Welcome to the web site of a minor theory, a project by Vox and Spinmeister. It was a fun side project for both of us to have a little nostalgic fling with 1980s inspired synth-pop. However since we had met online through remixing (at realworldremixed.com), and thus experienced the musical joy of remixing, we made remix packs of all of our material. Quite a few talented remixers took us up on the offer and it became clear very quickly, not only that some remixes were better than our originals, but that each remix took the original into a new and interesting musical place.

So we are seeing our project defined by the remixes, than by our original versions and ourselves more as creators of musical sketches, which remixers can take and do what remixers do. Some of the  remixes here are amazing -- a glimpse of the possibilities.

There's no assumed business model here. All remixes packs are available under a creative commons license, which allow a ton of non-commercial exploitation. Music first, business models maybe later, maybe never.

In the meantime, we've mostly moved on. Vox is very busy with his real world band Wayside Drive. Spin has been a virtual studio musician for some of their newer songs and  is remixing over at ccMixter.org. Also, there are blogs by vox and spinmeister. If you'd like to have a go at remixing any of our a minor theory songs, all individual parts for our songs are available as remix packs and we also encourage remixers to upload any of their remixes of our material to ccMixter.org where they will find a wider audience than on our site here.

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For nostalgia's sake, this is how it started back in late 2006:

Vox is a Peter Gabriel freak. Card-carrying. If Peter Gabriel released a CD of him reading his grocery list, Vox would be the first in line to buy it at midnight. His family is awfully worried about him. Often times he’s been seen wandering the streets in the witching hour chanting, “Rael is coming, Rael is coming…” Well it had been a while since Vox had visited the official Peter Gabriel site. It wasn’t due from his affection waning. It was more due to the fact that Peter releases some new (and incredibly awesome) CDs or DVDs every month (it seems) and he can’t afford to buy any of it. Why punish one’s self? But on this day he found himself checking it out just to see what the ol’ bard has been up to. “Hark! What’s this?” Vox says to himself, “Real World Remixed?” It seems the incredible record label Real Word (in which Mr. Gabriel himself is entwined) is releasing tracks of some of their artists to be remixed. “How can this be?” Vox mutters. To further send his heart a-racing he notices that there’s a contest to remix Shock the Monkey by Peter Gabriel and the winners are to be announced by the man himself. “Help!” Vox shouts aloud, “Somebody call an ambulance! My heart is palpitating!” But it was never meant to be… the contest had cruelly ended the week before. Undeterred, Vox decided to give this remixing business a try. Having only remixed one song in his entire life, he thought this would be a fun challenge. He downloaded the latest pack made available, If I Had My Way by Little Axe. After trying a few different mixes he decided he was going to try something different. He dropped the vocals down in pitch until it sounded like the devil himself was crawling out of hell to sing the blues. Then he recorded his own guitar and bass tracks, adding a simple (but massive) drum loop that sounded like a horde of Viking drums beating in unison as they plunder helpless villages. Yes, you could say it was a little dark. He sprinkled it with a few other ditties and decided to wrap it up and upload it for the rest of the world to listen to and be afraid... Surely they would think this would be evil-incarnate. The webmasters will burn it in virtual effigy on the site and the other members will gather around and roast marshmallows on the flames. He eagerly waited for comments on his witches-brew. “What’s this? A Comment? And they don’t think I’m evil?” Vox says to himself. Quite the opposite actually. His first comment was by another remixer named Spinmeister. Not only was the comment nice but also he had a really great suggestion of bringing back the original vocals to try with the new guitars. Brilliant. It would still send shivers down the spine’s of children but it would be a little less evil, perhaps a little more acceptable for the general public. So he tried it and sure enough, it worked marvelously. He listened to some of Spinmeister’s remixes and really liked them. SM definitely had quite a gift. Since Vox was just learning this craft he enlisted SM to help him out. He asked many many questions and SM was always very helpful and patient. SM checked out some of Vox’s own songs and really liked one in particular and wanted to remix it. Vox was shocked. He had always wanted to have his own material remixed but wasn’t sure if that would ever happen. He gladly provided the original tracks and Spinmeister produced 2 excellent remixes. Vox was ecstatic. Vox had also always wanted to do a synthesizer project and hadn’t met anyone who was interested in doing it. So what better than to try it with someone he hadn’t met? An internet-only musical collaboration. It would be innovative, it would be intriguing, it would be a blast. So he gave it a shot and asked Spinmeister if he wanted to do it. Much to his shock he said yes. “How fun will this be?” he thought.

