Radiohead jamming with Kanye West would be an odd pairing on any stage, but in the world of mashups—where the vocals of one song are folded into another—the weirder the combination, the bigger the bragging rights. While the RIAA is determined to put an end to the art form, many artists are releasing a cappellas (vocal-only tracks) and stems (individual tracks of a mix) to support the creative movement. And you can be part of it too.

Pros often look to Sony ACID Pro ($315, www.sonycreativesoftware.com) or Ableton Live ($600, www.ableton.com) to mash up music, but you can do it on the cheap with Audacity, an open source audio-editing app, and your own music. We’ll show you some basic techniques—you just need to find two tracks to work with. Find songs in the same key (like Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss” and Puddle of Mudd’s “Blurry”) or ones that have a similar groove and chord progression (such as Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”). Or Google “a cappella download” to find vocal track downloads (for personal use only) and choose a song in your music collection to pair it with. We always thought 4 Non Blondes’s “What’s Up?” sounded just like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” so for simplicity’s sake we’ll use these songs for our example.