Why I personally hate the whole idea of remixing.

General Discussion
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Many young electronic music producers of today, especially young EDM producers, tend to make countless remixes of the latest tracks and trends, including other people’s tracks. I just deeply suspect that a really major part of that is to make it commercially satisfactory, especially in the clubs.

To me, this is totally on the verge of disgusting. As an artistic composer, I really, really detest and despise the whole idea of remixing; it completely spoils the originality, blemishes the creativity, and totally contaminates the artistic integrity of the original track in the first place.

I’ve learned from experience to never let anybody remix my composition pieces ever again, no matter how much they offer, beg, plead, reason, pressure, or even threaten. Many times, many users on Soundcloud have remixed some of my pieces, and unfortunately those remixes seemed to have gotten more popular than the original pieces I composed. It just feels stupid. It is depressing and I wish I’d never let them remix my tracks.

If any artist, group, DJ or even record company offered to remix the pieces I composed over the years, I would promptly turn down their offers because I personally DO NOT trust those people who want to make remixes of other people’s tracks. I personally hate remixing. It’s very distasteful to the artistic music composer, and I’m sorry to say that many young people today do not want to understand the meaning or enjoyment of being an artistic music composer at all. Furthermore, I personally am more influenced by composers like Pierre Schaeffer, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bernard Herrmann and Karlheinz Stockhausen instead of young modern producers like Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Eric Prydz and Nicky Romero.

To be honest, these days I feel very, very sorry for the deceased Avicii because he wasn’t the kind of boring commercial product I thought he was after all; he was instead a sensitive and fragile artistic soul who loved his fans but shunned the spotlight, and he was NOT made for the music business machine he found himself in. If I only understood his case much earlier before his unexpected death. My gratitude and respect goes to Avicii, a struggling artistic music-painter in the whole cut-throat music industry that finally did him in. It’s all the music industry’s fault.

This goes to prove that all too often many artistic musicians are being weighed down by the commercial of what sells and what’s popular, and to me that is highly demoralising and downright demonising against the artistic musician. A true, quintessential artist should have the freedom and liberty to just create music, or any medium of art, that they personally love, and hopefully someone’s going to like it.

That is all.

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everything is a remix

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I think remixing is fun, especially when you’re starting out and you get to see how the tracks are made by professionals. This is a great insight.

In days gone by it was encouraged to find artists to remix in order to raise your profile, but nowadays people are deterring anyone from doing remixes to get your name out there, as there is just so much noise now. Marshall Jefferson recently said don’t go down the remix road for this reason.

I also miss Avicii. I never liked or listened to his music, but he seemed like a good guy who wanted to make people happy. And he made a LOT of people happy.

As a commercial enterprise, yes they are cynical and vacuous…but for many people its fun to re-work a classic. Here are some remixes which are not commercially motivated, and for me are reasons remixes are cool. Where else would you get someone re-interpreting an art form?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lak9BZQsviQ

And this may just be the best remix of all time !!

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To me, this is totally on the verge of disgusting. As an artistic composer, I really, really detest and despise the whole idea of remixing; it completely spoils the originality, blemishes the creativity, and totally contaminates the artistic integrity of the original track in the first place.

Would you change your mind if someone offered to pay you for a remix of your work?

I’ve learned from experience to never let anybody remix my composition pieces ever again, no matter how much they offer, beg, plead, reason, pressure, or even threaten. Many times, many users on Soundcloud have remixed some of my pieces, and unfortunately those remixes seemed to have gotten more popular than the original pieces I composed. It just feels stupid. It is depressing and I wish I’d never let them remix my tracks.

Could you point me in the direction of those remixes of your work and also your original work so that I can compare and contrast?

I get what you mean though. People definitely do not want whole phrases of their musical pieces sampled and released under the name of another musician / group. Although I think sampling single drum hits or notes and making a new arrangement is fine most of the time. Depends if you feel more sorry for the studio engineers and people who got all the mics set up nicely, or intensively worked on creating the sound in the recording, or if you feel more sorry for the guy who only has a laptop and cant afford studio equipment or nice mics, amps, effects etc.

If someone has only sampled a series of single drumhits or single notes and rearranged them into something completely different from the original piece of music I dont really feel that bad for the guy who ‘hit the drum’ or ‘plucked the bass’…but I think sampling whole musical phrases is pretty lame in a way, unless the original guy got paid. Then again, there have been soe awesome tracks that sampled whole phrases.

Anyway this is a forum about sampler / sequencer software. Most people probably going to be enjoying sampling on a forum about a sampler / sequencer.

heres an old school rap song about sampling beef, in which they are saying that the songs they sample were already so unpopular no one would have heard them again unless they had been sampled.

A lot of people have said over the years. How small do you need samples to be, in terms of copyright law?

Is one second o.k?

I know you were talking about remixes and not sampling in general, but the topics are linked.

If the law says ‘no sampling whatsoever’, whole genres of music die out.

It also means that whoever did the first ever recording of sound could have a copyright claim on all music ever recorded because all sounds in the universe are made up of sine waves, and he/she owns the rights to the first ever recorded sine waves.

