Remixing - Six Tips You Won't Want to Miss

1. Envision the finished product before you start. Make sure you have an idea, even a general one, of how the overall mood will play out in your version. You might work better with an open-ended project that could branch off into many surprising ways, but a clear vision of the desired atmosphere is the key starting point. Was the original slow, somber and moody? Think about how you can put your own unique twist on that. Perhaps you want to completely change the mood. Speed up the tempo, throw in some energizing synths, unique percussion, polyrhythms, etc. Dominate the vibes. With attention to the bigger picture, your remix will take a shape of its own and each section will seamlessly blend into the next, leaving you with a cohesive final product.

2. Screw the original version. That’s right, forget all about it. By disassociating with the sound of the original song you let your creativity take control and steer the direction rather than subconsciously mimicking the aspects of the original. Though on the surface it may seem to be important to have an understanding of what you might want to make different, the truth is that getting that “different” sound you are looking for means letting the vibes do the work. You are continuously in the process of perfecting your signature sound, whether you are aware of it or not. Let that subconscious instinct be the drive for your remix, not the desire to be different.

3. Use phase cancellation to isolate vocals. If you can track down a good quality instrumental version of the song you are remixing, you can use it to extract the vocals from the original song by inverting the phase on the instrumental track. (If you are not sure how to do this, please read my article that explains this process in detail: “How to Extract Vocal Samples Using Phase Cancellation”).

4. Make room for your own drums. If you are using a WAV or mp3 of the full original song rather than separate stems (i.e. isolated vocal tracks, drums, bass, synths, etc.) sidechain the original song’s audio track to your kick bus. You can even route both your kick and snare to the same bus if you should so choose, so as to allow your drums to replace the original beat. You may run into some issues depending on the complexity of either your drums or the ones from the original song so use your ears and if what you are doing isn’t working, don’t do it. It isn’t fool proof, but it can make life a heck of a lot easier when done right. At more complex breaks where you want the instruments to shine through over your sick drum fill, simply bypass the compressor you are using to sidechain.

5. Slice up the original. Clip the beginnings of each beat on the original WAV or mp3 to make room for your own drums. This works effectively in conjunction with the aforementioned sidechaining method. It isn’t easy working with a single block of audio, and to make your touch really stand out you need to “take over” the song. The best place to start is by implementing your own drum samples. By splitting the original song on all of the main downbeats and clipping off a few milliseconds immediately following, you will allow your drum samples to snap through the mix, as if they were the original drums. It is an illusion but an effective one!

6. Change the chord structure. Pay attention to the melody line of the vocals and think of ways in which you can tear out the “foundation” of chords underneath and replace them with ones of your own. Familiarize yourself with the circle of fifths and as much music theory as you possibly can. This will allow you to have a better understanding of what is going on in the original, and what will work (and won’t) in your remix. Most importantly, use your ears! If a minor chord sounds boring, make it a minor 7^th and see if that fares you any better. Most likely it will. Keep things fresh, interesting and unpredictable.

How to Extract Vocal Samples Using Phase Cancellation

For all of you remixers out there, it can be a daunting task to find quality a cappella tracks for the songs you are planning to remix, especially if the original songs are from lesser-known artists. Thankfully, there is a way to get those sought-after vocal stems yourself without having to browse the millions of websites claiming to have them but clearly do not. If you are able to track down a master-quality instrumental, on the other hand (which is usually much easier to do), you will be in good shape. You may be wondering “how the hell is an instrumental going to help me in the vocal sample department” and I don’t blame you if you are new to this in any degree, but as you will soon see, it is not only possible but relatively easy. Now, let’s get on with it, shall we?

The first thing you want to do is to drag both the original song and the instrumental version into your session. Bring the beginning of each song right up to the 0:00 marker so that they would both start at precisely the same time. The key is to get the songs to line up so that the waveforms match, and the easiest way of doing that is by ensuring the unison of their start point, i.e. dragging them both right up against the 0:00 point all the way on the left of your screen.

You may notice that even with this seemingly fool-proof measure, the waveforms might in fact still be slightly off as far as lining up correctly goes. If this is the case, you will need to pick a track and nudge it into alignment with the other. You may have to zoom in quite a bit to ensure that all of the peaks are lining up as close as they possibly can. Use the cursor as a guide.

