I enjoy doing remixes. It’s not often I have an opportunity to do so as I don’t do traditional remixes (adding phat beats and the like) nor do I know many musicians who seek remixes.
When I do a remix I try to approach each differently, and try to re-imagine the song.
Here are a couple remixes I’ve done with some info on what I did.
The first I did for cottrell/findlay/hunter and Concrete Moniker.
They were putting out an album of trio improvisations and had asked other musicians on the label to do remixes of tracks.
I picked the track “C” as it was really sparse and had the performers playing at different times.
I knew going into it that I wanted to radically transform the track into something else.
I also basically ‘improvised’ the remix as from the time I got the email with the download link to the stems to do the remix, to the time I uploaded the completed track back to the label took exactly one hour. That’s it.
Here is my remix:
Here is the original:
More recently I was asked by Beats & Pieces Big Band to do a remix for a re-release of their, then sold-out, EP.
I was stumped as to what to do for months. It was only when the deadline came looming around that I decided I actually had to DO something.
In not wanting to do a plain remix, I decided to interpret “remix” differently, and basically re-recorded the song.
I chose to use a male vocalist to recontextualize the lyrics, and changed around the key and time signatures a bit.
The mood is still there but, I think, amplified.
I recorded everything myself (including the singing) as the point of reference, then called in a couple singers to lay down the final tracks. Evan Wilson and Holly Carter, both from one of my old bands supplied vocals for the track.
Here is my remix:
And the original: