Remixing - I'm Overwhelmed

[Ten Flew South]

In a word, no. To quote the classic example - you can't remove the eggs from a cake once it's baked.

There are methods of trying to isolate it but you will never get the result you want, not even close, unless the track has identical left and right channels with the vocals panned dead centre.

[Delphine]

There was a debate on the subject here.

[caynick]

thanks for your help

so whats all this about Ableton being a great remix tool then? have i got it all wrong?

[Ten Flew South]

yes.

[jim_branning]

Originally Posted by caynick

thanks for your help

so whats all this about Ableton being a great remix tool then? have i got it all wrong?

no, it's just you have a different idea of what a remix is - remixing started back in tape days - you send the 24 track 2" to someone and they literaly just 'remix' it, it's as simple as that. Nowadays (prolly due to hiphop slang), people think a remix is just making a new arrangement for an accapella vocal which you're only going to get if the label authorises you to do said remix and delivers the vocals from the session in solo form on a data disk.

they mean that ableton is a good 'remix' tool cos you can put all the individual parts into ableton and experiment on the fly with the arrngement, that's all

[jac79dj]

Originally Posted by caynick

thanks for your help

so whats all this about Ableton being a great remix tool then? have i got it all wrong?

yes ableton is an amasing tool for remix/re edits i use it myself as my dj surface where all my tunes are created there and then by the seat of my pants lol {i might sort out a vid soon}

for me remixing whithin ableton starts with a beat either one that i have created myself or one i have ehem borrowed from my vast collection of music. if you want to go this route for a remix my own personal advice is this listen to every piece of music you can so you can understand the relationship between different elements of a track how the drums interact with the bass etc that will give an idea on stucture.

the next step for me is to get a loop but it has to be a good one you know the type that gets your head moving for me old funk and disco records are a good place to start. once you have a loop going over that you like decide the bits you like about it and filter out the rest using eq. at this point it usually sounds a little bare so its time to start adding my own stuff my own kicks bass and really start to flesh it out adding each element on a seperate track all of which looping over say 9 bars i want to be dancing around my studio by this point having a load of fun doing it.
when it comes to the end quite often i will drop the origional loop or re create it but just the parts i want.

if its during a set im doing this ill often drop an acapella over the top and ofcourse since its in ableton it will play in time sometimes it works sometimes not lol.

all of my tracks tend to start off with one of these sessions only to be fleshed out further within the studio to become full fledged tracks.

any way enough of my yapping lol would love to hear comments on my way of doing things and anyone elses way of doing things so i can get some tips
hope this gives a take on the origional question
jay

[lizard]

If you're into dance then you don't actually need accapellas (Though its a certain type of remix, not a traditional one)

Check the track "Speed Freak - Days of Anger" to see what I'm on about

[Quiggers]

why not try ccmixter or remix fight

http://www.remixfight.org/

http://ccmixter.org/media/view/media/home

[slimmandjango]

Sure, Live is pretty good for remixing, but you can do it in any piece of software really. The first step would be to try. The two sites Quiggers mentioned look pretty good. If I were you I'd start by remixing something from either of those, not to release commercially, but to practice. I never knew about them but will definitely be hanging around ccmixter.org from now on!

I've done a non-commercial remix where I recreated some of the parts myself because I had no tracks from the original. I also found some parts of the original song where there were just drums, and sampled those. Sometimes I used whole instrumental sections of the original song, layered over the beats I'd sampled and whatever other sounds I'd added. I was quite pleased with the results I came out with. It's not always possible to do it like that though - it was an instrumental song. It'd have been harder if there were vocals.