The next step is where the magic happens. Once you have the waveforms lined up, you will need to invert your instrumental track. Depending on how your DAW is organized, you should likely be able to locate this function in an options menu, audio effects menu or even as a pop-up option when right-clicking. As a Pro Tools user, I know that I can get to the invert function by going to the Audio Suite drop menu and looking in the “Other” sub menu. I would imagine that Logic, Cubase, FL Studio and other such DAWs use similar wording as to the names of menus in which the invert function can be found, but if you are having trouble finding it, a simple Google search should yield the answer in a matter of seconds.

When you find the invert function, apply it to your instrumental track. You may not notice any difference in appearance and when you solo it back it will sound exactly the same, but the science behind “inverting” the audio lies in the fact that the actual waveforms themselves have been flipped so that the troughs (dips) and crests (rises) are in the opposite position that they were before.

As some of you recall in my “The Correct Way to Choose Drum and Percussion Samples” article, I made mention of phase cancellation and the hassles one could run into when trying to layer samples. The way in which the troughs and crests of two different sounds line up dictates whether or not the combined sound will be more or less powerful in amplitude. For example, a kick drum sample starting with a crest will lose its snap and punch when layered with a kick that begins with a trough in its waveform. They essentially “cancel” each other out, resulting in the complete opposite effect you were intending to get with the additional layer.

On the contrary, this phenomenon works wonders for isolating vocal stems! The inverted instrumental track, with its opposing crests and troughs, will “cancel out” the majority, if not all of, the instruments in the original song, leaving you with a crisp, clean vocal stem with minimal background noise. Since the only variable between the original song and the instrumental is the vocals, the vocal frequency waves will be the only waves left over after the instruments cancel each other out.

A slight bit of work might still need to be done at this point, however. You may notice that some of the instrument noise slipped through the inversion cancellation process leaving you with some strange, muffled sounds in the background or in the parts that lack vocals in the original song. This noise can be deleted pretty easily via noise gates and proper EQing. Start off with a noise gate and set your threshold as wide as you can so that you hear no difference initially. Then slowly start decreasing it and you will begin to hear the noise become less and less. Tread carefully with gating, however, as you wouldn’t want to jeopardize the quality and nuances of the vocal lines like breathiness and softer phrasings which might accidentally get cut out with too much gating. Use an EQ to gently high and/or low pass the isolated vocal track to get rid of additional noise that your noise gate was not able to take care of properly. Again, pay special attention to the nature in which the filters might interact with the vocals themselves. These tools should be used very sparingly so as to leave the main vocals intact with all of their power and clarity. More chances than none, a little bit of leftover noise is hardly noticeable in the mix anyway, especially in a heavy dubstep track with a full range of pumped frequencies.

The Correct Way to Choose Drum and Percussion Samples

One of the key elements involved in the creation of a memorable, catchy, and heavy dubstep track is the power of your drums and percussion. The beat is what drives the song, gets the crowd jumping, and carries the context of your drops and buildups. It is critical to spend extra time perfecting your beats as to ensure a meaningful, successful recording. It is just as important that you focus on choosing the right samples for your beats. After all, a beat is precisely the sum of its parts and it pays to bear this in mind when crafting your own.

It is easy to fall into the trap of dragging any old snare or kick sample out of your Vengeance pack, but don’t allow that habit to befall you. As killer as some of those sounds might initially seem as you scroll through the list while trialing a few here and there, it is important to remember that you are hearing them out of context. The key to choosing the right sample lies in how it will mesh with the rest of the music. For instance, a bass-heavy track with minimal leads or high-end might call for a kick with a little more snap to it, so as to juxtapose the sub frequencies of the bass with just the right amount of attack. Use your ears and don’t be afraid to completely scrap a sound for a better version if you find that what you have isn’t working. Often, you might think a particular sample has all the components you need (a kick with heavy ‘thump’ and a snappy attack, say) while trialing it in your browser window, only to find that it falls short of what you had expected it would accomplish in the context of the mix. Now, you could do one of two things at this point: a.) Spend countless hours toiling with EQ and compression settings in order to make that kick sound halfway decent, or b.) Find a better sample.

The key to great sounding drums and percussion mostly pertains to the quality of the sample. Of course, every sample will need some degree of doctoring (whether it be EQ, compression, reverb, etc.) but it is important to consider the initial quality of the dry sample before you delve into perfecting it. You will save yourself many hours of work, not to mention frustration, in the long run.

