Ableton Forum

What you might say is better, I might say is utter shite and vice versa.

Are you talking about Mash up, or another type of cut'n'paste collage style or what?

If your favourite songs are not in stems (individual tracks) then I guess it's a case of sampling bits you like and using them creatively.

panten wrote:Green is NOT a creative colour.

Tell that to mother nature.

Voltagetower wrote:Hello All,

I'm not a musician. I simply want to take some of my favorite songs and drop them into Live V.9 and make them sound "Better."

How do people remix songs if they only have 1 track to work with?

Thank you for any who answers!!
Have a good day,
Marcus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdxZLSOI6Y8

Typically they are good buddies with the original artist, who gives them stems to work off.

Samuel L. Jizzle wrote:Typically they are good buddies with the original artist, who gives them stems to work off.

Sometimes.

I have created dozens of remixes back in the day (not legally mind you just for fun) using a number of different techniques to create them.

Most of the remixes I did were just to trial out different techniques and get to grips with eq and compressors etc. Remixing a track you have an idea to use already so you can follow along with other instruments.

Some attempts I used a simple song (such as Gary Jules Mad World) which was just piano and vocals. I could then practice playing piano along with the songs piano and strings and other orchestral instruments. Mix in some mellow drums and bingo, a personalised version of the song.

Other attempts (such as one I did using Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit) I experimented with all kinds of EG and filters to try and filter out the drums but leave the guitar and vocals. Chopped into segments and mixed with synth guitars, new hip hop beat and scratches.

Phase cancellation is one way to get a vocal track from a song without using an original stem. This use to be a lot easier because artists would often release a single which had an instrumental on it for karaoke fans. You can take the instrumental and invert the waveform and use it to cancel out the same material in the original song. What you are left with when done correctly is whatever is not in the instrumental (typically vocals).

Professionally tho, yes the "remix artist" would be hired for the task and given the stems. When I have entered remix competitions of various types you are given most of the track stems in MP3 format to use. That may be something to consider if you are interested to play around like that. I use to have a crack at

https://www.indabamusic.com/

You get remix stems of tracks but for my tastes I wasn't interested in half the artists tracks they offered up and don't have the time for all that nowdays

http://multitrackmaster.com/

first hit when googling for 'master track download'...