Hi All.
I am relatively new here, but I have been learning tons from this website.
We have a pretty awesome community here, so I wanted to start a discussion to talk about for today.
I am wondering about making remixes… I know that you can’t remix a song and sell it as your own, but I am very interested in taking some songs and making them into dance tunes.
Basically I want to know if anybody has any helpful advice on remixing a track.
When I say remix, I am thinking about songs like Sean Tyas - Diary of Jane or Eric Prydz - Proper Education. Obviously, both of these songs are from other bands and there is a whole licensing thing that goes along with remixing a track… but I’m not trying to sell anything I do at the moment. I know Sean & Eric both got the parts directly from the labels and had permission to remix those tracks.
Are there any tutorials out there from SA or anyone else on here regarding remixing tracks. It doesnt have to be a rock remix, it could be a dance remix of another producer.
One of my questions is do you have to have all the parts already to make a remix, or can you pull some of the parts from a song and then create a track / remix from the parts you want to include in your track?
What makes a good remix? How do you go about making a remix of a track?
Hopefully we can get some good stuff going back and forth.
I’m wondering if it would be something that Sonic Academy might think about making a video tutorial for…
Hey,
In my opinion a good remix is a remix that either improves/adds something new to the original track, or takes it in a completely different direction. When I go about remixing a track I usually just take one or two elements from the original track, and build my own track around it. I prefer using the elements that really stand out, like vocals and/or leads. So you definitely don’t need all the parts of a track to make a remix. If you get a remix request from a label, it can often be quite helpful not listening to the original track before you produce the remix, so that it won’t influence the result of your remix. At least that’s how I like to do it.
A good place to start might be finding the acapella/midi of the track you want to remix.
If you don’t find the acapella, that narrows your options down a bit though, but there are still some possibilities left. If you have both the vocal mix and dub mix of the track, and they are identical (except for the vocals ofc). You can run them through an audio editing software (make sure they are lined up perfectly on top of one another.), and invert the peaks of one of them. That should phase out the music and leave you with just the vocals + the vocal FX. That trick rarely works perfectly, and it is very dependent that the vocal and dub mix are identical, apart from the vocals. Otherwise you could sample it from the original track if they run solo or along with a few other elements, perhaps during a break or something along those lines, and try to EQ out the other elements, or just use them in your remix as well. And if you don’t find the midi, you’d just have to program it in yourself I reckon.
When you’re remixing (especially when it’s not for a label), you’re free to do pretty much whatever you like, as long as there’s a part of the original track in it.
Hope this can help you out a bit, and that I wasn’t being all too obvious. 
Thanks for the reply.
I am not at the level yet where I am getting remix requests from labels, but 1 day hopefully!
It is interesting that you mention about grabbing the midi of a track and using that for a remix. I have found a number of midi tracks for songs that I am interested in remixing. However the midi tracks I find are normally just a very simple version of the song (like a beeping or single pluck of the songs) but they have all the notes and the song sounds like it should be. Except for the fact that it is not the same instrument or have any sound effects. Is this something that I could use and then plug the midi notes into a synth or VST to create the song with my own sound? Then I could add the other elements to the song in a similar way that I would if I was creating my own track…
Is that how you or anyone else would go about doing something like this?
I have been thinking that I could grab the midi, make it sound the way I want. Create all my other elements to make it a house or trance tune. Then hit the vocals.
As far as vocals go, I was thinking about singing a few songs myself and then using those vocals for the tune. I could add the effects to those vocals and then have a nice clean version for the remix. I had the feeling that I shouldnt be remixing songs in their entirety and just remixing the best parts and integrating them into my track. Does anyone have any recommendations on an approach to what parts of the vocals should be included. I have the feeling that I shouldnt put any constraints on it and just experiment and include the parts that I think are really cool.