A good deal of dubstep producers are led to believe that it is necessary to layer your kicks and snares in order to achieve that sought-after heaviness but I am here to tell you that this practice it is not necessarily do-or-die. I will explain the ins and outs of layering in a future article and will keep this post mainly about picking the best drum samples you can, whether you choose to layer them or not. Layering absolutely works, and can be an excellent technique but it isn’t the only correct way, nor is it a fool-proof method for getting great sounds. There are a number of pitfalls that could occur during the layering process such as phase cancellation, clipping due to unnecessary frequencies if you are not careful with your EQ and compression settings, and an overall unorganized mix. Sure, with the right amount of skill you can certainly navigate yourself around these traps but for the novice producer, and in general, it is much more fruitful to find one really great sample and shape it to perfection.

The same rules apply to snares, hi hats, cymbals, rides, toms, ethnic percussion and so forth. Take the extra time to sculpt a sound that will truly be worthwhile in your mix, and if you are using a sample library, make sure you bear in mind how you want the song to sound before you start laying down tracks. This applies not only to drums and percussion but to the rest of your instruments as well. A good jumping off point comes when you can visualize your mix in your head, taking into consideration your key frequency points. When you do this, you will have a better idea of what samples to choose from your sound bank since you know roughly what range of frequency you need to fill. Obviously the entire frequency spectrum will be utilized in some respect, but even a very rough visualization of your spectral palette will come in handy down the line.

For dubstep, you already know going in that your track will consist of heavy sub frequencies pumped between 16-50Hz respectively as far as your bass is concerned, so you are now left with the knowledge that you will need some tracks that feature a higher timbre so as to complement the lows of your bass. This should be common sense, but one would be surprised at how easy it is to neglect a frequency range when one mixes under false assumptions. For example, a well-produced kick drum is low-frequency dominated but the snappiness comes from the high end of the spectrum (usually a high-shelf boost around 2kHz or a very subtle hi hat sample with appropriate filtering) while the punchiness prevails at between 2-5kHz (which would be boosted about 2dB or so on your second or “high” kick sample, if you are going the layering route).

Oftentimes some tribal and ethnic percussion sounds work great to complement the pulse of the kick, and a syncopated rhythm works wonders in achieving a driving groove on a dubstep track. Experiment with some different rhythms and throw in some unexpected percussion sounds to spice things up. You might even find that those seemingly random analog blips and down-sampled one-hits that are packed into some sample libraries can provide some really exciting and dynamic flavor that you otherwise might never have dreamed of. It pays to experiment. Be cautious, however, as what might at first sound unique could later prove to be more along the lines of inconsistent or distracting. This is why it is important, as I mentioned in my first article “The Dubstep Mindset,” to take a few extra days to let your track sink in. Even going back to listen the next morning after a night of heavy work sometimes proves quite a puzzling and often annoying instance in which you are left wondering what the hell you were just listening to, and how you could have thought it was acceptable at the time. “It sounded fucking sick the other night, what the hell happened?” You don’t know how many times I’ve heard myself uttering that phrase. Trust me. Take a day or two to let your “final” product sink in before you upload.

Finding the right samples takes time, but what doesn’t when it comes to making a great track? Never rush the trialing process. Try a million different kicks if you have to. Do it until you get the right one. But don’t drive yourself crazy because as soon as you take the fun out of the creation process, the negative vibes begin to manifest into them noticeable inconsistencies within the music itself. It can be extremely tough to find that middle ground but once you are in the zone, take advantage of it and take note of the feeling. Incorporate that vibe into your workflow and the choosing process becomes much easier, as does the entire production session.

The "Bass-ics" of Sub Bass - How to Create Great Sub Bass for your Tracks

Having an understanding of frequency ranges pays off big time no matter what style of music you are producing. In a nutshell, frequency range is what makes your tracks hold their unique position in the mix. When EQed properly, frequency is what helps lead vocals and instruments stand out as they are meant to, keeps the low and high ends of all sounds from contributing unnecessary noise, and ensures an overall balanced mix. In respect to frequencies, the mixing stage could just as appropriately be called the “balancing” stage as the idea behind EQing frequencies to blend amongst themselves is essentially this — a balancing act. Today we will be starting things off with the most iconic frequency range of all when it comes to dubstep — sub bass.

Sub bass is, in short, it is what lends the deep, thundering quality to dubstep sounds — the kinds that make people shudder in awe while their subwoofers are being destroyed. Think mono sine waves pitched down (-1 or -2 octaves) almost reminiscent of those oldschool hearing tests they made you raise your hand for in the school nurse’s office — but much more intense. You can barely hear them but you know they are there. You feel it. In dubstep, sub bass is meant to be felt.

