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What program to use for remixing a song ???

Avzone

Avzone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2004
179
0
U.k
Hi !

What would be one of the programs best to use to edit/ remix a song.
I wana say put my own beats in time with it, take sections and put fx on them and then re lay it all out in my own way.
I have been trying a few, but there not doing what I want them to?
I need something that will have the ability to find the tempo of the song, I would like it if there was a real time sort of equalizer so I could try toning bits down and beefing em up, instead of going back and fourth of applying fx and maybe the possibility of a drum machine to play my own beats to it?
Im quite new to this side of music editing.
Many Thanks!
:)
 
Jaymax said:
Hi !

What would be one of the programs best to use to edit/ remix a song.
I wana say put my own beats in time with it, take sections and put fx on them and then re lay it all out in my own way.
I have been trying a few, but there not doing what I want them to?
I need something that will have the ability to find the tempo of the song, I would like it if there was a real time sort of equalizer so I could try toning bits down and beefing em up, instead of going back and fourth of applying fx and maybe the possibility of a drum machine to play my own beats to it?
Im quite new to this side of music editing.
Many Thanks!
:)
Click to expand...

Garage Band is the place to start. It should do what you want. The good thing about it is that you likey already have it as it comes with every new Mac as part of iLife.

If you need more "Logic" is what you need. It can open GB projects so you will not have wasted much effort by starting with GB. Apple sells Logic Express for $199

GB comes with lots of drum and other kinds of loops and you can get thousands more. Or make your own either with yor machine of using the software
 
not to put you down, but you say your quite new to the music editing thing, it's pretty hard to 'remix' a track without the original stems to work with.

some bands offer their stems, such as nine inch nails and radiohead, but without them theres only so much you can do with a song.

you can still edit it to some degree, but don't get your hopes up of creating the next amazing remix.

another solution is to sample parts of the songs. i often try to find parts of songs with just one distinct part playing so i can add my own drum parts, basslines and melodies and remix like that.

either way, have fun
 
>>>

Ah, firstly I have Garageband 06' and haven't really used it yet as It just appears to be an instrument rack where you play different things in it and samples etc, but I guess I need to play around with it a bit more first as its starting to sound like one of the programs that may be under rated. I guess its the way its looks compared to other audio aps. I couldn't even work out how to open an mp3 file in it?

Secondly, what are stems and where do you get em from, I think I know what you mean, like accapellas etc of the song na?
What about if I just wanted to put my own drum beat in time with a track or beef the one in the song write up and fade other bits down, like using equalizers to do a karoke cut to sing to, only with the music part instead of the vocals?

Thirdly, I really appreciate your help and responses you give, many thanks!
;)
 
yeah kinda, stems are the individual recordings of each instrument.

i'm not sure how far you'd get with garageband, you could definitely add different effects to the track when you import (to import it just drag the file from the itunes folder in finder). but don't think garageband has automation for effects so you may need to chop the track up.
 
>>>

Ok, so just drag the mp3 into the main window? in garageband yeah ?
What is automation in music terms ?
:)
 
Remixing as in DJ remixing?

Ableton Live and Logic Studio for in studio work.

Ableton Live and Traktor Pro, (I have turntables so Traktor Scratch Pro) for live remixing.
 
>>>

Cor.. yeah! They do look like the ones, unfortunatly I can't afford them yet.
1 day..
Thanks!
 
Jaymax said:
What is automation in music terms ?
:)
Click to expand...

automation means that you can program a control or effect like "reverb" or and EQ setting to change over time. Garage band does allow you to set points in the track and set the volume to hit those points but other controls may be alow such automation.

Basically what you do is draw a line, or graph under the track and the hight of the line controls some knob or slider on a mixer. In Logic this can even be a physical slider with a motor and you line makes the slider move but for most people the "knob" is in an on-screen dialog box. Youlisten then maybe make a change to the shape of the line. that's "automation".

My suggestion is still to use GB. using it you will learn about "automation" and 100 other things. Later when you bump into limits move up to better software.

Without automation you would duplicate the track many times. Apply an effect to each and then use volume automation to re-combine the tracks. Has the same effect but it is 4X more work
 
Thanks for that reply.

I guess what I be looking for is like a multitrack recorder (like I use to use in Hardware form, a 'Roland Vs 1680' - Where I could record a song into it, it then comes up as a wave that I can edit, then I could play it and mess around with some knobs to equalize it like make drums louder etc in realtime.
Then Have a 4 beat straight drum pattern where I could bring in and alter at different parts of the song and use snippets of the original song and copy and paste them where I wanted and put delay/echo fx on a vocal sample etc.
I use to do this so easy with the hardware, but am new to the software side of things and finding it a bit daunting.
Since them days the nearest I got to it was cool edit pro 2 (adobe audition)
However ive heard that things have well improved, with features like auto bpm matching etc.
I really want to start by using something that can do the above in easy steps.
????????
:confused:
 
