I want to remix, looking for some tips and tricks

Tips & Tricks
1

I have done very few and half arsed attempts of remixing songs before, but i now want to dig a bit deeper into it. I’m a bit green on the subject so i’m looking for some tips and tricks and was hoping that some of you have some for me?

My procedure so far:

I take the mastered song (with autoseek on) play it in a track, find the bpm and adjust the patterns to fit the song. So far so good, but is there a tool or some other handy way of slicing it up to fit the patterns? I solve this by rendering the song and save each pattern into a different file and that works good enough, but if there is an alternative method i’d like to know.

As i only have a mastered track to work with i find it very difficult to isolate sounds from each other, particularly the vocals. Do you know of any plugins or anything that is able to isolate vocals better than just EQing and filtering? It doesn’t necessarily have to do it in realtime though, so any app for doing a better than bad job on this would be interesting.

I checked out a free VST called “Knockout” or whatever, but it wasn’t even close to be doing what it was made for.

I imagine some software where you can mark all the parts with vocals in it and it will then analyze and find the difference between the vocals and the instrumental parts, being able to extract the sounds that is not present in the instrumental parts. Almost like the principal of subtracting an identical instrumental track from the one with vocals, but taken a bit further. I have a hunch that if something like that exists it wouldn’t come cheap though…

The particular track i’m experimenting with has a lot of vocals in it so this is really my main problem at the moment, but any remix related tips and tricks would be very welcomed.

2

I haven’t remixed stuff before, but I guess you want a vocal remover.

This is just the first thing that came up when I searched:

https://vocalremover.codeplex.com/

3

I always thought it was more fun to find the acapellas. It seems much hard to find these things these days…

(or is it?)

4

I really do want the vocals, not remove it, but i’d like to separate it from the music. I’ll give that plugin a try, hopefully it works and maybe i then can subtract the end result from the original to get the vocals…

I’d love to find the original vocal track, but i’m not shure if it even exists.

5

My best attempt so far was with Audacity, first remove the vocals and then use it as a noise profile and remove it from the original, but still way off a good result. I start to believe this has to be done manually by cutting and filtering small bits at the time…not going to happen in other words. :stuck_out_tongue:

I tried to phase it out in Renoise, but i guess the vocal removal alters the sound too much, so that doesn’t work.

7

Call it whatever you want, i’m not going to discuss what is a remix or not, i just want to practice my skills on a specific track with no resources but the mastered track. I’m doing it for practice and i’m not going to make money on it.

I just want to play around with a song i like from the 80’s. No one is going to sue me for this, that’s just paranoia.

8

Usually the way I “remix” is more of a cover. I take the midi and rebuild the entire track from that alone. The only other way I’ve had any luck remixing is when I actually get ahold of the artist and have them send me the isolated tracks.

Honestly, my best remix was yourSewer Drain Clog/ Big Bloomerand HeartBeatHero.
So go figure…

http://soundcloud.com/xylvx/drk-pth-remixthebellows-heartbeathero

Typically, it’s more like:

“https://soundcloud.com/xylvx/hey-its-an-eva/s-183Rn”

Which is just a matter of finding a good transcription to midi.

I remixed a local chiptune artist by going to his house and recording his gameboys one track at a time. Then reassembling it in renoise.

So, ya… That doesn’t help you much.

9

I think i’ll just have to experiment some and see what i can come up with. I could possibly find a MIDI file of it somewhere, but i honestly don’t like those very much, they all sound so lifeless and uninspiring.

I’ll post if i do some progress on this. So far i’ve just exeperimented a bit and now i’m about to see if i can ‘recreate’ the vocals with the free Alter Ego - Daisy, maybe i can use it to as a substitute in some parts or add a unison effect.

10

If you can’t find the acapella have you tried doing the phase inversion trick? Take the right signal, invert polarity and sum with left as mono. Think it was something like that anyways…

Sometimes can help if most of the vocals sit in the middle alone.

11

What’s the track?

12

If you can’t find the acapella have you tried doing the phase inversion trick? Take the right signal, invert polarity and sum with left as mono. Think it was something like that anyways…

Sometimes can help if most of the vocals sit in the middle alone.

