IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I am Josh Harris and
welcome to Remixing Techniques:
| | 00:08 | Arranging and Song Form.
| | 00:10 | In this course I will take you through
the arranging process for a radio mix,
| | 00:13 | club mix, and a radio edit of the club mix.
| | 00:17 | I will also show you how to create what
I like to call ear candy: those exciting
| | 00:21 | moments and parts that give
an arrangement a finished feel.
| | 00:23 | I will do this in four
different digital audio workstations:
| | 00:27 | Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, and Reason.
| | 00:32 | I'll start by listening to the
original version of the song.
| | 00:35 | (music playing)
| | 00:40 | And then creating a sketch arrangement,
which will help determine the musical direction.
| | 00:46 | (music playing)
| | 00:49 | Next, I'll develop drums, bass, and keyboard
parts and then complete the arranging process.
| | 00:54 | (music playing)
| | 00:57 | And finally, I will mix down the
finished arrangement for each song.
| | 01:01 | If you're someone who has felt
challenge by the arranging process, then this
| | 01:05 | course should provide you with
invaluable insight into this part of the
| | 01:09 | track-making process.
| | 01:10 | So if you're ready, let's get
started with Remixing Techniques: Arranging and Song Form.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:01 | Since this is an intermediate course,
you should be comfortable with importing
| | 00:04 | and editing audio files.
| | 00:06 | Throughout this course I will be
working between four different DAWs, and you
| | 00:10 | should also be comfortable following
along with me in your DAW of choice.
| | 00:14 | If you're not familiar with digital
audio workstation software, you should check
| | 00:18 | out some of the courses right here, on
the lynda.com online training library.
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| Why did we record this course in four different DAWs?| 00:00 | Much like my course, Remixing
Techniques: Time Stretching, I felt it was
| | 00:04 | important to bring four different
digital audio workstations together again
| | 00:08 | under a common theme: arranging.
| | 00:10 | I believe that the success of a
musical arrangement lies within the
| | 00:14 | individual, not the technology.
| | 00:17 | The DAW is merely the vehicle, and as
arrangers, remixers, and producers, I
| | 00:21 | believe that you should have the
ability to use different DAWs for different
| | 00:24 | parts of the arranging process.
| | 00:26 | While this course isn't about editing
in these specific DAWs, I have found that
| | 00:31 | the more comfortable I am in different
DAWs, the more opportunities I have to
| | 00:35 | find work and collaborate with other people.
| | 00:37 | Editing audio is editing audio,
no matter what program you're working in.
| | 00:41 | And remember, the concepts taught within
this course are by no means limited to
| | 00:46 | remixing or electronic music.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | All lynda.com members have access to
the asset files that we'll be using
| | 00:04 | throughout this course.
| | 00:06 | Since I'll be working in different DAWs,
I've provided the stems that you'll
| | 00:09 | need to get started in your DAW of choice.
| | 00:12 | I've also provided a few loops and
samples that you can use in your own mix.
| | 00:16 | If you're a Premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, you'll have
| | 00:20 | access to the session files that I'm
working with throughout this course.
| | 00:24 | I've also included the finished mix
sessions of each arrangement so that you
| | 00:27 | can see my final work.
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1. Arranging: An OverviewA general overview of musical arranging| 00:00 | When we speak of musical arranging we
are referring to the organization of
| | 00:04 | musical ideas contained within a song:
How should a song, how should it end and
| | 00:09 | what is going to happen in
between those two points?
| | 00:12 | All of these questions are eventually
answered as a musical arrangement unfolds.
| | 00:16 | It's important to understand that
arranging the song is not the same thing
| | 00:20 | as writing a song.
| | 00:21 | An artist or songwriter can sit down
and write a song on a piano or guitar and
| | 00:25 | at that moment a marriage
of harmony and melody occurs.
| | 00:28 | But before the age of computers and
desktop recording, musical arrangers were
| | 00:33 | brought into recording sessions to
work with the studio musicians in crafting
| | 00:37 | the perfect parts for the song.
