How I Did It
Strange stonesby colab
Uses samples from:
more...Tools I Used
Propellerhead Record 1.0 with Reason 4.0
Audacity
Novation Remote SL 37
iMac
Apogee ONE
Sennheiser HD 200
I own the software I use (scout's honour)
Samples I Used
All ccm and freesound samples on this one - I added no instrumentation myself.
Process
Because I knew I would end up working with a bunch of tracks with different BPMs and scales I had to be a bit more organized this time around than what's usual for me, or it would have led to complete confusion.
I started off by listening through all Vidian's uploads and writing down both the specific tracks and the specific parts of them I thought I could do something with (for example, there's excellent section in his "I am not real" track where I jotted down "fast with good arps – sort of Kraftwerk-y" to help remind me later how/where to use it) .
Next step I needed to jot down the base scale for each of his uploads to get a sense of the range I was dealing with. To do this I simply played along on the keyboard to his tracks and wrote down the result in the log for each of them. Once I had all the results I decided on a "target scale" that I wanted to use for this remix. It wasn't a straight-forward call because on the one hand the Bagani sample ("tabi-tabi op") sounds natural - which was great as I really wanted to use that part - but now the Colbert/Lessig exchange is chip-munked. :) Anyway - I settled on Eb minor as many of his tracks were already in that scale.
I used the target scale and original scale to figure out how much each track would need to be shifted, and then did it in Audacity. I have a few issues with the quality of the pitch shifting in Audacity, but can hardly complain about the price.
I then imported all tracks to Propellerhead Record. I had written down the BPMs for each track because I needed to find a good target BPM for the mix. The sources range from 97-138 which would represent a hell of a challenge for any tool, but Record deals with it amazingly well. I initially took a scientific approach on this one and looked at the average of all the tracks (118.5) and the median (122.5) and then threw science out the window and settled on 125 because faster is better for this music.
After they were all loaded I spent some time fixing the timing to get all tracks to sync nicely. At this point they all ran simultaneously which was rather messy, so I started cutting snippets and rearranging them. Then I made sure transitions between tracks worked and that the soundscapes were a bit more clean. In the final cut there are between 2-5 track snippets playing at any given point (most often 3 or 4).
All in all the initial work to get me to this point took me just over four hours. The remainder of the time I spent listening to the track to jot down ideas about balancing - level and frequency automation, etc. I also added a few freesound samples to provide a bit of a change in each segment as well as provide consistency to the track. My process was to mix all tracks on my Sennheiser headphones and then listen to them the following morning on my iPod through my B&O earplugs on my way over to Starbucks. Gave me a good sense of where I have mucked up the night before.
Other Notes
This was a very fun project. So much of my time at ccM is about taking other people's materials and adding my personal stamp on it - but Secret Mixter gives me an opportunity to do more traditional remixes - in this case to showcase Vidian's material without drastically changing it. Now go and love his music. _Love_ it. :)
Finally, in the interest of full disclosure: I learned a thing or two about mixing during this project. Since I started working with Propellerhead Record I've found that my mixes have been sounding a bit weird - they've had stereo wobbling artefacts and it's been difficult to get the the sound levels right. Working with this many audio files got me to realize that I approached Record entirely incorrectly - I've routinely followed my old way of working (applying a stereo enhancer and a compressor on the final mixed audio signal) - but with Record each individual track has its own compression and stereo width setting - so doubling up results in really weird audio issues. That could be cool if that's what you're shooting for, but entirely inappropriate if you're going for a clean mix.
I hope I got it in the end.
/ Mikael
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