How do you remix a song?

[LFADAM]

I was wondering...how do you like remix a song? Like what program would you use? Ive seen where like people mix 2 songs together, etc. How do you do that?

[Erik]

Basically, you usually need to start by separating the vocals from the instrumental first - or obtain versions of each respectively and begin from there. If you dan't have that, you can't really make a great remix.

I like AcidPro and CoolEdit, but do a lot of my stuff right on the turntables becuase hip-hop and reggae usually comes out in single LP's and 45's with instrumentals with which to work.

What exactly are you trying to do? Perhaps I can help.

Erik
www.juniorhawk.com

[LFADAM]

well in one song Im thinking of, Im gonna shorten it and take out chunks leading to make transitions between the sections.

The song is darude-sandstorm, the original mix. (Before anybody says anything, I mostly like rock, punk, metal etc, but this song appeals to me but its 7 minutes long with dull sections in parts.)

[Tyler T]

smlparksguy133, normally, when a song is "remixed" it is done by the same studio that tracked it, ar in accordance with the same studio that tracked it. This means that each piece of the song is on it's own track and you can add and subtract things and play with the volume and panning and effects and what not. It would be rather difficult to remix a song that is mixed down to it's final version. Beacuse vocals are almost always panned dead center, you can use a little tool called a "center channel extractor" to erase the voice from the instruments, but beware it doesn't make it go entirely away and it leaves the rest of the instruments sounding dull and distorted. In order to do a good job, you need access to all the seperate tracks that make up a song.

[shagprodigy]

yay ANOTHER sandstorm remix. this is like the most played club song there is haha

[Erik]

hmm never heard of them...

[LFADAM]

shagprodigy, haha yea.

Tyler T, In this case there is no lyrics, does that make a difference? And I know its possible, I guess I should ask my sister's friend. He mixed like 5 songs with vocals into each other. It was pretty sweet.

[Tyler T]

smlparksguy133, I didn't say it's not possible. It's just way easier with all the separate tracks. It really depends on what you want to do. If you just want to shorten the song in places and and mix in another song with some cross fades and what not, then sure, you can do that no problem. But if youre thinking of actually playing with dynamics of the song, then you can't really do that with a song that's already mixed and mastered.

BTW, I do basically everything right now with Adobe Audition 1.5 (Cool Edit Pro).

[LFADAM]

Tyler T, ok thanks, so I have to buy some software? I cant just use like vid. editing or windowsmedia etc.?

[Tyler T]

smlparksguy133, youre going to need some multi-track software so that you can line up all the songs that you want to mix together and edit them by cutting out whatevet pieces you want/dont wan't. Why don't you tell us exactly what you want to do so that we can have a better idea of how to help you. And no, you can't edit music with WMP and I would imagine that the audio editing capabilities of whatever video editing software you have is fairly lacking. And probably not multitrack capabale.

[Erik]

No you need something that will let you get in and analyze levels, and frequencies and reduce them as required. There is no magic program for stripping the vocals out of a song. If there was I would be all over many many Nelly songs.

[pooser]

i use to have a free trial of pro tools that was pretty good. you might want to start there.