Hey everyone. So recently I've been really down in the dumps when it comes to my music production. I just don't hear it the way I used too. What I mean is that I feel like my original work isn't any good. I haven't been able to start anything from scratch and it's been really making me feel terrible.
Well enough with the sob story- what brings me here is this question:
With all of that said, I think I should remix a song. Only because I have ran into such a road block I feel as if this is a decent way of getting around it..for now..
How in the world am I supposed to remix a song without having the audio files of the original song? Yeah, I got some acapellas of songs, but I don't have the tracks of songs to really remix. i hope you understand what I'm saying, I'm drawing a blank.
I mainly do electronic dance music stuff.. Any suggestions? I'm losing it over here o.O
thanks...
Looking to remix a song, but..
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tastypants
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:42 pm
Looking to remix a song, but..
The Brotherhood Shall Prevail
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jestermgee
- Posts: 4500
- Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am
Re: Looking to remix a song, but..
I like to do a remix from time to time for this reason. It can be a lot different when you have something to work with and I like to make a personal version of a song I like mainly just for my ears.
I have rarely ever used stem or accapella files. Typically I will pick a song that I can imagine another layer or something. I haven't done too many lately because I have too many other projects and things going on but here are some examples that were all done on older trackers so there was no warping, I had to manually edit each loop section from "loose" timing to exact timing to get things to fit. God Live makes this so much easier.
War Of The Worlds Theme: This is one I keep going back too because I just love the dramatic strings. Use the string sample and turn it into a dance/techno tune. Added drums, Vangard synth, bassline, stabs and all kinds. I tend to use this as a DAW tester and one of the first remixes I approach when I start on a DAW to test drive things.
Daft Punk - Around The World: You have the bassline clean from the rest in parts. There is also the bridge section that has the robotic voice with just a hat and then you have all the funk pieces that you can extract, create loops and add other elements such as acids and even try and use a bass instrument and mimic the bassline is fun. Again, just trying to mimic what has been done can help you progress. This was done way back on Fasttracker.
Gary Jules - Mad World: Loved the song and it is only a voice and a piano so easy to add a mellow hip-hop styled beat, string section and bassline. Also it's easy to play the actual tune so I created the whole thing as an instrumental and a vocal mix. That was back in my Buzz Tracker days.
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit. This was a test to see how I could use EQ to try and filter out the drums, bassline and just keep the voice and guitars. It was a good learning curve and I managed to get the vocals and guitar to stand out. I helped the guitar by adding additional grungy guitar sounds and placed a big rock drum beat and heavy bassline. You could still hear the original detail but when you can use enough other content it can mask a lot of it.
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony - Such a simple track to remix you only need the intro violin part. I copied the violin section and recreated it as close as possible which took a while to get right using sound fonts (again this was a long time ago) then used that as a basis to turn it into a drum and bass track by doubling the speed but leaving the strings at about the same speed.
So many others I could list and not all are great but some were very popular with friends and I learned quite a bit during many of the processes. They are all rather dated but if you have an interest to hear what I did just drop me a PM and I will send you an MP3.
Have some fun.
I have rarely ever used stem or accapella files. Typically I will pick a song that I can imagine another layer or something. I haven't done too many lately because I have too many other projects and things going on but here are some examples that were all done on older trackers so there was no warping, I had to manually edit each loop section from "loose" timing to exact timing to get things to fit. God Live makes this so much easier.
War Of The Worlds Theme: This is one I keep going back too because I just love the dramatic strings. Use the string sample and turn it into a dance/techno tune. Added drums, Vangard synth, bassline, stabs and all kinds. I tend to use this as a DAW tester and one of the first remixes I approach when I start on a DAW to test drive things.
Daft Punk - Around The World: You have the bassline clean from the rest in parts. There is also the bridge section that has the robotic voice with just a hat and then you have all the funk pieces that you can extract, create loops and add other elements such as acids and even try and use a bass instrument and mimic the bassline is fun. Again, just trying to mimic what has been done can help you progress. This was done way back on Fasttracker.
Gary Jules - Mad World: Loved the song and it is only a voice and a piano so easy to add a mellow hip-hop styled beat, string section and bassline. Also it's easy to play the actual tune so I created the whole thing as an instrumental and a vocal mix. That was back in my Buzz Tracker days.
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit. This was a test to see how I could use EQ to try and filter out the drums, bassline and just keep the voice and guitars. It was a good learning curve and I managed to get the vocals and guitar to stand out. I helped the guitar by adding additional grungy guitar sounds and placed a big rock drum beat and heavy bassline. You could still hear the original detail but when you can use enough other content it can mask a lot of it.
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony - Such a simple track to remix you only need the intro violin part. I copied the violin section and recreated it as close as possible which took a while to get right using sound fonts (again this was a long time ago) then used that as a basis to turn it into a drum and bass track by doubling the speed but leaving the strings at about the same speed.
So many others I could list and not all are great but some were very popular with friends and I learned quite a bit during many of the processes. They are all rather dated but if you have an interest to hear what I did just drop me a PM and I will send you an MP3.
Have some fun.
Re: Looking to remix a song, but..
You can find tons of stems by searching for "Remix Contests" on google for example. This way you can even enter your remix in the contest and who knows...
Here is a site that can get you started:
http://www.remixcomps.com
Here is a site that can get you started:
http://www.remixcomps.com
Re: Looking to remix a song, but..
The Rolling Stones' team of lawyers will hunt you down and make you pay for this treachery!jestermgee wrote: The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony - Such a simple track to remix you only need the intro violin part. I copied the violin section and recreated it as close as possible which took a while to get right using sound fonts (again this was a long time ago) then used that as a basis to turn it into a drum and bass track by doubling the speed but leaving the strings at about the same speed.
Re: Looking to remix a song, but..
Have you checked out Blend io? That should keep you busy pretty much forever.
https://blend.io/
And then there's the stuff that comes through Beatport Play--remix contests, essentially.
http://play.beatport.com/
https://blend.io/
And then there's the stuff that comes through Beatport Play--remix contests, essentially.
http://play.beatport.com/