Sub bass frequencies lie between 16-60Hz. When applying sub bass, make sure to cut out all frequencies below 16Hz using a high-pass filter. This will rid your track of unnecessary low-end noise. Sub bass is meant to be deep, obviously, but anything below 16Hz will only make your mix more cluttered. The effect of your sub bass can be felt most powerfully with a clean mix that utilizes the proper frequency ranges. (As a rule of thumb, it is important to cut these extreme low-end frequencies with just about all of your tracks as to free up room for your bass and kick tracks and eliminate noise.)

A sub bass can be added as an individual track that follows all of your bass and lead melody lines, or as a supplemental component within a synth patch itself. If you are using Native Instruments’ Massive for one of your bass patches for example, try setting an unused oscillator to a sine wave with the intensity brought all the way down with the bend mode set to Spectrum. Pitch the oscillator down an octave (-12 steps). You will get a full-bodied sine wave that will mimic whatever the bass is doing with the other oscillator(s).

Depending on the manner of filtering that your patches are routed through, it might be in your best interest to make a duplicate of your bass track and make the sub on this separate track rather than in the main bass patch itself. By duplicating the track, you will have created an identical version of your sound. Now, make that duplicate act as the sub bass. What you want to do is turn off all oscillators, effects and inserts except for oscillator one, which you can then set to the aforementioned sub bass parameters. (Spectrum bend mode, intensity all the way down, wavetable set to sine) If you handled this correctly you should be left with a sub bass that mimics exactly what your main bass line is doing. Tweak and fine-tune if necessary, and make sure to lower the volume of the sub bass so as to ensure that it acts as a “supplement” rather than a mask over top of your main bassline.

Every sound you create must be treated subjectively, and therefore may likely require some different methods of tweaking in order to get a sub bass that will benefit your sound in the best way possible. Use your ears and experiment. For example, if your main patch includes a modulated band reject filter sweep, go to your sub bass duplicate track and try experimenting with the filter setting to see if you can come up with something even more exciting than a sub bass sans filter.

On the contrary, I personally find most of my own projects benefit from the simplicity of a sub bass track that features nearly no modulation whatsoever in regards to waveform or effects/filters. The simple power of a Spectrum sine (with a possible low pass filter if necessary) played in conjunction with the melody of the bassline is exactly what is called for. Anything more would result in a lack of signal power, that is to say, a sub bass that falls short of doing what it is meant to — put the final, giant nail in the coffin of your low-end.

Use sub bass for all of your bass sounds and even try using it on lead or melody instruments to see how it affects their potency. A great example of sub bass used in conjunction with a lead synth can be heard in Skrillex & Damian Marley’s “Make It Bun Dem,” specifically between 0:40-1:08 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR_u9rvFKzE). Notice how the pulsing of the lead can be “felt” through your sub. This is the effect of a carefully-sculpted sub bass. I know firsthand that this particular sound uses a direct sub bass within the patch itself as I had the pleasure to remix this song for my solo project 11:11 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeI4F78D1K0). The pulsation of the sub frequencies really give this lead a jarring, stabbing force and presence that an otherwise untreated lead would not.

Dubstep would not be dubstep without sub bass. It is one of the most simple yet profound aspects of the entire genre, and that of pretty much any subgenre of modern day edm. No matter how interesting and powerful your new Massive patch might be, make sure to take the extra time to consider the aspect of sub bass and how it relates to your sound. If it is lacking, duplicate that baby and make a separate sub! I would personally suggest to make it a habit of creating a separate track that you will dedicate to any and all sub basses in every one of your songs, but that is ultimately up to you. The key is making sure it is present, one way or another.

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, there it is, sub bass, plain-and-simple! The power of the sub is in your hands now. Use it wisely. Or unwisely. Whatever sounds cooler…

The Dubstep Mindset

When it comes to dubstep, a very particular frame of mind is required in order to let your creative juices flow in the most efficient and fruitful way possible. By fruitful, I mean take a handful of fruit, throw it into a blender amidst a grotesque heap of bile, raw sewage and unleaded rocked fuel and slam your fist onto the “PLAY” button. Then drink it straight. This is the optimal way in which the creation of dubstep should be approached. Before you jump to conclusions, (let the voluptuous blonde in the front row with the fishnets take care of any and all jumping), it is best to understand that this article pertains to the overall “bigger picture” of taking on a dubstep production session. It is about the way you need to think in order to get the results you want.

