La Orquesta de Baja California joined forces with Nortec Collective artists Bostich and Fussible on Sunday for a free concert in the plaza outside Tijuana’s cultural center. It was the final day of Entijuanarte, a three-day contemporary art festival featuring work ranging from painting and photography to digital and performance arts.
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Here’s a very rough track. I’m recording using the laptop’s built-in mic and an acoustic guitar, then processing it with Garage Band effects. It’s quick and easy, but not exactly pretty. I added some drums to fill it out a bit, which points out my wandering rhythm. You can grab the full mix, guitars, effects, or rhythm track to use as you will.
This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
From left: Panóptica (Roberto Mendoza), Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Hiperboreal (P.G. Beas), Clorofila (Jorge Verdin), Fussible (Pepe Mogt)
A few weeks ago, the progressive Tijuana magazine ZETA published a candid interview with Pepe Mogt (Fussible). In the interview, he expresses his outrage that fellow Nortec Collective member Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica) individually trademarked the name “Nortec” as his own:
Nortec isn’t something between just the five of us. Nortec is part of the same people of Tijuana that made it possible to define the sound and its own cultural movement. Nortec is a sound. Nortec isn’t a brand, nor is it something that belongs to one person alone, or a specific group of people. At least to those of us in the collective it’s ours in the musical sense, but Nortec came from many people that gave an aesthetic and musical life to this movement; and if we have to mention names, we’d say Torolab, Acamonchi, Ãngeles Moreno and an uncountable group of others. (Translation of Pepe Mogt’s comments in ZETA)
Mogt describes the name Nortec as an abbreviation of “Norteño Techno.” He clarifies that the collective registered the name “Nortec Collective” for international distribution, but says he’s unsure of the legalities in Mexico. He says this all came out of nowhere; he was notified on paper and hadn’t yet spoken to Mendoza.
Another collective member, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal), blogged about the controversy. He confirms the group had no plans to tour in 2008 as each member works on individual or duo projects.
I haven’t the least idea of Robert Mendoza’s plans with his band named Nortec Panóptica Orchestra. The use of the name Nortec like this pisses us off; it’s already disingenuous that a band that isn’t the Nortec Collective uses the name Nortec. It’s obvious that no one in the collective knew that Robert Mendoza would register the name Nortec in Mexico as his own. This would seem obvious, but in some news it wasn’t made clear. Another thing that would seem obvious, but I’d like to underline it, is that we have said a thousand times that without Tijuana, Nortec simply wouldn’t exist. It would be nothing. (Translation of P.G. Beas’ blog post)
Bloggers (BeamTV, Xeelee) clearly agree with the anti-Mendoza sentiment, using words that just don’t have the same ring in English :)
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Here’s another diddy, mixed in Garage Band. I threw in a few of the default drum loops for fun. Download the individual tracks for your mixing pleasure: Guitar, Wah, Rhythm.
2 x o o x x x – 4 x o o x x x – A
F#m – A – E – F#m
G# – A – C#m – B
F#m – D – A – E
C#m – A – C#m – B
C#m – A – B – G#
This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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Here’s a track I’ve fiddled with the last few days. I’m posting this for you musicians to remix. I’m licensing it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. That means you are free to use it as long as give me credit (attribution), don’t make money with it (noncommercial), and license any work you make under the same license (share alike). Contact me if you want to use it outside those parameters.
For your mixing pleasure, download the individual pieces (recorded at 72bpm): main guitar riff (mp3), accent guitars (mp3), bassline (mp3) and reversed cymbols (mp3). The bass and cymbols came straight out of Garage Band, so feel free to discard those and come up with something better. If you use these pieces in some way, post a link in the comments.
Bm7 – A – D
G – Bâ™ – D
Bm – Gâ™ – A – E
Bm – A – G – A – Gâ™
This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
I’ve played the piano and guitar most of my life. I’ve improvised an endless number of riffs that never materialize into songs. I’m going to try and start recording and posting them online with a flexible copyright, hoping that the creative geniuses out there will make something out of it.