Maybe the bassline is too busy for a certain
| | 00:41 | section of the song,
| | 00:42 | so the arranger might work with the
bass player in simplifying the part.
| | 00:46 | An arranger's job can entail working
with the entire song structure or just a
| | 00:51 | specific part in a specific section.
| | 00:54 | When you take a look at some of the
popular albums of the 1950s and 1960s, you
| | 00:57 | will often see a musical arranging
credit listed among the album credits in
| | 01:02 | the back of the record.
| | 01:03 | One such example is Nelson Riddle,
who is a prolific arranger for Capitol
| | 01:07 | Records from the 1940s until the 1980s.
| | 01:10 | His arrangements can be found in
recordings by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and
| | 01:14 | Nat King Cole, just to name a few.
| | 01:17 | But as more and more musicians began
working out of their own studios, the
| | 01:20 | arranging duties started to fall on
their shoulders, thereby blurring the once-
| | 01:24 | divided lines between producer,
arranger, songwriter, artist, and engineer.
| | 01:29 | So what makes a great musical arrangement?
| | 01:31 | First, a strong musical arrangement
has an ebb and a flow to it, telling a
| | 01:36 | supplemental story to that of the
lyrics and melody, if the song happens to be
| | 01:39 | a vocal-driven song.
| | 01:41 | Second, the arrangement should not
attempt to cram too many musical ideas or
| | 01:45 | moments into the song or track.
| | 01:47 | Let's use a cooking analogy for a moment.
| | 01:49 | The secret to a great recipe
is to use the proper amount of
| | 01:52 | required ingredients.
| | 01:54 | Each musical part contained within
arrangement can be looked at as an
| | 01:57 | ingredient, and the challenge is to
figure out how much or how little each one
| | 02:02 | should be used.
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| An overview of remix arranging| 00:00 | It was only a couple of decades ago
that the term remixing began to creep into
| | 00:04 | the mainstream music vernacular.
| | 00:07 | In the 1980s D's like Shep Pettibone
gained worldwide notoriety by creating
| | 00:12 | remixes of songs recorded
by mainstream pop artists.
| | 00:16 | These remixes were specifically
designed for dance clubs and DJ sets.
| | 00:21 | Often referred to at the time as
12-inch mixes, fans were treated to longer and
| | 00:25 | more amped-up versions of
songs they knew from top 40 radio.
| | 00:29 | At their core these early remixes were
rearrangements of the original versions,
| | 00:34 | with small amounts of overdubbed parts
added to give the tracks a bit more hype.
| | 00:39 | DJs were given the analog multitrack
recordings of the original songs from the
| | 00:43 | record label, thereby giving them the
ability to take individual parts of the
| | 00:47 | song and rearrange them to suit their needs.
| | 00:50 | The most obvious difference between
the original versions and their remixed
| | 00:53 | counterparts was the length of the arrangements,
| | 00:56 | with the remixes having long intros and
outros so that DJs could mix in and mix
| | 01:01 | out of them into the next song.
| | 01:03 | As remixes grew in popularity, they
evolved into complete reproductions of the
| | 01:08 | original versions of the songs, with
barely any of the original multitrack parts
| | 01:12 | used in the arrangement.
| | 01:14 | But the shell of the arrangement
pretty much stayed the same, a DJ-friendly
| | 01:18 | intro and outro with some sort of
breakdown section halfway to two-thirds of the
| | 01:23 | way through the track.
| | 01:24 | Today we see slight variations of this
blueprint, and more often than not, parts
| | 01:29 | are added and subtracted every eight
bars to keep it interesting to our ears.
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| An overview of radio and club arranging| 00:00 | At first it may appear that creating
arrangements for radio and arrangements for
| | 00:04 | the clubs have no overlap.
| | 00:06 | But when you break down the process
for each one, you will find that there are
| | 00:09 | quite a few similarities, and
some fundamental differences.
| | 00:13 | First and foremost, a finished
arrangement has a certain feel to it, and it
| | 00:17 | certainly needs to be tailored to
work within the desired musical genre.
| | 00:21 | Songs on the radio have to
fall within a certain timeframe,
| | 00:25 | since you don't hear FM radio stations
playing five-minute versions of songs anymore.
| | 00:29 | On the flip side, you would not arrange
a song for the clubs that clocks in at
| | 00:33 | three minutes in length.
| | 00:35 | Radio arrangements are designed to
pull the listener in through a series of
| | 00:39 | musical and vocal hooks.
| | 00:40 | The same can be said of a club
arrangement, but the big difference is that club
| | 00:44 | arrangements are allowed to take
time to develop and unfold, and they're
| | 00:48 | designed to get people on the
dance floor and keep them there.
| | 00:51 | The nature of a club arrangement is to
take a person on a journey, with ebbs and
| | 00:55 | flows as well as peaks and valleys.
| | 00:58 | Most club arrangements have what's
called a drop, or breakdown section, where the
| | 01:02 | energy subsides for a moment, only to
be brought back up and climax within the
| | 01:06 | last few minutes of the arrangement.
| | 01:08 | Radio arrangements mainly centered
around the chorus of the song, and the
| | 01:12 | repetition of the chorus throughout
the duration of the song so that the
| | 01:15 | listener will be singing along
after hearing the song just one time.
