I was very excited when Trent Reznor first released the master tracks for "The Hand That Feeds" in Garageband format. I imagined bands following Trent's lead and releasing Garageband files on iTunes. I thought about what it would be like to be a kid again learning my guitar songs and being able to lay my guitar solo directly into my favorite song's master mix. But I had to be content with my imagination because I didn't have a Mac.

And then I forgot all about it, even after I got a Mac.

Last night I was reminded as Trent Reznor went ahead and released even more tracks. As far as I can tell, bands haven't followed Trent's lead, but that hasn't stopped him from stepping it up. There are now 3 tracks from Year Zero available for download with the possibility of even more. Its refreshing in a DRM-laden period, where artists and companies alike are so intent on control down to the individual note, and takedown notices are issued even to guitar tablature sites, that a successful musician can completely give up control of his music to his fans. NIN still makes a ton of money; now it might make more.

I played around with all of them until late in the night. I made the songs super fast and super slow. I made Trent sound like a chipmunk and a demon. I stacked vocals on top of each other in a "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" fashion. I ran guitar tracks through the Atari effect to make it sound more 8-bit.

It was fun and also a bit inspiring -- the individual tracks were much more simple than I thought they would be. I won't say that creating music is incredibly easy -- several failed attempts to do so in a band taught me that -- but somehow having a sample to dissect made it seem much more approachable.