“Remix culture” / Edits / Mashups!

Mashups are the best place to start, in order to get your feet wet, before you move on to full on remixes.

If you don’t already own it, you will want to purchase Mixed in Key (Warning: They have always-online DRM – I don’t like recommending them, but they really are that much better than the rest). If you don’t already own a DAW, you may also want to consider picking up a copy of Mashup from the same company… it’s basic, but it’s a cheap ticket into the party.

Run tracks through Mixed in Key – not the tracks you DJ with, but the “regular” music you are interested in trying to Mashup (For example, the Bee-Gees and, say, Pink Floyd, a’la Wax Audio). You are looking for tracks that have the same key, those are compatible for a mashup.

Then, load the tracks up into your DAW, and start to slice the tracks up. I personally like to break them up by their function, e.g. Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, etc. (This is also how my self-made DJ software operates, I like to do live mashups.)

From there, start putting parts together that sound good between the two tracks. You’ll most likely be spending most of your time fitting vocals from one track with instrumental bits from the other, since vocals clash in a mashup just like they do when DJing. Slap an EQ on the tracks, a 3 band should do fine, and use that to shape how much of each song you are mixing in at any given time.

You can certainly also make a track mostly from scratch using acapellas you’ve picked up, or you can try to isolate the vocals yourself.

If you are going to isolate them yourself, depending on the method you use, your results WILL vary. If you can find the instrumental version of the same track, that will give you the best results. There are several videos on YouTube that treat vocal isolation in depth, spend some time getting good at it.

That said, I find that if your remix gets busy, your listeners aren’t going to be noticing how imperfect your vocal rip is. This will vary from genre to genre – I do Ghetto Funk remixes, and honestly, sometimes I just cut the bass and that’s all I bother with, but that won’t work for all styles.

This was a disjointed post, but I hope it at least gives you some rough idea what to be looking for.

Basically, to use Mixed in Key to detect the Key, you must always be connected to the internet. In order to protect their software from piracy, they only put the key detection code on their own servers. Some people, myself included, take some exception to onerous DRM – if their servers ever go down, or if they go out of business, then we will no longer be able to use the software we purchased. I don’t care for that.

Unfortunately, they are the best thing goin’ in terms of accuracy, and their prices ARE pretty fair.

With a remix, you end up re-inventing a LOT more of the music yourself. When I do a mashup, it’s similar to how I DJ where I’m just mixing two tracks together in a way that works. When I’m remixing, I am creating new drumbeats, new basslines, completely restructuring the song, changing its genre, etc. A LOT more work. It is frequently suggested to start with mashups because you can get the feel for how the music fits together before you’re trying to make your own parts. You can do it otherwise, but it will be harder.

Glad I can help!