>> Kate Zwaard: Hi. I'm Kate Zwaard, Director
of Digital Strategy and LC Labs team at the
Library of Congress. It's the Library's
220th birthday today, and we're celebrating by
offering a sneak preview of Citizen DJ, a new tool that
helps you make your own music from sounds in our collections. Creating projects like this one
in our crowd sourcing website, crowd.llc.gov are just some of the ways the Library is
working to connect with you. We want you to know the
treasures and resources at the Library of Congress,
America's Library are available to you, many from
the comfort of home. Before I hand it over to the
mastermind behind Citizen DJ 2020 innovator in residence,
Brian Foo, I want to tell you about one more way you
could connect with us. You could become the next
Library of Congress innovator. For two years now, we've held
open applications for folks to send us their creative
ideas for using the Library of Congress's digital
collections. I hope what you see today
inspires you to think about what you might do. If your idea is selected,
we'll fund your project and occasional travel to
Washington DC for a year. You'll get to meet
Library of Congress staff, explore our reading
rooms and collections, and most importantly,
make something exciting to share with the world. It's an incredible opportunity
to be a part of the mission and legacy of the
Library of Congress by helping us open
our treasure chest. I hope that you'll apply. Subscribe to our newsletter
at labs.llc.gov or follow us on Twitter at LC_labs
for more information. Thank you for joining us. >> Brian Foo: Hi. My name is Brian Foo, and I'm
one of this year's innovators and residents at the
Library of Congress. So I've been working on a
project called Citizen DJ which invites the public to create new music
using the library's free to use audio and
video materials. So the project started
around this idea of the DJ who in the early days of hip
hop would build their reputation on the size and diversity
of their record collection. There is this phenomenon
called crate digging, where DJs would be in the
backs of record stores and thrift shops and
they'd be looking for the most obscure sounds to
add their to their collection. And, you know, with
turntables and samplers, they would transform
those sounds to make completely new music. So the idea was I wanted to
work with the amazing staff at the library, to identify, you
know, what is in our collective and shared crate of sounds
accessible to, you know, anybody in the country,
and invite the public to make new music
out of those sounds, and we want to hear what
you would create from it. So today I'll be demoing some of the tools I've been
working on for Citizen DJ. So these tools are
still in development, and we're looking for feedback. And they really focus
on discovery of sounds from the Library's collections,
as well as providing ways to access them, learn
more about them, and hopefully make
good music from them. So there's kind of a sampling
of some audio collections that were curated by Library
staff, that is kind of a mixture of really old sounds, newer
sounds, music, spoken word, government, film,
speeches, radio broadcasts, a very broad range of
different types of sounds. And also, these are
sounds that are free to use without restrictions,
so anything you make from it you own and you can
do whatever you want with it. So you can give it
away for free. You can perform it. You can sell it. It's yours. So I just want to briefly kind
of go through some of the tools that we'll have available
to you. First is this exploration tool. So I'm going to be showing you
this collection [music] that's in the Edison cylinder
collection. So these are really old,
early 20th century sounds. And these are kind of a
mixture of music and sketches, so I'm going to kind of
just give you a sense of what's in here. [ Music ] So right now I'm kind
of just scrubbing through a few thousand audio
clips that are, you know, under a second long, and it kind
of gives you a very broad sense of what is in this
collection sonically. The way these clips are laid
out is the clips that are closer to each other should
sound similar. And the color reinforces
that so I can play what's in the corner here. [ Music ] Sounds like opera, and
in the opposite corner. [Music] It sounds like
piano and xylophone. And as I'm scrubbing
through, you can actually see where the particular
sound comes from. So once I find an interesting
sound [Music] I could hear it in context. >> Real Christmas cheer. [ Music ] And I can also view it on the
Library's website as well as, you know, hear the
whole sound clip, as well as download
it for some items. And I also have a
couple features that allow you to
kind of filter. So I can just highlight
everything that's marked as humor. Just play those. [ Noise ] It sounds like [inaudible]. And also from a musical
perspective I can highlight different pitches. So everything kind of in a pitch
of C, or the lower pitch sounds, I can just play those. Let's see. Let's go down here. [ Music ] And just to kind of give you
a sense of the different types of sounds that we'll
have available. So this is a collection
of really old stuff. [ Music ] But just to kind of give you a
contrast, this is a collection of more contemporary sounds. [ Music ] Completely different sound. [ Music ] So next I want to show
you the remix tool. So once you find an
interesting sound, [music] just find a sound. [ Music ] Maybe this one. I can go to this other tool. So basically what this tool
does, it took the sample that I selected and put
it on a musical sequence. And these are different clips
from that particular item. It's called I've Been Floating
Down the Old Green River. I'm just going to play what it
sounds like in the sequence, so I'm gonna mute the
drums for a second. [Music] [inaudible]
a little bit. [Music] I'm going to
[inaudible] bring it up once. [ Music ] And [inaudible] the drums. [Music] It came with
the sound of the drums. [Music] And then
if I want to change up a particular sequence
I can do that. [Music] And I can also
randomize [inaudible]. [Music] I'm going to do
some music [inaudible]. [Music] Then I could just
plug up the [inaudible] trying to make it sound
like a [inaudible]. [ Music ] So it's similar to before. You know, once you find
an interesting sound, you can learn more about
it so you can kind of see where this particular
item comes from. Download the full audio as
well as find information about how you can
access it and reuse it. So there's a couple ways you can
access the sounds that you find. So you could actually
download each individual sample in individual sound clips, but you could also
download the clips in bulk. So we've been using this idea
of sample packs that allow you to import, you know,
thousands of audio clips into your own music
production software. So this particular collection
you can actually download all of the clips into your own
music production software. So I'm going to quickly show
you what that looks like. So in this sample pack
you'll have access to like the individual
like clips. So play what that
kind of sounds like. [Music] So this might
be useful for samplers, but they also have longer clips
that you can chop up yourself. [ Music ] And these sample packs
give you information about where they come from, and how you can give
credit, which is recommended. You can also, you know,
obviously import your sounds into your favorite software. So that's the demo. We're looking forward
to hearing your feedback and seeing what you
make from it. So even though Citizen DJ
isn't officially launching until at least late summer, I want to invite the public very
early into my design process, because I feel strongly
to be able to respond to your feedback. So whether you're a musician,
or a student, or just, you know, a curious citizen, I
want to hear what kind of tools are useful to you. And, you know, I know that we're in a currently very
challenging time. And you know, especially
for musicians who, you know, make a lot of their
livelihood on the road at concerts and public events. So I want to make it very clear that what we're making
will be a public resource, and I want to work with
you to make sure it's as useful to you as possible.