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I get what you mean, Lettuce.

Aye, most of you have different opinions about remixes, and I do respect that. Everybody’s allowed to have their own opinions of remixing.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t change my mind even for a dollar or a pound if someone offered to remix my material unless I get all the credit I deserve and unless the original piece gets respected, adulated and appreciated first before the remix does. But hey, everyone’s allowed to have their own opinion about remixes.

As an artistic music composer myself, I very rarely do remixes of other people’s works and they’re not really published. I prefer doing original works.

I get what you mean about the difference between sampling and remixing. Sampling is fun, yes I agree. But like you said, it’s better to only sample drum hits or single notes instead of long musical phrases just for the sake of copyright unless the original artist gets paid for their work to be sampled.

I do a lot of sampling myself, and I have to be careful about it in case I breach copyright enforcements unless I pay the original artist… Over the past ten years I’ve sampled many Hands-Up kick drums from songs by Klubbingman, Cascada, Basshunter, Scooter, and such like, and I’ve recently sampled big cannon snare drums and acoustic kick drums from Gary Numan, Belinda Carlisle, Bon Jovi, etc. My up-and-coming “autism awareness” power-rock album_Welcome to the Asperdome_ is heavily sample-based and uses a lot of drum hit samples and percussion loops from Gary Numan and Bon Jovi.

If someone wanted to remix my work in an artistic-sounding form, not a commercial-sounding one, I might consider it because it’ll be interesting to hear someone else’s remake who is also a person of great musical culture.

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I think remixing is fun, especially when you’re starting out and you get to see how the tracks are made by professionals. This is a great insight.

In days gone by it was encouraged to find artists to remix in order to raise your profile, but nowadays people are deterring anyone from doing remixes to get your name out there, as there is just so much noise now. Marshall Jefferson recently said don’t go down the remix road for this reason.

It would definitely be interesting to see how tracks are made by professionals, but provided that those professionals are artistic and love REALLY good music.

Aye, Marshall Jefferson HAS made a really great point. There’s too much noise out there now. Too many commercial-oriented schmalzy teen pop, electro house, bigroom house, and all that. That’s why I wouldn’t risk someone making a remix of my musical works.

But there’s good news… I hear that uplifting trance is making a comeback, and with the same JP8000 synthesizer to provide the supersaw sound. It’s the same uplifting trance you’d here in the mid to late 2000s.

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" Everything is a remix"
It is designed to reduce the activity of any representative of the creative sphere.

Restrictions that are created in the head of any musician, writer, producer … Should slow down its activities at a certain level, so that the present creators of these content will not cease to satisfy consumers of the first grade and the creators of the “Second Class” with their Original Ideas.

Such arguments as “All good music was created a long time ago, all good books have been written for a long time … and so on,” should put you in a dead end as the creator of a particular concert. Purely inhibition of brain functions contribute to leading you into despair, even after a small number of attempts to finish your work, because, in your head, it’s long since dispersed that Everything is a remix, right?

Therefore, for those who really think that everything is a remix: Continue in this spirit, you make the lives of some people even better!

Thank you.

Concerning your attitude to the trend of Remixes:

You are absolutely right from the point of view of creativity, but from the point of view of the market: Everybody does not care about everything. Musicians today work as creators of musical fast food. The age of the coolest song in the 21st century is not longer than 2 months, after that you will get sick of it and you automatically open the Internet in the search for “The Next Hit”.

The question is, what do you want from the music industry? How do these musical hypers on the mainstream affect the quality of your life, as a musician-producer?

Disease of the 21st century

The disease in the fact that people began to worry about the forms of something rather than its contents. A simple listener does not really give a fxxk where and how you wrote your music, even if you did it on an ordinary calculator, even if you mastered it in a microwave and let it down through the toilet to the stores- Listeners do not care. It does not make their lives worst or even better …

I advise you not to bother about these issues. I understand that they are irritable, and at times unfair, but you have to take good care of what you like and do what you like.

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this is what i like about this forums jjj you made a single post an everyone starts assuming a whole bunch of ideas right the way

the only thing i tried to tell with such argument in the post

" Everything is a remix"

was a resume itself of the whole idea expressed in the 1st min or so in the video

remix and what it means (a creative act on itself)

remix - to combine or edit existing material to produce something new

why on earth would you mention that

quote

for those who really think that everything is a remix: Continue in this spirit, you make the lives of some people even better!

come on dude

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@Type A
It was not directed specifically to you. I’m just in the last recently began to see this excuse everywhere “Everything is a remix.” Almost at every forum, in every discussion … As if the people have a deficit of ideas or something …
Even video bloggers began to justify their plagiarism with the same expression “Everything is a remix” .Plagiarism is Plagiarism. I do not consider it expedient to sort plagiarises under the slogan Remix.
I know such artists that they make a remix under the template in less than an hour, just to stick their name to a “hit” in time and to promote their social pages. At the same time you can not blame them , Unfortunately/ it still works /
90 % of the Big Room artists made their career by doing this
50 % of Trance artist -
30 % of Techno artists-
15 % of House artists -
and so on …

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this is a really bad opinion

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I hate remixes so much that I remix remixes back into original songs.

