The Remix Business: Part 2 : July 2009
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November 2009
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| The Remix Business: Part 2Article Preview :: Getting CreativePublished in SOS July 2009 Music Business We continue our insider’s guide to remixing with some practical tips on the creative decisions that will underpin your remix.
Last month, I looked at the world of the remixer from a ‘business’ point of view, so now I want to explore the creative decisions that underpin a remix. I’ll avoid being too genre-specific, but where decisions might vary according to the genre, I’ll try to differentiate between them. Remix With What? Possibly the greatest influencing factor in deciding which way to progress with a remix is the actual ‘parts’ given to you by the record label, and by far the greatest number of remixes are based purely on using the vocals from the original track. This seems to be pretty much standard practice these days, and probably for good reason, too: most remixers will want to put as much of their own sound into the remix as possible, and even if they were given the full multitrack recording, they’d choose to use only the vocal. There are times, though, when you’re given other options. I’ve recently worked on two remixes that couldn’t have been more different: one for Girls Aloud, and the other for Pussycat Dolls. For the Girls Aloud remix we were sent the full ‘stems’. Stems, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, are groups of instruments mixed together. For example, there may be three guitar parts in a track, but rather than give you every single guitar part separately, you’re given the guitar stem, which is simply all of the guitar parts mixed together and recorded as a single (usually stereo and with effects included) track. This doesn’t give you absolute flexibility, but it does allow you to manipulate the groups of sounds that are present on the original recording. For remixers, the track will often be separated into the following stems: Kick drum Other drums ‘Effects’ Bass Guitars Keyboards (sometimes further separated into pads, leads, arpeggios, and so on). Lead vocal Backing vocals Working with stems allows you to use, say, the guitars and basses from the original (as well as the vocals), while mixing in your own sounds. In fact, for Girls Aloud, I used plenty of the stems because I wanted to keep quite a lot of the original track in the remix. It doesn’t always work that way, though, and the Pussycat Dolls remix is an example from the other end of the spectrum. For various reasons, all we were given was the original master recording. That’s right... exactly what was being played on the radio! Based on my original definition of a remix, it would seem quite difficult to do anything in this case, because there’s nothing at all that you can truly subtract from the original; you’re forced to only add things. But when the recording is sonically full and complete you might be wondering what you can possibly add. There are things that you can do, but your choices are much more limited, because you have to make choices that are 100 percent sympathetic with the original track. It’s not something that you’re likely to have to do that often, but it does happen. Decisions, Decisions... ...
Published in SOS July 2009 
| Friday 6th November 2009 | |||||||
