As you all know, mash-up master DJ Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk dropped his fifth album All Day (download here) on Monday, and I'd wager that anyone who has listened to his music has at one point or another tried to fathom the complex creative process he undertakes in layering what seems to be an infinite number of samples. All Day alone contains 373 different samples. Can you remember the last time you even listened to 373 different songs? Take a look at the first track “Oh No” from All Day: 19 different samples including The Doors, Tupac, Black Sabbath, and Missy Elliot. Nothing short of tedious.

Now, imagine deconstructing those 19 samples and putting them into a program that displays each as the song plays through. Then imagine doing that for the entire album, and within the span of four days. That's what Silicon Valley software engineer Travis McLeskey does. Go to alldaysamples.com, and I promise that you'll never listen to Girl Talk the same way again.

You're probably wondering (as I did) what would inspire a software engineer with a B.A. and Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering who has developed air traffic simulators for NASA, written screensavers for Mac (including Life Clock), and is developing productivity software for Mac and Windows, to dissect Girl Talk tracks.

“I'm not particularly musical, and I'm not an obsessive Girl Talk fan,” Travis said, “but I realized that the combination of Girl Talk's sample-based music + data about it + an ultra-lenient license (Creative Commons) meant that someone could probably make it so you could watch the samples while you listened to the music.”

Simple as that. Travis first caught attention with his site feedtheanimalssamples.com in 2009 that displayed the individual samples in the tracks on Girl Talk's album Feed the Animals as the songs were streaming in javascript form, and caught applause from both the New York Time blog, and Pitchfork.com for his innovative creation. 

To give credit where it's due--some of you may have come across the developer going by the alias of "Gingerninja's" sites which are similar to feedtheanimalssamples.com and alldaysamples.com--let it be known that Travis was the originator of the deconstruction concept. It's the Internet—good ideas are always going to be duplicated (though Travis informed me that Gingerninja claimed to have no knowledge of his sites). Regardless, Travis seems humble, a characteristic that certainly matches the charity of the work he put in to his websites (in truth though, his sites are really much more compatible and user-friendly than Gingerninja's).

Travis launched his follow-up to feedtheanimalssamples.com yesterday to match the release of Girl Talk's new album, and I had the opportunity to chat with the man behind the curtain:

Though Girl Talk stands alone in the music mash-up DJ genre, artists across the musical spectrum have been using samples from each other's work, films, political speeches (the list goes on and on) since hip-hop's early beginnings in the 70s. What was it that drove you specifically to deconstruct Girl Talk's music?

Travis: Unlike a lot of other hip-hop and electronic music that uses samples, Girl Talk's music is the samples. And unlike the music of so many mash-up DJs, it's obvious that he treats his music as a work of art and puts a lot of thought into its construction. In my experience, a Girl Talk album – including All Day-- gets better with each listen, which I haven't found to be true of DJs who slap together a heavy metal and hip-hop song just for the novelty. Also, he uses a lot of samples that invoke a nostalgic response in the listener, and often presents the track in a way that make them feel genuinely new. Of course, another major factor that made these projects possible was the incredible work of Wikipedia users in deconstructing the music of both albums.

Beyond just the aesthetics, Girl Talk is fascinating because of his bold assertion of fair-use rights and because he gives it all away for free (except the concert tickets, of course). But I don't think the party will go on forever; whether or not Girl Talk is within his rights to sample the music, I expect that the music industry is aware of him and sees him as a source of uncollected revenue. I predict that they will try to make him pay royalties one way or another. In general, though, I'm really looking forward to seeing whether other artists can follow Gregg Gillis' lead and fill out a genre around this kind of music.

You've deconstructed Girl Talk's new album “All Day” and the preceding album “Feed the Animals” that have both been greeted with acclaim. Do you have any aspirations to go through his earlier work and do the same?

Travis: To my knowledge, only these two albums have been released under a Creative Commons license. By releasing under that license, Girl Talk has explicitly given fans like me permission to redistribute the music, which is a big part of what my websites do.