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demix the planet

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I dont mind remixes if they came from well written original music and are done well.

I agree with MedievalMusic. There is too much fast food, disposable, plasticky music written to a ‘genre formula’ .

Shit is lacklustre son. Shit is wack with noob emcees all about saying nothing these days. No imagination.

No content for the contemplation.

Aye, let me say this one-time.

Its like art, like painting. Mixed media is better.

I’m saying if you did a painting that started with a good creative idea that used oils, sculptural elements and digital elements, maybe even some animation somehow…some sound…a mix of traditional and modern, it will be better than the generic ‘made in adobe illustrator with shape tools and stock color palette’ kind of ‘advertising art’ that you see smug people praising all the time these days.

Yes, use adobe illustrator but with elements from photographs, oil paintings etc. ‘sampled into the piece’.

Thats why ‘synth only’ can be pretty shit in music too.

All those hihats…Its better with a mix of ‘synth sounds’ and ‘sample based sounds’, take inspiration from someones tune maybe ‘tribute’ or ‘nod to’ rather than directly remix. Its just my opinion.

In particular, I really feel that good drums needs to have some element of sampling from ‘breaks’, which came from recording a real drummer in them.

Probably a lot of people would disagree but ‘only drum machines’ or ‘only synth drum sounds’ sounds a bit dry.

Same with autotune on vocals, shit sounding too polished…personally I prefer talkbox.

Aye.

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I like when Richard D. James remixes that Aphex Twin.

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…or when Aphex Twin makes 26 mixes for cash :wink:

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Personally I quite enjoyed this remix although some would say its a bit commercial.

Some of the singing parts are a bit cheesey but its a good effort to turn this rock song into dubstep, quite interesting in places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUGzY-ihqWc

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(distressed and upset from strain and stress) Come on, you all! I:( Let’s just put an end to this discussion right now. Some of us artistic and autistic composers are starting to get headaches, migraines and queasy stomachs arguing or debating about the whole remix nonsense.

What I said in the beginning of this discussion is my personal opinion because I’m actually not a dance music artist, club DJ, or a plain EDM producer, and I do not make Bigroom House, Electro House, or other bloomin’ awful commercial dance genres like that. I’m a composer, making all kinds of good and creative electronic music.

So let’s just put an end to this debate before somebody gets a mental breakdown from exhaustion.Let’s just call it quits and move on.

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rock musicians have been playing the same song for almost 100 years, with slight changes :badteeth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-bar_blues

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I don’t get what the real problem is. Other than maybe personal affectivities, like envy for someone prodcing a work that seems better than the own, or disguise for being connected with music that is thought of as inferior to the own threshold of quality expectations.

I really like the idea of remixing. We all know that creativity is not always running full throttle, and also is in potency not really evenly distributed among people - picking up other’s ideas might be just the right incentive to developing the own skill to its prospering in a more effective way. That might not always be reached by trying to do everything radically out of what is percieved as “one’s own creativity”. I believe that is more of an illusion than a proper trait anyways. Keep in mind that our creativity is like 99% if not even more fed by the stimuli received in the world throughout your lifetime, thus already stemming from other people’s creativity and building up on it from the root on. Guided by own taste, and performed with your own creative skills that are subject to development whenever used. I mean music is all about developing taste, why not try to impose one’s own taste onto other people’s ideas once in a while, it seems like a very proper way to train the capabilities.

Radically staying away from remixes might be a choice one can make to oneself, though I really think this rejection can at times impair artistic development instead of bringing benefit to it. Other than maybe at what is considered “master level”, where further build up is only limited by own invention and not so much any more from external input…still then it seems logical to me that rather than rejecting the external input, maybe the skill of still recognising it in some way or another that doesn’t taint the own vision might be a more fertile state of mind. And the independence from other people’s ideas is only because the own skill has already grown above the skill of all relevant other producers, thus the inspiration store is already saturated and would need no more input to grow on.

Especially beginners would deprive themselves of very good oportunities to try themselves on something they don’t have to build up from the very start, in a rather frustrating process of isolation. If your lvl is fair enough, think of it as a good deed of giving other people fair opportunities to grow on when you open up yourself for remixes. You still have a choice of how to position yourself in terms of public relations and commercial aspects. I’d also say a crap remix is good promotion of one’s own work, a number of people will always want to hear the original, who might have not known about your music before. And even if the remix is much better (which is often the case, as the remixer if skilled can focus on comensating shortcomings of the original, without having to spend all the time with developing the core ideas), some people will recognise your original track a good base for a good tune. Also some of those, who might not have known your tune or even yourself as an artist otherwise.

Oh and for the envy, or the pain of having to see one’s own ideas being turned into dirt, or other ego related feelings of disaster, there’s still beer, or similar remedies to ease the pain…make the shit remixer buy your box of beer for his fault, so he can make good for all the pain :clownstep:

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