as they saw fit. What this means is that these source files were not just the song itself but all the pieces of the song on different tracks. So, the drums, guitar, bass, lyrics, etc were all separated and the contest was open for anyone to take these pieces and remix them anyway they wished. Then they submitted their new ​version of this song and the winners decided at the end. 

I loved this idea when I heard it back in 2006. I am not a musician by any means but the idea of celebrating and promoting this remixing culture was infectious. A few weeks back I wrote about how sampling music was not the best idea when you don't have permission (Vanilla Ice & The Verve)  but in this instance the artist WANTED his fans to remix his song. 

So... do you want to hear some of the submissions? Here are my tpo three
  • This one is called "Speed Monkey" and is by Ken Wagman
  • Next is "Frugal-Glucose Mix" by Russel Picket
  • But the winner (and yes my favorite too!) was this version by Kristen Shirts who rocks the ukulele!

Below is a live version that two sang together as Coulton invited her to one of his shows. (Fast Forward to about 2:45 in the video)
Which version was your favorite?

By the way... Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license which means that he is OK with others using his music in "noncommercial works".  
This could be great opportunity for your kids who are really interested in music to get them inspired in making and remixing their own music. 
But there is a problem. There is not a lot of great places to find Creative Commons licensed audio out there. Here are a few:
  • ccMixter is a community remixing site featuring CC-licensed tracks from the Beastie Boys, Danger Mouse, Fort Minor, and hundreds of other artists.
  • Freesound is a collaborative database of CC-licensed samples and sounds.

Now for anyone, and yes younger students can do this too, interested in starting to make their own music I HIGHLY recommend this service called Soundtrap. It is a super simple to use web based program where you can create your your own music by dropping in loops, beats, and even your own voice or instruments. Plus you can have student actually collaborate from different computers on the same song. Pretty wild and like I said, SUPER EASY.

And for when you're ready, there are remix contests out there. Here is a site all about this very thing called  Remix Comps. 

1 Comment
men's health clinic treatments in Orlando link
11/12/2021 09:44:26 pm

If you are a man suffering from PE, ED, Low-T, Excess Weight, Fatigue or other common men’s health issues, contact the men's health clinic, Premier Men’s Medical Center in Central Florida.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Recent Posts

    Libraries and "What I'm Reading" Template​

    Tough Talk... Political Conversations in the Classroom
    ​

    Goodbye Padlet

    #ArmMeWith
    ​

    UPDATE: The New Tab I Open In Chrome Is...
    ​
    Orbits

    Twitter Hashtags for Education

    Top Five Non Education Podcast Episodes of 2017

    5 Ideas For Your Home Page

    ​
    The Importance of Taking Notes

    8 podcast episodes you should check out

    ​Blocking
    ​
    Waiting for the Tidal Wave


    Be a power user when editing your photos

    Thanks Smartphone

    Episode V: The Classroom Strikes Back

    Is it too late to apologize to my senior English teacher?

    ​Want to make a movie? Have you heard of PowerPoint?

    ​
    Make Your Own Memes

    My 100th Blog Post

    What Is The Internet?

    Bingo for the Classroom


    Bring Star Wars Into Any Classroom

    Sticky Notes & Candy Wrappers from Google Drawing

    Top 15 Google April Fool's pranks

    ​
    CUE 2017 Reflections

    ​​
    Visual Primary Sources

    Twitter is like.... 

    My Top 10 Chrome Extensions

    ​Share Your Stickers

    I'm Not Really The Best Co-Worker


    So, You Want To Start A Podcast?

    What Does Your New Tab Do?

    My favorite Google Docs sharing request

    Build Your Own Green Screen Kits

    Need Music and Sounds for your next Project?

    ​What's In Your Bag?

    3 Tips for Teaching With Images

    ​6 Degrees of Wikipedia

    Candy Quiz!
    ​

    Am I The Only One Who Didn't Know About "Alt Codes"?

    Have you heard of Fiverr yet?

    4 Fake Headline Generators

    Hour of Code: Check... Now What?

    To Scan or Not Scan... That is the Question!
    ​
    #createwith
    chromebooks


    How little classrooms have changed

    Tips for having student listen to audio clips

    "I Finally Got Twitter!".

    YouTube Tools You Maybe Haven't Thought Of

    Ed Tech Cartoons

    9 Tools for Making Quick Videos

    ​
    Google Innovator Update

    Wish Me Luck!


    Agendas Using Google Slides

    Yes, I Used To Collect Comic Books

    So long Summer!

    On A Midnight Plane From Georgia

    History Dinner Party

    My Year By The Numbers
    ​

    12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media

    What's In A Name?

    I'm The Map!

    Historical Images in Lego

    Sharing Podcasts

    Ken Robinson is going to Check This Out!

    Code Monkey
    ​

    8 Student Blogs to Check Out
    ​

    Watering Rocks

    A "Bittersweet" lesson on copyright

    "Don’t Copy That Floppy" Software Piracy

    Fun & Games with Google Maps

    Bring Star Wars Into Any Classroom

    Fact vs Fiction

    CUE 16 Reflections

    Where, How and Why to find good copyright free images

    7 Reasons To Start Using Google Photos


    "School of Rock" & Project Based Learning

    Learn About Search

    More Ideas For Using Padlet

    Fictional Twitter Profiles

    Blogging... Who, What, When, Where, Why
    ​
    Newsletters


    Ed Camp 123 Reflections

    NASA's Apollo photos online​

    Creative Ways to use Tag Clouds​

    Virtual Reality: Apps, Ideas & Resources

    George Lucas Likes Ice Cream

    Top 6 Star Wars Parody Songs

    More Twitter Stuff - Visual Twitter Tools

    ​Sticky Notes to help understand Twitter





    ​
    Categories

    All
    App Smashing
    Blogging
    Collaboration
    CUE
    Digital-citizenship
    Digital Storytelling
    Flickr
    Google
    Graphic Organizers
    Green Screen
    Lang Arts
    Newsletter
    Podcasting
    Professional Development
    Project Based Learning
    Science
    Social Studies
    Space
    Star Wars
    TCM Resources
    Twitter
    Virtual Reality

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Templates
  • Game Shows
  • Listicles
  • Trainings