I would say that your endeavor in “decoding” the tracks is on par with Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk's effort in composing his songs. As you know, there can sometimes be three, four, or even five samples layered over one another at certain points in the songs. What was the process you used in picking apart and organizing the different samples?

Travis: The track identification credit completely belongs to some amazing work by Wikipedia users. Since Monday morning when the album was released, and probably without any special information about it, they've constructed a pretty thorough list of samples, and they're still adding to it. I don't know how they're able to identify the samples so readily, but I'd like to thank them for it. All I did was write the player in javascript, create the website, and put it all together.

But as impressive at the Wikipedians' work is, I disagree that it is commensurate with the effort in creating the album itself. Gregg Gillis quit his job to work on this music full time, and I expect that he spent much of the last two years painstakingly putting this album together. He is the artist here, and the rest of us are just fans.

Any favorite Girl Talk tracks or ones that you most enjoyed deconstructing (if in fact you enjoyed picking them apart)?

Travis: One of my faves is when Skee-Lo's "I Wish" is set against an instrumental part of "Heart and Soul" by T'Pau. There's something about recontextualizing barely-remembered novelty 90's hip-hop with sentimental 80's keyboards that just makes me want to keep hearing it.

A project like this seems like it would require a diverse knowledge of contemporary and past music across the genres. What are some of your favorite musicians?

Travis: As a programmer, my taste in music should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but I will say that my listening habits have completely changed now that there's Pandora and Grooveshark; I tend to find out about artists through Pandora and then listen to them on Grooveshark until I can't stand them anymore. (Girl Talk's great for finding new favorite tracks too). Most recently, I've been stuck on the Pixies and on the now-defunct Be Your Own Pet. When nobody's around, I like to listen to the Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar.

I could see the basis of your project branching off in multiple directions. Any future plans to venture outside of Girl Talk?

Travis: I'm not aware of any other sample-based artist with such a rich collection of identified tracks as what's on Wikipedia for the Girl Talk albums. So I'm going to be focusing my free time on other programming projects; right now I'm working on a productivity tool called Project Hedgehog.

Where did the inspiration for feedtheanimalssamples.com and alldaysamples.com come from?

Travis: I have a 40 minute commute to work, and when I first got hooked on Feed The Animals, I was listening to it in the car every day for a while. I think I was trying to identify one of the samples and thought it would be really cool if I could see the samples as the music was playing. Then I realized that all the data was on Wikipedia, and I could redistribute the music for free, and I could probably put together a javascript music player. I decided to try to spend a week of nights and weekends developing it, and it was just luck that it turned out as fun to use as it did.

Any favorite comments you've received from fans?

Travis: What I've gathered from the comments on the site is that they are all from people who are a) way, way cooler than I am and b) way nicer than people you find in some parts of the Internet when they interact with strangers. I like to read some of the ambiguous compliments ("wtf this is awesome") that might actually be directed at Girl Talk and pretend they're for me. Also, I love it when they think of me as "the Internet," as in, "This is awesome - thank you Internet."

Left field Question: if you were approached by Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk, what would you say to him about your project and his music?

Travis: I talked to Gregg Gillis briefly over Facebook last year about coordinating for his future albums. He was hesitant to divulge the complete list of source data, probably because he worries that it might take away part of the "magic" of the mix. However, I think my sites have proven that an enhanced player really makes it even more fun to listen to the music and makes it more engaging for fans. Especially considering the technical problems he's had with delivering his music (their server apparently crashed on Monday), I believe there is a lot of opportunity there.

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There you have it, straight from the source. Click around the thesaurus at Merriam-Webster for synonyms to “impressive” and “innovation,” and you'll come across the appropriate words to describe Travis' work (in my opinion). For the sake of privacy, I won't post his email here, but say your thank yous by visiting feedtheanimalssamples.com and alldaysamples.com.  

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