Cleaning House: Remix Services Must Cut Crossover-Oriented Projects Down To The Bone for Mainstream Play. Here's How it's Done

The telephone rings and a voice on the other end says, “Dave, I have a remix for ya. How fast can you get it done?”

“Well,” I reply, “Do you have an a cappella, or am I on my own?”

“No a cappella, but I can get you the radio version and maybe a club mix.”

Trying to buy as much time for myself as possible, I hesitate, then ask, “When do you need it by?”

“You have a few days,” the voice says. “I’ll send it out to you today.”

The next day my FedEx man drops off a thin cardboard package. Inside is a DAT – although on other occasions it could be a CD version – of a song to be remixed. And so begins a day in my life – the life of a service remixer.

Working for various remix services, my job is quite different than that of a remixer commissioned by a major or indie label. A label remixer has more flexibility – their mixes can be as long as a 12-inch piece of vinyl can hold. Therefore, anything goes: two-minute intros, 64+ beat dropouts and 15 minutes total time. Most remix services, on the other hand, require the vocal to begin within the first 64 beats. Both the break and the outro should be a clean 32 or 64 beats, and the total track time should fall between 6:15 and 6:45.

In short, label remixers don’t need to put themselves in the shoes of a club jock in Grand Rapids or a mobile DJ in Shreveport. But I do. That’s how I’m different. I try to make a mix that 90-percent of all DJs can play, not just those who spin in the handful of velvet-rope-and-red-carpet nightclubs in New York City or Miami Beach.

So how do I craft that remix for the average jock, that DJ who’s looking for the Reader’s Digest version of a re-mix? Read on and sit in on my remix project from start to finish. Hopefully, it’ll show you some of the tricks of making a remix.

In The Beginning

When I sit down to do a remix, I listen to all of the mixes that have been sent to me – sometimes I’ll receive four different remixes of the same song. After picking the mix or mixes that I am going to use, I listen to the song three or four times all the way through. First, I listen to how the song is put together, because, after all, I’m getting ready to pull it apart. Where are the verses and choruses? How many of each and how are they different? Are there huge dropouts, parts of the song where all of the music stops? (In my 20 years of DJing, I find that these drops, while musically interesting, tend to kill the energy on a mainstream dancefloor). Is there a bridge, the part of the song after the break that may change the key in which the song is played? This is vital because if you add your own music to the mix you must follow the key in which the song is played from start to finish. Then I listen to how the song builds to its peak and see if there is more than one peak. What types of percussion or sound effects have been used to get the song to these peaks and what can be added to enhance these buildups? At this stage, I’m trying to reconstruct the song in my mind by using the best parts of the original mixes and my own creativity. Creativity is what will separate you from the rest of the remixer pack.

After the listening stage, it’s time to input the song into my Pentium III 800 computer. To do this you must use a soundcard. There are many types of soundcards on the market and they range in price from $30 to $1,000. What’s the difference? Well, there are many, including the number of inputs and outputs, noise floor and sample rates (I will go into much greater detail about all of my equipment in future articles). But for now we will use as an example a soundcard with just a basic stereo RCA input and output.

If you have the song on vinyl, you would patch out of your mixer’s main or tape output and into the input of the soundcard. If, however, you have the song on a CD, you can use a ripper program that will take the song off the CD through the CD player on your computer. If you can do this, it is the best way because the song remains in the digital format and you don’t add any noise to the song. Try to stay digital. We don’t want to add extra noise to the project, unless it’s a hip-hop song and we want it to sound old school.

