Remixing songs?

I wanna know the same thing, but I don't know the answer :'( Would be nice to know though!

 

lol ur going to feel dumb.u just need to get the tape of the song they used to recored with.be for they mix every thing togarther. so u have every diffent insturment on a diffent track. u just dub wat tracks u wanna use to diffent tapes.

 

Say you want that for a Mudvayne song (NOBODY REMIX THEIR SONGS OR DIE!), how are you sposed to get that exactly?

 

In most cases, the artist doesn't have a say. Their record company owns the masters and will usually hand em over, for a price. Song writing credits are another issue though..........

 

Person who did that should be shot...Dig is such a good song

 

True, but I don't think Matt wants to pay a crap load of money to get the masters to remix the song

 

The guys who remix songs must get access to the multitrack masters. No, there is no way to split up a stereo mix into its constituent tracks. You can do a certain amount of that with filtering and the like, but it doesn't work too well.

You can't just take out the drums and leave the rest, for example. If you try to filter out the bass drum, you'll probably lose a lot of the bass too.

But, this made me laugh:

"u just need to get the tape of the song they used to recored with" - LOL, yeah, like you can just get hold of the multitrack master.

 

there IS a way of separating out the vocal from a mixed song, which is sometimes used by bootleggers-

if you can get hold of an instrumental, or use instrumental sections, if you invert the phase and combine it with the original track it will cancel out the backing and leave the vocals, if you can line it up precisely enough.

I think a fair number of the acappella versions on the net were done this way.

 

It's not like walking into Sam Ash and asking "how much is that bass".

It all depends on what song, who's song it is, who you bribe and what they stand to make (a cut of the profit is also usually part of the deal).

 

A lot of bastard pop guys use Sonic Foundry's Acid and Soundforge.

You can't really separate tracks, or at least only to a certain degree depending on the source material.
You have to trick around so it's not too noticeable anymore. So this pretty much dictates how the song turns out.

http://www.dazautomatic.co.uk/main/archives/cat_article.html

 

Yes, that's true, if you can find an instrumental version that's identical to the vocal version except for the lack of vocals.

However, due to compression and limiting used in mastering, it may or may not work perfectly.

See, the levels need to be the same. In order for it to work properly, you need to have an instrumental version where the levels are the same as the instrumental backing in the vocal version. Whereas if they compress the whole thing during mastering, then the level of the music will come down when the vocals come in.

It may also require some fiddling to line them up perfectly, so that the two versions are exactly in phase.

You said "...or use instrumental sections", well, that may be possible with some songs. If the music was played live (rather than sequenced, or each section was played once and copied), then it won't be possible. Because, the instrumental section you're using won't be the same as the vocal section you're trying to subtract it from.

If you're working with sequenced pop, which instrumental sections which are identical to the vocal sections (except no vocal), then it'd work. But even then, only if you can get the levels the same.

 

You can reduce or loose signals from the centre of a stereo mix (often the vocals... although frequently the bass as well) by swapping the left and right tracks and playing it back 'out of phase'.

I've also found something along these lines happening when I've taken the L and R phono outputs from the CD player at church and plugged them into a 2 phono to 1 jack plug on the mixing desk at church. That's not ideal when we're trying to learn songs from a CD so we now run into two separate channels (no problem - plenty to spare at present).

However, neither of those let you do a true 'remix' of a song - for that you'd either need the masters or to get the necessary musicians to make your own 'masters'... with the various legalities involved, it's probably simpler to stick to cover versions or contact the publishers to see how much they'd sting you for access to the originals.

Wulf

 

here's the page on the site JMX linked to about using phase cancellation to extract an acappella-

http://www.dazautomatic.co.uk/main/archives/000026.html#more

there are a LOT of acapella and instrumental versions of popular songs on WinMX- I seriously doubt that many of them were legitimately sourced from the original multitrack tapes.


ps.
here's a bootleg I did- Electric6's Gaybar vs. the Benny Hill show theme (using Sonic Foundry's ACID-

http://mysite.freeserve.com/audiofiles/BennyGayBar.mp3