Dubstep, as you are well aware, consists of some of the most bizarre, boundary-pushing sounds that have ever been squeezed, compressed, mangled and puked out of the belly of computer-generated waveforms. It pays to remind yourself of this every once in a while, but preferably upon the beginning of each recording session. Remind yourself of how fucked-up dubstep can be. Remind yourself of how you want people to shit bricks, actual bricks, when they hear your next banger — bricks with which you will build your tower to the top of the Beatport charts. Yea, dubstep is all about the mental images. It keeps the fun alive, and is one of the quickest ways to get the aforementioned juices flowing.

Picture the blonde with the big tits hearing your new song for the first time. Everyone has a quintessential blonde with big tits chilling somewhere in the velvet recesses of their minds. She might not be blonde at all. She might not even have big tits, if you aren’t into big tits, in which case you should quit life. But in all seriousness, think of someone you want to show your skills off to. I will be the first to tell you that doing anything for the sole purpose of impressing someone is as toolish as it is foolish, but when it comes to being productive in a recording session, it pays off, in some really weird but helpful way. She’s an imaginary blonde, but she exists in just the right amount in order to get you motivated when it matters most, i.e. when you get stuck in a creative rut in the middle of a recording session. Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think of hot girls dancing to your music. It works wonders.

Don’t worry about everyone else. Don’t dwell on whether or not a rival producer is “better” than you. What is “better” anyway? I’ll tell it to you straight — as straight as the shitshake your mind brewed up before you started your session: “better” is bullshit. It is subjective and a waste of time and energy to agonize over someone else’s skill. Rather, you should commend them for making some dope music and learn all you can from it, even if that means listening to it thousands of times on repeat until you figure out what waveform in Massive they used in order to get that gut-wrenching growl that lasts for two seconds during the first drop. You get what you put out. Give and you shall receive. Enjoy great music for what it is and never be jealous. This is incredibly important, and if you haven’t learned so by now, you will. By taking legitimate enjoyment in listening to your competition, you will be seriously surprised at how drastically your own product will improve. Take my word for it.

Time is no object. Life isn’t a race to the finish, and neither is the road to fame or notoriety. Take pride in what you do and don’t beat yourself up over sub-par production quality when you are racing against the clock to submit your remix into the contest before the deadline. Fuck it, just finish the song and have fun while doing so. It is obvious that you should give yourself enough time to get the mix as close to perfect as you can manage, but don’t drive yourself crazy. The key is to maintain a positive attitude from ‘A’ to the very last second of ‘Z.’ And for the record, keep the positivity flowing all the time, whether you are recording music or not.

On the contrary to busting your ass amidst time constraints (time is an illusion, just so you know), originals that don’t require a specific deadline must be handled with a more laid-back approach, but not too laid-back. For instance, take the extra time to mentally soak in your final product before uploading it to your Soundcloud page. Don’t jump the gun. You will be surprised at how many little things will nag you within the coming days after you have your song online and have heard it a number of times since its completion. (This never goes away, no matter how good of a producer you are!) Take an extra day, or two if you really have the patience, to simply listen to the music objectively. Let the music do the talking (but never the Modern Talking! Yea, yea, yea…). You will hear anything that needs fixing. It will jump out at you on its own so there is no need to nit-pick your work to death.

It is much too easy to go insane by selling your product short when, to potential fans, the song kicks just as much ass as it would even if you did spend another three weeks toiling over mixing. Just get shit done! I repeat: Get. Shit. Done. This is so important I cannot stress it enough. Don’t obsess over one track while a month passes you by, or worse: two months. I myself find this to be my most difficult obstacle. I’m the king of hating my own music. I am my worst critic, and, though it is extremely wise to be critical of your work and to pay attention to detail, it does you no good whatsoever in the long-run to obsess. Obsessing with a mind full of frustration is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. Have fun fucking sounds up. That is the key, and that is what people love most about dubstep.

Never lose sight about what you want to accomplish. When you are stuck at work thinking about how you will spend the rest of the night recording a new song, ask yourself what it is you want the song to do. You already know the answer. You want it to make people shit bricks, and you want hot girls to jiggle their tits to it. Think about this on the drive home. Delve into the fantasy, whatever it may be. Make music magic and your music will be magic. It’s all about the mindset, and if you have the right kind, the “dubstep mind” that consists of a heavy dose of both dedication and exuberance you will produce some really fantastic music.

There is actually a hidden filter in Massive, and it is the secret to making the most incredible dubstep known to mankind. It is called Positivity. Route everything through this.