i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Here’s a great example of a multimedia Personal Information Management system. Gregg Gillis, the artist behind the musical mash-up sensation Girl Talk, discusses on NPR how he organizes the music he samples in his work. Here is the most interesting quote about his system:

"I have many folders detailing the music, whether it's a melody or a beat or percussion. I kind of have a running list of things where they fit in by tempo, so if I have that bit of Drake or that bit of Willow Smith vocals, and it's at a particular tempo, I can go into this text document and look at it and say, 'Oh, here's the list of melodies that go well here.' On the album, I like to keep it as diverse as possible, so if there was an '80s pop song before this piece, something like The Rolling Stones would be nice now."

It sounds like Gillis might benefit from using a controlled vocabulary tagging system where he could search for music across tempo, mood, era, and style to find pieces that will blend effectively. Maybe he would benefit from one of the tools Jess highlighted in lecture 26.

Listen to the interview here: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/04/131791011/girl-talk-cataloging-samples-all...