Dude trust me nothing is going to be better for your situation then ableton live. I use it to DJ with, do multi-track recording, and mostly to do remixes/mashups. Can even sync video with it. The key part of remixing is to beatmatch and that is way easier in Ableton then it is in Logic. I have both. It's also better for looping. And if you don't know what automation or looping or beat matching are then you should probably read about that kind of stuff first. Also you can't adjust the pitch/bpm/speed of individual tracks inside of garageband so unless you have two songs that are the exact same bpm you're going to have a hard time mixing them. If you're just using samples from a single song and laying down midi tracks then you might get it to work. Here is a small sample of some of my older stuff I've done in Ableton...

soundcloud.com/coday182

and an example of a video being synced to a mashup I made (keep in mind I used low quality video because I'm not really into that whole scene I'm more aobut the music itself)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-miJGCA134&feature=channel_page
 
>>>

Yeah man, I have to start saving.
I do know about stuff, just certain words I am not familiar with.
I cant get your U Tube Page to work it says: 'Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player'.
But I have the latest version for my System and Java is on ???:confused:

This sort of thing keeps happening to me at the mo, hold up's etc etc!:rolleyes:
 
+1 for Ableton Live. Creating remixes, bootlegs and mash-ups has never been more fun for me.
 
If you're just starting, GB should be awesome. The program isn't packed with features and complicated stuff but it forces you to do stuff in an old-school way and up to a certain point, work around the program. But most of all, actually make you learn what you're doing. So if you eventually step-up to better software, you'll know the lingo and techy things on top of knowing what the software is actually doing to the audio.

I personally use GB, mostly because I don't have Logic but I know starting out with GB probably helped me out a lot in terms of quality. If, I had Logic, I'd probably do ruff sketches in GB and import them into Logic afterward. I've briefly used other DAWs on the PC side. Instead of trying out all the bells and whistles and end up with a clangny over-produced mush of a mix, you can concentrate on the core of your song, what really counts, the notes you choose, the rhythm and groove you got going and the overall feeling.

I personally do french-touch/house kind of stuff with lots of looped samples from songs, so I don't have the problem of fixing the tempo across an entire song. And I don't really mix things live as I have a bunch of virtual instrument tracks to record and move stuff into a song format much more than a mix format. But I do use an ghetto app called metronome that allows you to find the tempo of a song by clicking to the beat to cut my samples faster.

Getting all your samples to the same tempo is fairly easy, just press the follow pitch and tempo button, and you're all set. You can tweak your effects while listening to the mix, as you said you wanted. I'm pretty sure any modern daw can do that too.

Hey, you have it on your computer right now, might as well give it a shot :p


Quite nice, coday182
 
>>>

Im going to, I am currently doing some tutorials from Computer Music magazine, which is really cool. When I've finished this issue im going to get started with Garageband and the rest of ILife 08 and when im comfortable with that get to grips with Reason 3 and try out Ableton Live and intergrate video etc (I use to Vj).
Thats my plan, im just finding it hard to concentrate and lock off into it at the mo.
Thanks for all your advise everyone.
As always its very much appreciated.;)

Mac Life is the way for me!:)
:apple:
 
You do realize that Ableton offers a 2 week free trial per email address? If you create an account you can download anything from the LE version to the full Suite, and it will be FULLY functional for 2 weeks. I had a personal e-mail account and a school email account so I actually tried it for 4 weeks before I bought it. And just by using youtube tutorials and the ones in the tutorial section of abletonlivedj.com, I had created my first remixes within my first week or so. Plus if your a student, there are educational discounts. And if your trial runs out and you still just want to play around on it, you can still use it to its full function, but just can't save or export after the 2 weeks.

From what I've seen, trying to do this stuff in Garageband will be unproductive. Think of it like this... if you were going to take a photograph and completely redo it then would you rather use iPhoto or Photoshop? (ableton is 100x easier then photoshop though lol). Say you found a good 4 bar insturmental loop in your song, and you want to use it for the remix. Maybe you would want to add a 4 bar drum loop or synth line to it. Well if your song is 100bpm but the sample loops are 110 bpm then obviously they won't play. So in Garageband there is no effecient way to match these tempos. The only method I know of involves taking the single loop, exporting it, then reimporting it into a new project.

However in Ableton, it's as easy as looking at the clip and telling Ableton where the first few beats are. From there it will automatically find the bpm and match it to whatever else is playing (assuming you've got those ones set up too). That's called warping. Plus once you've got a song warped, you can just drag it into your library and it will be there ready to go for later use in any other project you please.

Same thing when it comes to tuning or detuning a ciip.

Also Ableton has a huge amount of instruments and FX that come standard with it.
 
>>>

Thanks for the cool reply, im so stuck to such a point at the moment, i've actually halted using any program in particular. I've heard a lot of good reports about A.L and I have recently requested a free disc from there site.
What is it you mean by
'If you create an account you can download anything from the LE version to the full Suite'
?
 
http://www.ableton.com/free-trial go there, or just click on the "downloads" section in the menu bar, and click on teh banner that says Ableton Live 7 Free Trial. Then it goes to a page where you choose your language and OS. Then check the box for a 14 day trial serial number. Then it will ask for your address email address and at the same time start downloading the full version of the program. Then from there you just install it (it's the full version!) and enter teh serial that they gave you.
 
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