Ableton Forum

a bootleg is (usually) an unauthorized concert recording...

a remix is ....what you said,yep...it can have bits of the original music sometimes as well...

I think a better question is, when is it a remix vs. when is it a cover?

hrvatski did this kid606 remix and the only sound he used from the original was a cat meow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQESTUHqSQ

I think back in the 90s, Remixes were a lot more popular, though it may just be the way I remember. A lot of times some remixes did better than the originals.

The way I think there are probably 3 categories:

Remix - Takes the original song and makes a new song with the same premise (IE, uses at least some of the lyrics and the same style and would still be considered the original artists track)

Cover - Simply the original artists song covered by another artist, commonly with very little change apart from some different styles or instruments. The lyrics would be the same.

Remake - Takes just a part of someone's song and regurgitates it with completely new lyrics and a new style, often to bring an older "forgotten" song to a new audience. Seems to happen a lot these days and is considered both clever and lazy.

That's just how I look at it. I love to make the odd remix now and then for fun just to try and match the song with my own work and add in additional elements.

I brought up Onra's "Change of Heart" (original by Change) and Young Montana's "Sacré Cool" (originally "She Can't Love You" by Chemise) in a semi-related discussion on another forum recently.

I'd be interested to hear which category the hivemind thinks they belong in, as they leave so much of the original sample in tact (or more accurately, so many smaller samples sometimes arranged to resemble the original), they don't really alter the core meaning of the original song, and the Onra track even has a sort of parallel structure. By contrast, "Sacré Cool" is all over the place whereas "She Can't Love You," like most/all disco songs, reveals the beat in the first bar then hangs there until the next song plays.

I think one or both of them could be covers.

It also seems to me they could conceivably work in any of the three categories Jester described. I'm still not clear on the distinctions, if any, between remix/rework/remake/edit.

Also, what was it when Sean P Puff Diddy Daddy Combs and Jimmy Page (and in a bizarre turn of events, per Wikipedia, Tom Morello, apparently) did that horrible Godzilla in Kashmir thing? Actually, don't tell me. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.

simmerdown wrote:a bootleg is (usually) an unauthorized concert recording...

a remix is ....what you said,yep...it can have bits of the original music sometimes as well...

Well, lately "Bootleg" take a whole different meaning in EDM. Aside of "Bootleg" being what you described it (which derive mainly from Rock/Alternative and Pop concerts), it is also lately considered a remix type in the Dance music scene.
"A Remix Bootleg is a remix of a song, almost exclusively in the electronic dance music genre, in which the remixing DJ uses an entire song or samples from a song in a remix without the explicit permission of the original artist. This is however considered an acceptable practice as nearly all EDM DJs care more about the music than they care about the money. Having someone remix your song, bootleg or not, is typically a sign of great respect and appreciation." Quote from Urban Dictionary.
There are tons of Bootleg Remixes floating around the net from well known working DJ's in the EDM market (ie, Afrojack, Thomas Gold, Stonebridge, etc...). These bootlegs can be heard primarily in that respective DJ set and sometimes posted on their sites or SoundCloud (or whichever places they post their stuff).
If the songs never gets released by a label, it stays being a bootleg but if a label picks it and release it then automatically it falls under an official Remix.
So, yeah, depending the type of music being referred to, then the word "Bootleg" have a different meaning and even different value.

for ma at least, a remix is when i use someone else source audio/midi material(smells like teen spirit for example)
a cover is when i play a song without using any of the original material(like when i play da funk or harder, better, etc)

a bootleg is pretty much any unauthorized "record"(live, remixes, studio outtakes etc)

well said darkman, i put (usually) in place of all that , hahah, not much a typist