Vibes and Scribes

Greetings crew.

Hope all is well. A lot of you here heard me profess my love for Twitter, and for those of you who haven’t, here it goes: I love Twitter for its easy of networking and especially information push to me about things I’m most interested in. Via an actual person or a website, if it allows me to grow in areas of learning on topics that greatly interest me (various areas of tech and music production), than I’m with it. The *push* aspect is of most interest. In any event, a few weeks ago, one of my followers let his followers know that he was about to drop a release and offered the chance for other artists to remix certain songs on the release for its remix EP and a list of singles. Being as though I aspire to ALSO become a great remixer, I try to jump at the chance to remix songs when I can. This particular genre is electronica/synthpop/DnB/etc with BPM (beats per minute) faster than I usually choose to compose in. I thought, “What better way to expand my musical horizons and skills”. The EP, remix EP, and singles list has been release and I’m proud to say that my remix was chosen for the singles list. This is the first single from the new SKatterBrain album “the Basic Condition Of Life“. The artist is @dan303 (Dan Weatherall of Stoke-On-Trent, England)

This remix project was different than the first official remix project I did for Philip Clark, in that I knew what the original song sounded like, typical of remixes that are released AFTER the original song is out. Instead, Dan offered just the remix stems, so I had NO idea what his composition was like. That provided me with an open palette to create from. All he provided to us was the BPM (145) and key (Dm).

My DAW (digital audio workstation of choice) is Logic Studio. (Logic 8). I unfortunately had limited time to complete the remix because it was smack in the middle of vacation time – which meant out of the studio (if I had my Mac with me, that would have been another story ).

In the limited amount of time I had, I chose to explore the loop library in Logic versus programming my own drums from scratch or even chopping up samples to do so. My original plan was to time stretch the samples, but couldn’t remember how to until the 11th hour. Since I’ve grown to be a fan of drum and bass, and already a fan of 2-step, it didn’t take long to find a drum loop that was a mix of both and fit the stems perfectly. Dan used a number of percussive spatial synth effects that give good stereo dynamics, so those stems were added next. Listening to the drum loop, I played a percussive bass synth to lock with parts of the kick drum and counter the analog synth bass stem he sent as one of the stems. He suggested we use as many of the stems as we could, but I decided to create another synth lead part using Logic’s ES-M synth to sub for the one he sent. In the beginning of the remix, you’ll hear a four note section of electric piano, that I mirrored with a synth line created with Logic’s ES-1 synth. The synth pads I play under the ES-M lead are Logic’s “Chilled EP” pad.

Anyway, here’s the track listing:

1. The Most Impossible Plan 04:31
2. The Most impossible Plan [303 edit] 03:03
3. The Most Impossible Plan (groove7 outerbanks edit rmx) 03:38
4. the basic condition of life (ne7’s daijo mix) 05:14
5. Balance of sanity 04:41

Dan’s bandcamp page has links to all the releases.
The EP page is here .
The remix EP page is here .
The singles page is here.

My remix can be dowloaded here .

Much thanks to Dan for giving me the opportunity.

Thanks for the read….on to the next remix project.