As mentioned earlier i tried this by phasing out a track where i had removed vocals in Audacity, now i also tried to phase out the left with the right like you mentioned, which seemed to remove most of the vocals, the opposite of what i need, so then i thought if i tried to phase out this version with a mono version i would reverse this, but it doesn’t seem to do me any good neither way i’m afraid.

What’s the track?

Haha, i have waited for this question. The song is in fact Aha - Manhattan Skyline. Now i have no faith in me being able to produce a better version, but i just wanted to play around with it and see if i can come up with something interesting and maybe learn some tricks on the way. :smiley:

Now this is a very vocal driven track, so getting hold of the acapella track would make this so much easier.

The best way i have come up with so far is to use noise reduction with a noise profile from similar instrumental parts and apply it to small chunks of the song. It’s tedious waork and sounds far from perfect, but i might just do it anyway…

13

http://www.celemony.com/en/melodyne/what-is-melodyne

Enjoy.

14

Manhattan Skyline???

You ok dude? Everything’s cool at home, right?

I know my taste in music getsreal lame if I’m totally freaked out under stress, or depressed. I’ll come up with a second personality that finds a happy retreat listening Real Lifes “Send me an Angel” or 2 Unlimited. You gotta be careful because you’re treading whack waters brother.Like a sleeper agent with amnesia, one day you wake up and its Cat Steven’s all week… When you put the Technotronic and your friends know you’re not joking… That’s when you might have snapped upstairs and there’s no coming back. You won’t ever be the same man.

If I start cranking out ABBA & Tears for Fears covers, without a hint of lolz, just know I’m already dead, it’s just a husk. So, if you don’t work thru this phase just know I got your back…

If you fly over that cuckoo’s nest I ain’t got no hang-ups icing you, while you sleep

No, seriously though it’s a great song. It’s got a lot of genuine mood and pretty melody. It’s the rage that first time he says “You know! I don’t want to cry again” That grabs me, it’s shocking, because it’s not the A-ha people know. Whatever he’s talking about it, he meant it. I’m a huge Depeche Mode fan and I can’t help but wonder how they woulda put this track together if it were them who made it? Idk…

What I do know, is you’re gonna have to find a killer acapella, because without his voice the song is pointless. If you’re doing this track as some kinda therapy, maybe you should try your best at doing the vocals yourself, for yourself? Ya, they’ll suck, but you learn something about yourself, _or whatever._You can always take your vocals out later.

I remember I tried to do a cover of Blasphemous Rumors, spent nights on it… and without the vocals it didn’t matter what I did the magic wasn’t there. Lookin’ back, I shoulda manned up and did the vox myself.

I do wonder how a female would sound in Harket place though… You know any Stacy Q’s in Norway? I think if you get the midi you could totally transform the song while still staying true to it. You could really make this your own.

Check this cover Arsis did of Depeche Mode:

It’s an amazing mindfuck to hear my favorite Melodic Death-Metal band take a depressing little song from Depeche Mode, 20 years old then KNOCK it out the fuckin’ park!

I could see you totally making the track unique.

If you’re down I’ll go hunt down some midi and start putting together a few instrument tracks to contribute.

(PS. I had no fuckin’ clue A-ha was from Norway till a moment ago. So, maybe you’re just feeling patriotic.)

15

I surfed some dices places to find these… It’s not much, but might help you a bit.

http://ge.tt/4hx729Z2

Also, there’s at least 6 different versions they did of the track, and countless live versions. I swooped up what I could. The extended mix is rad, starts out with ‘YOU KNOW!’. The track with all the Russian is pretty low quality, but it my layer well. His vocals are nice and loud in the Oslo live version.

I found quite a bit of covers, and they all sucked, hard… Except the two or three I uploaded. Those are decent, I suppose.

I been listening to this track ALL morning. Saw some good vids on youtube too. This is my fav A-ha song now.

16

This was probably not my best idea. :smiley:

Maybe i’ll get there some day, but i think i’ll lay this to rest for a bit as there’s no point when it turns into shit anyway.