Once the song is in the computer, I open the song, which is now a (.wav) file in a computer program that allows me to edit audio files. As with soundcards, there are many such computer programs that can be used. Audio editing programs are available for both the PC and MAC. Which is the best? Well, it really depends on whom you ask. I use a PC and have had no problems. However, there are many MAC diehards out there, so see what your budget allows. Ranging in price between $150 to $600, some of the programs out there include Sound Forge, Wavelab, ProTools, Logic and Cakewalk. You can even find some free programs on the Internet, so if you have access to the net, look around and see what’s out there. The key to all of this is to get your feet wet by using the low-end programs to see if you like this business. Then you build your studio. I know many people who have spent thousands of dollars on the “newest…blah blah blah” only to give up on remixing and try and sell all of their studio gear. Trust me, you won’t get in return what you paid for it, so take it slow. I use Sound Forge and, for me, it is a great program.

Now I must decide what to do with the song. Do I just edit the song, cut and paste parts of it to adhere to the remix service format? This is where the editing program comes in handy. Or do I completely rework the song?

The song I have chosen for an example is “Let’s Get Married” by Jagged Edge. Assigned by Burlington, Mass.-based X-Mix, I was asked to use the version with the Run-DMC loop of “Hard Times” in it. So here it goes.

First, I need to find the master tempo of the song, which is the foundation of the mix and where everything starts. It’s sort of like building a house. Here’s how I lay the foundation. From here on we will call the original song file, main. This will help you keep track of which file I am using and what I am doing to it. I open the main wave in Sound Forge and edit the file so that there is no silence at the beginning of the file. This is important, so take your time and do this right. Now save the file.

To get the Master Tempo, I cut the first four beats off the front of the song and make sure that these four beats make a perfect loop. If I can’t use the intro, then I search the song for four bass-drum beats that I can use. These beats are just a way to get close to your Master Tempo. These new beats I save as a new file, main loop. It is vital that you name all of your files something that relates to this project and save all of the files in the same folder. (I will explain why later). We now have a loop with our tempo, which I import into Sonic Foundry’s ACID, a PC program that is a loop-based production tool. For me, ACID is the best loop-based program that I’ve used; if you want a program that will get you started quickly in working with loops, this is the program to get. After I’ve imported this file into ACID, I save it as “married.”

ACID uses tracks, which can be thought of as a graphic representation of an audio file, either stereo or mono. As stated above, I have imported the main loop file into this project. I then right click on that track in the window with the info about the track. This opens a pull-down that contains a caption called “use this tempo.” When you choose this it will change the project tempo from 120 BPM (default) to the new tempo of that loop. Now import the main file into your ACID project. This will give you a new track. You will draw this track out, meaning that you will use the pencil tool to open the wave file in the project. Do not start at 0, give yourself about 1:00 into the project to start your draw. This will give you room to make your intro.

This next part is time-consuming, but sets the foundation you need for the rest of the remix. On the screen, maximize the main track to better see the waveform and zoom in so that the timeline is in 16-beat increments. Start at the beginning of the track and click play. As the track plays, watch the timeline and listen for the kick drum. Allow it to play for 32 to 64 beats and then click pause. Now look and see if the beat is near the first count of the next 32 beats on the timeline. If the beat is to the left, then scroll down to the tempo box and increase the tempo – this will move the beat to the right. If the beat is to the right, then decrease the tempo – this will move the beat to the left. If the beat is right on, then click play and continue. The change in tempo will usually be after the decimal point; this is because our first four-beat loop got us close to the master tempo. Now do this throughout the whole song. Sometimes you may think that you are going back and forth, but just keep going. Hopefully the main wave was produced on tempo. Now that this re-mapping is complete, let’s build a remix. After the foundation there is the structure and the roof. The structure is how the intro, break and outro work with the main song. The roof is the added percussion loops you will add.

On the market today, hundreds of loop CDs are available, ranging in price from $25 to $200. When I was a kid, my mom would often yell at me: “Why do you keep all of these dumb records?” I told her that I might need them someday. And boy I’m so glad I kept them. Go through all your old records and find loops and samples. Use your soundcard to get them into your computer, then edit and save for later use.

