A couple years ago I got hooked on music mash-ups when a coworker pointed me to the work of Party Ben, a DJ who, until recently, had a mash-up show on San Francisco’s alternative station Live 105. Since then I’ve been hooked.
What’s a mash-up?
Music mash-ups are the result of a DJ taking two different songs and mixing them together into a hybrid of the two, sometimes with fantastic results. It’s a little like sampling (taking a riff from one song and making a new song around it). Some of the results are total crap… but sometimes one can find some real gems.
Why do I enjoy mash-ups so much?
Well… I listen to music a lot and find I get sick of what’s on the radio and what I have in my own collection. Mash-ups are a fun way to listen to music I already like and make it fresh again.
Where can you find mash-ups?
A quick search will net you all sorts of stuff but you can save yourself a lot of legwork by simply going to Mashuptown, a mash-up review blog which picks out great tracks almost daily. Mashuptown will point you to the sites of some great DJs where you can find more great tracks on your own. Another good place to start is on the mixes page of Party Ben’s site. Party Ben has a collection of tracks all crammed into a single file, as if you were listening to a long set at a club.