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2. Arranging for the RadioReferencing the original or demo version of the song| 00:00 | It's almost impossible to create a
quality musical arrangement without having
| | 00:04 | some pre-existing version of the song
to reference, even if that version is
| | 00:08 | merely a piano and a lead vocal.
| | 00:11 | In the world of remixing there are
instances when an artist or a label will
| | 00:15 | request a radio remix, with the hopes
that this new version will either add to
| | 00:19 | whatever radio play they are
currently receiving or help them get the radio
| | 00:23 | play that they desire.
| | 00:24 | Over the years I've worked on many
remixes that were purely geared for radio,
| | 00:29 | often reproducing an entirely new track
just using the vocals and nothing else
| | 00:33 | from the original version.
| | 00:34 | I'd like to take you through this
process using a song by Natalie Brown
| | 00:38 | called Around the World.
| | 00:39 | Those of you who have
taken my Remixing Techniques:
| | 00:42 | Time Stretching course will recognize the song.
| | 00:44 | I'll import an MP3 version of the
original and Pro Tools will convert it, and I
| | 00:51 | always set my Quality on sample
rate converting to Tweak Head.
| | 00:55 | It's important to leave the sample rate
converting option on Tweak Head at all times.
| | 00:59 | It just ensures that when you import
outside samples that you have the highest
| | 01:03 | quality of sample rate conversion possible.
| | 01:06 | I'll select the Audio folder and I'll
designate New Track and there's our clip.
| | 01:13 | So, let's lower the volume, because you
never know how loud a file that you've
| | 01:18 | just imported is going to
play, and let's take a listen.
| | 01:21 | (music playing)
| | 02:22 | I generally listen to one verse and
one chorus just to get the feel of the
| | 02:26 | original, and I can already tell
from the background vocals that I will
| | 02:30 | probably have to follow the chord
changes of this original version.
| | 02:34 | I might be able to get away with
swapping out of few chords, but those
| | 02:37 | background vocals have an R&B feel,
they're layered, and they're essentially
| | 02:41 | spelling out chords in the
way that they are harmonized.
| | 02:45 | So, don't underestimate this
part of the arranging process.
| | 02:48 | Many questions about how your
arrangement will unfold can be answered by
| | 02:52 | spending a few minutes listening to
the original version and asking yourself
| | 02:56 | a few important questions. That should
help you begin to develop a focus on a
| | 03:01 | musical direction.
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| Listening to stems and deciding on the musical direction| 00:00 | Building on the previous movie, it's
time to import all of the remix parts, or
| | 00:04 | what I like to call stems, into our
session and listen through everything.
| | 00:07 | But first, let me clarify what stems
are, in case some of you might not be
| | 00:11 | familiar with the term.
| | 00:12 | A stem is a bounce of a file as
it sat in the final mix of the song.
| | 00:16 | In other words, a drum stem is a
bounce of all the drums as one stereo file
| | 00:20 | with their EQ compression and volume
automation settings from the final mix of the song.
| | 00:25 | For most remixes, I receive vocal stems
only, which typically includes a stereo
| | 00:29 | file of the lead vocal and a
stereo file of the background vocals.
| | 00:33 | Such is the case with this song,
Around the World, by Natalie Brown.
| | 00:36 | I was provided with two sets of
vocals. And as I increase the width of my
| | 00:43 | browser, you will see BG VOX DRY, BG
VOX WET, LEAD VOX DRY, LEAD VOX WET--
| | 00:50 | basically wet and dry versions
of the lead and background vocals.
| | 00:53 | Although I can add these directly to
this session, I will copy them so that all
| | 00:57 | of my audio files live within the same
Audio Files folder, and I will choose New
| | 01:02 | Track as a destination.
| | 01:05 | Next, I will change the BPM of the
session to 104, and I will add a click track,
| | 01:13 | which I can do by creating an Aux track,
naming it Click. I'll put it up at the
| | 01:20 | top, go to my Mixer, and
choose Click, under Instrument.
| | 01:27 | It's important to go through this
process because even though the vocals say 104
| | 01:31 | beats per minute, I'm not 100%
sure if they lock up against the grid.
| | 01:35 | So the first thing I'll do is take a
listen to them and see how they line up
| | 01:38 | against the click track.
| | 01:40 | I'll start by listening to the dry vocals.
| | 01:45 | We'll just listen to the leads and
backgrounds together, and we'll start from
| | 01:49 | the very beginning.
| | 01:50 | (music playing)
| | 02:27 | I can already tell by listening just
20-30 seconds into this song that these are
| | 02:31 | indeed locked up against the grid.
