KuruPrionz Posted January 23, 2022 Share Posted January 23, 2022 It's been a while but I learned a great deal doing remixes on Metapop.com. It's Native Instruments site (no affiliation) and they have great prizes for the winners of their remixing contests. It's freeing to work on projects that you would otherwise have nothing to do with, it makes it easy to try new things. I set goals for myself - what can I do with pitch shifting and what should I not do - was one. Making loops was another. There are more. Here are a couple of my favorite remixes, with brief comments on my experience. https://metapop.com/opossum-apocalypse/tracks/hana-opossum-apocalypse-remix/166618 Yes, I am Opossum Apocalypse on there. This song had too many parts and quite a few of them weren't very good. The beat was OK for part of the song but it never changed. I deleted all the "extra" parts I didn't care for and found a "dope beat" on my NI Drum Lab. Being lazy, I just dropped it in there. It could be cleaned up but you could spend the rest of your life on a mix and I saw no point in it. Great singer! https://metapop.com/opossum-apocalypse/tracks/cats-n-dogs-opossum-apocalypse-production/97388 We were all provided with nicey-nice cat sounds and instructed to go at it. I like cats but it seemed really boring. I went to visit friends and took a Tascam DR-40 to record critters. They have dogs a cat. I got some creepy grunting noises mostly. Then I dug through the Sound Effects CDs that I've bought at thrift stores and found all sorts of beasts. This track helped me learn to make loops, plus it is evil. Thoughts? Quote It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bryce Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 I don;t know why, but doing remixes has never really managed to hold my attention. It's kind of fun playing with the individual track files for classic albums, but I tend to view that as more of a learning process than an opportunity to create something new. "Slice and dice" remixes don't really work for me - not because I don't appreictae the art, but more because there's other things I'd proably rather be doing with a room ful of gear. dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KuruPrionz Posted January 24, 2022 Author Share Posted January 24, 2022 I hear ya loud and clear!!! I actually disliked quite a few of the projects going in. I still don't like them. And, I don't care!!! It took all the pressure off since I didn't have to worry about it sounding "good". I learned a ton of useful things I can do with my DAW, that was my main reason for trying it in the first place. I tried stupid things to see what would happen and now I find some of those ideas may have potential to be used on my own projects. Most of Metapop is EDM on the grid to be honest and over half of it is "toss these dope samples all together" kinda stuff. It's not a world I live in. The education was more than worth it. I'm open to other types of remixes, I did one for Lewitt microphones that was an actual band playing a real song. Screaming Ibex if I recall correctly. I got to play "Producer" on that, it was a valuable experience too. I have no idea where the file is, most of the Metapop stuff got tossed too. We don't keep our old Math books, do we? Quote It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bryce Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 Totally clear. 👊 I’m actually happy to take work outside my “comfort zone”. I know what all sorts of genres are supposed to sound like, and I find I can frequently make decisions easier because I’m more objective… …and I almost always learn something in the process. Ideally, anyway… dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KuruPrionz Posted January 24, 2022 Author Share Posted January 24, 2022 Moving forward, that's my plan too. Mess about with my own ish. The things I learned will help. It was a bit of a deep dive for me, to give myself a solid kick in the ass. I don't know that I have a "comfort zone" but the crazy I was throwing down didn't need to be mutilated and some of this stuff cried out for chaos. I did some parallel processing, some loop stretching (and shrinking) for poly-beats and other weirdness. That can yield different results depending of whether you stretch/shrink audio or MIDI tracks. I pushed a pitch shifter plugin well beyond it's limits, made stuff diminished and/or augmented. Stuff got backwards, I eliminated lyrics to make things mean something else, just had a fine old time partying on somebody else's concepts. https://metapop.com/opossum-apocalypse/tracks/you-remix-opossum-appocalypse/83393 Quote It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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