It's Tuesday. As almost every day for the last few weeks, spinmeister casually browsed to www.realworldremixed.com. It was much calmer over there now. The Shock the Monkey remix competition was over. Peter Gabriel had spoken. Winners had been announced. The ratings were kinder and gentler now. The comments were more genuine again. Not every second forum post was complaining about unfairness in the ratings system or people creating multiple user id's or having their friends sign up just to vote for them. No more comment spam lobbying for remixes to be added to top 10 lists. And fewer remixes per day. Only two today. "I can handle that", spinmeister muttered to himself. He had taken a little break from remixing after having submitted 4 remixes to the site. In the forums and comments section, he had conversed with many remarkable remixers - from very experienced and accomplished professionals to others using music software for the very first time in their lives. "How cool is that?", spinmeister thought every time, he made his daily visit to the site, "All of those people from all over the world, who are as crazy about making music as me." "Now this is different", spinmeister thought as he had just clicked on the latest remix submitted that day. He was intrigued. "Great guitar work - powerful remix", he thought, but as remixers often do, he wondered what if there was just one thing different in that mix. He was curious, if that might sound even better. "This is a newcomer to the site," he thought while typing that comment. "I hope he won't be offended", he sighed as he pressed the submit button, not wanting to start a flame war. About two and a half hours later. Vox - that was the new remixer's handle - had responded. He didn't seem upset. He had answered spinmeister's questions and another half hour later spinmeister noticed a private message in the brand new private messaging system at realworldremixed.com. It was from vox. Soon they were messaging back and forth about bpm, pitch shifting, time stretching, audio illusions, remixing and good songs. Vox let spinmeister listen to some other stuff he had done, and spinmeister thought "that would be a fun one to remix", and for some inexplicable reason typed that thought into the messaging system. What was he thinking? Most people are just too in love with their versions of songs to let a stranger touch them. Or they would be worried about somebody stealing their song. Or they would be worried that it would end up on a P2P network. Or they would be too shy to let someone else listen to their raw tracks before a nice mixdown. At least he had made the comment in a somewhat light-hearted way, so it could just be ignored. Another half hour later, a return message from vox contained the question: Were you serious? A few days later, vox and spinmeister had exchanged personal email addresses and vox had created a remix pack just for spinmeister. "How cool is that?" spinmeister thought to himself. He decided to do two remixes. The first one rather close to the original with lots of guitar, and another one with lots of keyboards. Spinmeister enjoyed working with the tracks from this talented singer, guitar player and song writer. Three days later and he had two remixes. Vox liked the remixes. They listened to some more of each other's material. And they emailed about music. Lots of music. Composers, artists, producers, technology, production. Edvard Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Peter Gabriel, Pet Shop Boys, Yello, Trevor Horn, double tracked vocals, guitar pods, usb keyboards, software, mp3, bit rates. Then, a casual question towards the end of an email: "Hey, do you feel like maybe doing an Internet collaboration?" "Sure," spinmeister replied, "want to blog about it?"

And so there it was. The idea had been hatched. Exactly one week after vox submitted his remix and spinmeister wrote his first comment, they had decided to form an Internet band. Whatever that meant. Three more days and a name had been chosen. A domain was registered. Web software installed. A first blog entry: "hello world!" from "a minor theory".