Chronicles of a Remix: I’m Walkin’/Mary Mary – Day 7

Sup crew…

Below is a short video on the status of the remix. This is a collab between me and Bill Cammack.

In the last update, I had just started chopping up samples from the timestretched vocal acappella. Analyzing the acappella is where I always start. Knowing the BPM is always helps, but if that isn’t readily available, you could always import the original track and use Logic’s BPM counter to determine what that is. Here’s a video he did on beat mapping for this remix:

There are a few ways to timestretch an audio file. What I find easiest to do (without using any external plugins) is to use Logic’s Time and Pitch Machine. Once you know what the BPM is of the original audio file, you enter the new BPM, and let Time and Pitch Machine run the Complex algorithm selection to stretch (or sometimes called time compress) the audio to the BPM you want use. The Complex algorithm setting seems to work the best in dealing with any problems from any audio aliasing resulting from the time stretching.

From that point it was adding some other elements from my sample library and arranging how I wanted them to be. My thought, throughout, was to have the mix include some dynamics to it…in terms of audio effects, at minimum (after all, this IS a dance club remix). THe first thing was to incorporate some delay on the samples. This is pretty much where I ended up going, while keeping focus on how I wanted the drum track to be.

Fast forward to some back and forth discussions with Bill on FB, and a collaboration was born. Bill has a good working knowledge of just not Ultrabeat, but Logic in general. I sent him an mp3 snippet of what I had so far and we went to work on it! The video clip below gives a lil background on how it’s been going so far.

That it’s it for the moment…stay tuned.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh!

Quiktraks (60 sec audio) – Day 3

mpcblue2
Crew…

How’s everyone. Third installment here. The newest piece of gear I have in the studio is an AKAI MPC 1000 sampling music production workstation. The beat you hear is a simple one I did a few months ago when I first got it. While I wont go into the long time history and popularity of the machine, I primarily got it because I am used to (and prefer) composing drum tracks on a drum machine’s pad versus a keyboard, and as it is designed to do, it’s a nice sampler as well.

The track is the original beat, with me laying a lil 70’s funk rhythm guitar over it. Nothing fancy, everything dry….a few seconds of funk.

Background Notes:

Drums and vinyl scratch: MPC 1000
Guitar: Fender Strat recorded dry into Logic Pro 8

My personal tracks are on my Myspace page
The Lab is here.

peace…
F!

Quiktraks (60 sec audio) – Day 2

Hey crew….

Here’s a lil sumthin’ I was messin’ around with this evening. No loops this time. This track was originally composed in an old Mac sequencer called Master Tracks Pro. I programmed the drums using my Yamaha RY30 drum machine. I also used a Yamaha TX-81Z for the bass synth, and Yamaha TG-55 for the synth pad. I took the MIDI sequence and imported it in to Logic Express 7.2 and used all EXS24P sampler voices. The track name, No Need For Clocks, was for an artist I was working on a demo for (this is what I came up with, though she eventually did something different with the song).

I seem to be into producing chilled beats lately… I wonder why… 😉

The bounce audio came out real rough, and I dont know why. There are no plugins at all on the tracks, but I did say I will post whatever I come up with, good and not so good. Note to self: find out why the bounce is bad.

Background Notes:

-Recorded with: Logic Express 7.2.2
-Computer: Mac Powerbook G4 Aluminum
-Drums: EXS24P Sampler Hip Hop Kit
-Bass Synth: EXS24P Sampler Analog Bass
-Synth Pad: EXS24P Sampler Filtered Dark Analog Pad

My personal tracks are on my Myspace page
The Lab is here.

Thanks!
F!