the Peace of Winter project
(personal thoughts from Snowflake...)
Peace of Winter is a ccMixter musical collaboration. It is a collective musical work, featuring visual art, of peace, for peace.
This Holiday project began out of a conversation I had with Steve at Big Fish Media in August, an idea of producing a holiday album, with proceeds benefiting Tibet. I mentioned, "only ccMixter could create an entire album from scratch in that short of time." I was inspired and thought we could do it.
I reached out to fourstones (Victor Stone) at ccM. He said, "if you can get great pellas from the great voices of ccMixter, you can do it. Reach out to them." So I did. Leza2unes, CiggiBurns, Panu Moon, SackJo22, brad_stanfield. Anchor Mejans, spinningmerkaba, & MC Jack in the Box pitched in. And I discovered narva9 had started a forum discussion about a similar idea last year and she had a few pellas already!
Then I reached out to the Mixters. Loveshadow, ditto ditto and many, many more. What came back was an influx of inspiration and energy. With each upload notice, I rushed to listen, with such delight. What magic is happening here?
At the extended deadline, we had 50 mixes. We had to pick 14 for an album. 14. I couldn't get below 30. Narrowing it down felt like painful surgery to me. Alex and I spent an entire day listening to the last 20 and got it down to 14. (I hope you will listen to all the Mixes & Pellas created & submitted for Peace of Winter).
All along k_loco (Kirsten Swartz-Morton) has been researching Tibetan charities, reaching out to dozens of them. We learned a lot about the Dalai Lama and his amazing work for peace.
go1ldfish (Alex Goodwin) created the AMP player for digital-LPs and we felt if we combined the 'open source' art and music communities using Creative Commons licenses, it could be really cool.
DJ QuikPik (Sean Halley) agreed to master it. The levels and EQ were a challenge. In our tracks, we all basically use MP3s of each other (instead of WAV or AIFF or FLAC). It is amazing these songs can sound this good on that type of foundation. (Imagine what we could do with all Lossless Stems???) Sean worked a lot of magic on this mastering layer. He even remixed a few tracks due to some distortion and other issues. He really rocked it.
spinningmerkaba (Jason Brock) took the songs the last little step. Somehow "It Came Upon A Boogie Night" got skipped in mastering and its level was way hot compared to the rest. So smerkaba did an Audacity hack and while he was at it, lifted the volume on "Gloria" and lowered "Amazing Grace" just a bit for a fluid listen of the entire album.
We tagged the titles and files (not easy with so many artists to attribute in each song and all the weird tagging issues at iTunes) and rushed it to Steve at Big Fish Media on Nov 12. He said, "nothing like pushing it to the limit." He said he could get it on iTunes by 11/24 - and he did! (Get Peace of Winter at iTunes HERE).
Music - ccMixter. Art - Deviant Art! (I've been a big fan for years) and have discovered some amazing artists there. We reached out. Got more than a dozen artists that gave their permission for use in the album artbook. ricky4 donated 'snow angel' and Jeff Whitehead of FridgeWorks made it the album cover. KeswickPinhead actually went out and photographed just for the project (amazing stuff)!
Artbook. I loved doing this (and hated how much work it was for a nongraphic designer person like myself!). I loved getting to know each artists work, and began to understand even more powerfully how visual art illuminates music (remember the Magical Mystery & Sergeant Pepper vinyl?). Full thank yous are in the artbook at the back.
The final stretch is where everyone came together. Each ccM Mixer helped get licenses (inspired by Magnatune) from each contributing artist on their track. spinmeister (Niels Voll) stepped in with the press release and a bunch of ideas. We've all been working nonstop to share this message and music and art. The folks at Jamendo have been extremely helpful and supportive too! (Get Peace of Winter on Jamendo HERE.)
Peace of Winter carries a message of international, unifying peace. Peace through the highest parts of us, often found in our creations like music and art.
Peace, especially this time of year, is what we long for most.
I am proud to offer half of the proceeds from this collaborative project to the Dalai Lama. He inspires me. He is an example of being peace. I look up to him immensely and pray for peace in Tibet and everywhere else on our collective earth.
Thank you to everyone that contributed to this amazing project. So many people stepped up. My neighbor, Jeanne, actually cooked for us and her daughter painted her face like a snowflake and dawned little blue wings. We have a MBA intern showing up here in our home in a few hours.
I hope you'll join a Listening Lounge to help support the Peace of Winter project. Each Room (Green, Blue, Purple) offers special 'thank you' artistic and musical gifts associated with your support. Half of all proceeds go to the Dalai Lama Foundation. The remaining half is split between ArtisTech Media and the contributing artists. Partnerships are the means of the future.
May we all experience peace. I say this at the end of each yoga session. Yes, peace on earth, goodwill to all.
~Snowflake
Helps us share the messager of Peace of Winter! Links & more HERE
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