Mix Project presentation: What You Are - Ken's Well Hardcore Mix

Remix week part 2

I was very happy to find that all of the other students had approached the mix assignment with the same ‘remix’ mentality that I did.

I was very impressed with what was presented. It struck me that each of us were unconsciously (or perhaps very consciously..) exerting an influence on the material in the direction of our personal musical preferences.

This was certainly well within the spirit of the remix (see my project notes and references for more detailed comments on this!)
So essentially, we all presented real world samples, remixed and reshaped in our own image!


My Analysis, References and Mix notes are as follows:


MTF Real World Mix Project: Analysis of Recording session

PREAMBLE
I am deliberately limiting my analysis to the loops provided in the real world remix folder. (Refer to my production notes for elaboration on this – and appropriate reference!)

BAND: Joi (Without Zero Album)
SONG: What You Are
DURATION: Unknown
GENRE/STYLE: World/Dance

GENERAL ANALYSIS

It is clear that most or all of the loops have already had some processing applied.

Vocal loops have some background noise, which is only evident when the vocals are happening – so have evidently been through some sort of noise gate to cut down on the bleed or background noise that is clearly there.
The noise level is such that it shouldn’t be audible in the context of a mix, but likely precludes most of the vocal recordings being used in isolation.
Vocals also sound like they’ve gone through some sort of reverb treatment (may also be just the natural ambience of the room…)

Percussion Loops
Percussion seems to come from a Roland TR909 (or something very similar to this).
Very standard dance type percussion loops – which I interpret as an invitation to mix this track in a dance style!!
Also present are Tabla loop and other ‘world’ instruments.
Instrumentation is a combination of traditional Western (eg Rhodes, synth pad, 909 drums) and World (Ouda, Tabla) sources.

This diversity is also evident in the vocal loops. There are very Western-pop loops alongside more traditional eastern vocals.

Conclusion
For me, many of the melodic elements stand out, and make this the most obvious choice for me to mix/remix. There are enough hooks in this that I really enjoy hearing to make me feel like I want to work on these loops.

I noticed on the Real World website that the artist sites 80’s pop legend Chaka Kahn as a major influence.
This, combined with the obvious dance-hybrid feel of the loops leads me to conclude that a fairly upbeat, commercial dance inspired sound would likely be an appropriate direction to go in for my remix of the material.



Reference list.


Hill, Dave ‘Making Music With Ableton Live’ 2003, PC Publishing, Kent, UK;

Owsinski, Bobby ‘The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook’ 1999, Mix Books, Vallejo, CA;

Prochak, Tim ‘How to Remix’ 2001, MPG Books, London, UK;

Snoman, Rick ‘The Dance Music Manual’ 2004, Focal Press, MA, USA;

White, Paul ‘Recording and Production Techniques’ 2002, MPG Books, London, UK;



MTF Production Notes


My aim was to approach this project as a remix, rather than as a ‘mix’, as it was my desire to have an almost self indulgent level of creative input throughout the process. I read some books on remixing and some more general material on production as my research component.

I chose some loops from the project I selected (‘What You Are’). I chose loops to work with that I found musically interesting, as this is seen to be a good way of ensuring the most musically fruitful results (Prochak, 2001).

I chose to avoid listening to the original song in order to approach the loops I’m working on with ‘fresh ears’. This is considered one of many possible approaches to the remixing process (Prochak; Snoman, 2004).

I used Ableton Live software as my tool for auditioning the loops, and as a sketchpad for my final arrangement (Hill, 2003).
My goal was to find several segments for a final mix: I was looking for a few parts which went well together. It was my goal to not have too many parts playing at once, as this is seen to be a prudent way to mix/arrange (Owsinski, 1999).

I also used Live as my base of operations for time stretching and special effects. I chose this way of working because Live’s time-stretching engine works simply and seamlessly (Hill), and some of the effects plug-ins I wanted to use are not available in RTAS format.

I dragged loops into Live and auditioned them – by themselves, with other loops, and with and without effects. From here I chose which loops I was going to focus on, and then made a ‘sketch’ of an arrangement in Live’s Session view. Live is rather uniquely suited to making the process of remixing very simple (Hill; Snoman).

I determined that the 110 BPM pace was a little too pedestrian for my goals for this mix, so I upped the tempo within Live to 124 BPM. This sounded about right, and didn’t leave obvious artefacts in any of the loops.

I then used Live to bounce the loops as new audio files in order to save the loops in their time-stretched and effected state.

From here I moved all the loops into ProTools and used this as my final arrangement/mixing environment.
I bounced a version of my ProTools final mix with a compressor/limiter applied to the Master Channel in order to finalise my mix (White, 2002).



And My screenshots.... Well it kept telling me that there were errors as I was uploading them. Sadly, it is too near the deadline to do anything more about it... But they did look great!!