The Rotunda

Issue date: 11/19/08 Section: Features

Freshman Nick Lee.

In recent years a new genre of music called mash up has been hitting the airwaves. Mash up started with DJs laying the vocals of one already existing song on top of the music for a completely different song, mashing them together to create an all new song.

Freshman Nick Lee was inspired by one specific mash up artist, called Girl Talk, to start making his own mash up songs.

Lee has been playing around with different types of music his whole life. He started playing bass guitar in eighth grade and started a band called Prima Primo in his junior year of high school with his best friend who played the piano. His aunt played the ukulele, and listening to her play it made him want to learn how to play.

But his older brother introduced him to Girl Talk last summer, and when he got to Longwood he started to make his own music to pass the time. So far he has made four of his own songs and is currently working on a fifth but he says he is currently suffering from writer's block.

When making his songs he uses familiar beats for them. "I try to do popular hip hop/rap songs," he said. His most recent song uses tracks such as Ludacris' "Move B----" mixed with Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Snow" on top of AC/DC's "TNT."

He says he listens to whatever is on his iTunes or steals his roommate's CDs to find dance beats that sound good together to make his songs.

Lee tries to use more mainstream music, although those are not usually the genres he personally listens to. "I listen to alternative, really obscure independent bands," he said. His favorite is a French electronic band called Justice.

Although Lee tries to stay within the mainstream for mash ups he does use some of the more obscure artists every once in a while. He says he's used Dukes of Windsor and Ratatat, which are both in the electronic genre.

Although mash up is starting to appear more and more on the music scene, it's not exactly legal yet due to copyright laws. However, there is a Fair Use Clause that has been used to protect several mash-up artists.

Although Lee has not been taken to court yet he has been sent a warning for his Myspace page. "Myspace sent me a warning," he said, "but there are so many mash-up artists I think it's more of a formality. They haven't kicked me off yet or anything."

He keeps all of his music on his Myspace page, www.myspace.com/letsjelly. Jelly is his adopted DJ name. "One of my friends uses Jelly as a verb and I thought it was funny, so I used it as a name," he said.

Lee says that doing the mash ups is really fun and he might want to be a DJ at some point, but he sees it as more of a hobby than a career path. "I really like music," he said. "And I've been told I'm really good at it. The more I think about it the more I consider it. But I don't think that's where I'll be in 20 years. It's more of a hobby."

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