Once you have loops that you like, look at the project tempo and pick the loops that are in the same tempo ballpark. However, with ACID, you can use any speed loop and the program matches the tempo without problems. But make sure that it is a perfect loop just like we did with the main loop. Try many different loops. They may sound great by themselves, but once they’re in the project, they may sound bad. Bring these new loops into the project and draw them out, just like we did with the main file.

Here is what I did with “Married.” If you know the version I used, it is the a cappella over the beat track from Run-DMC’s “Hard Times.” Great idea, but it sounds like a simple a cappella over a beat loop. Hoping to add to this great idea to make a fuller mix, I went through the above process and imported all of the tracks I was going to use, including the main version, three different cymbal and hi-hat loops, two kick and snare loops, and some sound effects for accent. I also wanted to use more of “Hard Times,” but when I listened to the loop it didn’t seem to work. So I took the kick, snare, clap, and a few other parts out of the Run-DMC song and built the loop from scratch. All of this was done using Sound Forge and ACID.

Now is the time to set up the intro. For a remix service it is usually 32 or 64 beats. I used the loops that I had imported and created and then blended them into the main wave. I then went through the song to find a good place to insert the break. This was not easy. You’ll find that when you use a radio edit as your main wave, you really have to look hard for a way to transition from a chorus into a break. Remember when, in the beginning of all this, I listened to the song? This is why: you may find that one particular chorus is best suited for your transitions.

So I find the point that works best and then I locate the chorus and, through the method of cutting, copying and pasting, I put together the break, which I make 64 beats. Since service remixes are no more than 6:45, place your outro accordingly. At 130 BPM, 32 beats is about 15 seconds, so use that as a gauge. I continue through the song and use the same method to make my outro. I won’t go into detail about the outro here, but if you have the program, it is very easy.

Now I listen to the whole mix and make sure the loops work well with the main track. Make your adjustments now; you may even need to work with the tempo again. This will only affect the main track, not the loops. They will match the main. This has given me my first floor, or structure, of the remix.

This project is now only a one-story house. Some projects have multiple floors: more audio edits, MIDI work, and full production projects using a cappellas. But again, I am just trying to get your feet wet and give you a basic understanding of remixing.

Now that the house is built, it is time to decorate. At this point you’ll want to go through the song and add snare rolls, cymbal crashes and vocal samples. This is where your creativity comes out, the part that separates the good remixers from the great remixers. Think out of the box and take chances with the effects and transitions. Use these additions to make the mix interesting and try to add as much movement and energy as you can. In the “Married” remix, I felt it still lacked something, so I took samples from Fatman Scoop’s “Hands Up,” and looped them over the break. To really make this work I added 32 beats to the break. So the first 32 beats are clean and then the next 64 have the samples followed by a transition back into the main. I also added some snare rolls and some more cymbals.

After this is done I listen to the song three or four times and watch the levels so that it does not peak. If you are peaking, then go through and adjust the different track volumes. Once levels are set, it’s time to burn the mix to tape or CD and send it off.

We have just built a small mix, at little cost – under $800 for the software and a decent soundcard. But this business can become very expensive. This is why you need to do your research and find out what people are using. I hope to go into more detail about the use of MIDI, other audio software/hardware, and help topics in future articles, but the information in this article should get you started.

Now the answer to the $1,000,000 question: Why name all the parts of your project something that can be associated to the project? House cleaning! When your project is complete, all you need to do is delete or back up that project folder, because everything that has to do with the mix is in that folder. By naming everything from the start, you don’t have to look all over your hard drive to find loops. And because audio requires a great deal of hard-drive memory, it’s best to clean as much off your drive as possible. But with that in mind, always back up and while putting your remix together click the save button every so often just to be safe.

Good luck with the mix and I’ll see you at the top.

Waterbury, Conn.-based Dave Gadbois has been a DJ for 20 years. In 1992, he attended his first International DJ Expo, and learned how to get started remixing by attending the “Remixer/Producer” panel. Forty remixes later, he’s got his own studio and has worked for Hot Tracks, X-Mix, and Ultimix, three of the leading remix services.