Another question I have is regarding BPM & arrangements for songs. Does BPM have a huge effect on rock remixes, or if I speed something up to I need to make adjustments to the vocals or other pieces of the track to make sure that the changes I make sound as though they belong into the song.
Should I create similar arrangements for house or trance remixes that I learn on SA? I guess the feeling that I have is that the BPM & Arrangement of the track or remix is really the biggest factor in what makes a track belong to a particular style. Anybody have any tips or comments on how I should think about the arrangements for remixes?
A REMIX TUTORIAL here on SA would be Nice !
Yeah, the midi can be run through a synth or VST, and it is the way most people go about it. What kind of DAW are you using? If you’re using either Logic, Ableton or FL Studio I can explain how to do it. But I guess in all of them you can just drop the midi file onto the channel you want it in, in the arrangement window, and then load in your VST for that channel.
As for the vocals, it is like you’re saying, there’s no right or wrong (although some ways may sound a lot better than others), so it all comes down to experimenting, trial and error, and doing what you think sounds best.
If there is a large BPM difference, then it will most likely have a large impact on your remix, unless it’s close to double or half the speed of the BPM you want for your remix, then you can double or half the length of the notes. The melodies and/or vocals may sound very odd when they’re either slowed down or sped up, but it depends quite a lot on how large the BPM difference is though.
You would want to increase/decrease the tempo of the vocals so that they won’t end up out of beat. And if you want to make the remix in the same key as the original, then you would want to make sure that pitch stays the same. For every 6 BPM that are altered, there’ll be one semi-tone difference I believe, may be mistaken here. If you have other parts that aren’t midi, you would want to do the same thing to them as well. Midi will adjust to the tempo you set in your DAW, while staying in the same pitch.
Following the arrangements that are show here on SA is absolutely a good idea, and also listening to tracks by your favorite artists in the genre you want to make, and analyze how they’ve set their tracks up is also a good way to go about it. But there’s still a lot of room for experimentation here as well. And basically it all comes down to what you think sounds right.
I have been using Cubase 5, but I think I am also going to start messing with Ableton.
I also have FL studio, but I find that Cubase 5 is easy as hell and I don’t use FL much.
Most of my friends that produce use logic, but I dont have a MAC and I dont feel like spending the money for it considering I basically have a super computer PC.
Ableton seems to be the main focus here at Sonic Academy, so probably will try that soon.
I’ve been disecting songs and then trying to create some sort of plan for arrangements. Do other producers on here try to build a plan or a flow for songs or do most people just kind of follow arrangements and then build each part when they get to it. The reason I ask is that I have like a dozen songs I have written on the guitar that I have been looking to build into dance tracks. However because I already know the whole song in my head, I’m trying to create a plan of attack for moving these songs (mostly rock oriented) into dance tracks. Basically whats your process for making a track or remix?
Eccentrica The info you gave on the vocals was awesome. That was what I was looking to know. I have a question for you, since you use logic & ableton… What is the biggest difference between the 2 for you. When do you use ableton and when do you use Logic. What do you like about each one or not like. Do you ever rewire albeton through logic?
Really glad I could help out bud.
Ahh, well I’m clueless about Cubase unfortunately, but I guess it shouldn’t be more of a problem than to drop the midi in the arrangement window, and loading a VST to that channel.
Well, I have only been using those DAWs for a short period of time now, but till now I find Ableton much easier to start up new projects in, and it is definitely my go-to DAW. Since Logic is a bit more slow to move around, I feel that kind of blocks my creativity if you catch my drift. But on the other hand I love Logic’s sound engine, and the power of it. So I will be using it for the mixdowns, and use Ableton for the creative process, when I finally get some time to focus on producing. Also when I’m going to alter vocals, I always use Logic’s “Time and Pitch Machine”, which is giving some really good results, and is really easy to use.
I dislike Logic’s sample editor, and that sometimes stuff won’t snap to the grid. And that there’s no curved automation in Ableton is annoying me quite a bit.
But all in all, both of them are really great!