That's why I like to give the stems a chance.
| | 02:36 | Every once in a while you may get a stem
that you import and it's a quarter note
| | 02:40 | off or it's a few milliseconds off and
you have to then go in and line it up.
| | 02:45 | But you never want to assume that
just because an audio file is labeled a
| | 02:49 | certain way that it
actually is what it says it is.
| | 02:52 | These locals and these projects that
you come across, a lot of them are done
| | 02:56 | at home and people are not always
aware of how to export files properly.
| | 03:00 | So it's just good housekeeping to
always double-check the assets or the audio
| | 03:05 | files that you're provided with for a remix.
| | 03:07 | Now, as I solo out the background
vocals, I can already tell that I'm going to
| | 03:15 | need to follow the chord changes of the
original, because these vocals here--
| | 03:18 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | --are basically spelling a chord.
| | 03:22 | (music playing)
| | 03:26 | And they're pretty prominent;
| | 03:27 | they're very prominent part of the song.
| | 03:29 | So if I cut them out on a radio mix
I'm left with very little vocally,
| | 03:33 | especially when the lead vocal plays off
of them in the chorus. This is what the
| | 03:38 | lead vocal is doing in the chorus.
| | 03:39 | (music playing)
| | 03:51 | So you can hear that if the
background vocals were to be omitted from the
| | 03:55 | arrangement, we'd be saying goodbye to
the majority of the vocals on the chorus,
| | 03:58 | which is not an option for a radio mix.
| | 04:00 | For me, listening to the remix parts
and determining the BPM of the original
| | 04:04 | version, or in this case double-
checking the BPM of the original version, are
| | 04:08 | some of the most important parts
in creating a remix arrangement.
| | 04:11 | The included stems play a huge role in
the parts you may or may not use in your
| | 04:15 | arrangement and once you actually zero
in on the BPM of the song, you now have
| | 04:20 | a handle on what your time stretching options
are, if you even need to do any time stretching.
| | 04:26 | And in the case of this song, because
it's a radio mix, I'm going to leave the
| | 04:30 | BPM at a 104, and I won't need to
involve any time stretching in this particular arrangement.
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| Creating a sketch arrangement| 00:00 | I'm a big believer in creating sketch
arrangements, which usually includes a
| | 00:04 | basic drumbeat, bassline, and piano part.
| | 00:07 | This allows me to get a sense of whether
or not my chord changes are working, and
| | 00:11 | if I'm on the right path with my baseline.
| | 00:14 | This part of the process is not about
committing to sounds or even parts, but
| | 00:18 | if I do happen to lay down a part that just
feels right to me, then I'll most likely keep it.
| | 00:23 | I have made the decision to use the dry
vocals. After listening to them in the last movie,
| | 00:28 | I think that that's the way to go, and I
muted and deactivated the wet vocals, so
| | 00:32 | they are here, highlighted gray. I have
muted the original, as well as muted the
| | 00:36 | click track, and the first order of
business is to import some loops.
| | 00:41 | I have a couple of stylus RMX loops
right here that are four-bar loops. I will
| | 00:49 | copy them into the session. They will
be saved in the Audio Files folder with
| | 00:52 | the rest of the files, and
I'll assign them to new track.
| | 00:56 | These are already set to 104 beats for
minutes, so there's no time stretching or
| | 01:01 | any of that nature that needs to be done.
I'll copy and paste them throughout the
| | 01:05 | whole song and take a quick listen to
these two loops underneath the vocals.
| | 01:10 | (music playing)
| | 01:39 | It sounds good in the verses;
let's take a listen to the chorus.
| | 01:42 | (music playing)
| | 01:56 | I like these loops. There is a
bounciness to them. And this song is kind of a pop
| | 02:01 | R&B song. As you listen to the
background vocals, they're dictating the chords
| | 02:04 | that I will need to use.
| | 02:06 | (music playing)
| | 02:11 | So I already know, before I even lay
down a bassline or piano idea, that I'll
| | 02:16 | follow the original chord changes on some level.
| | 02:19 | Now, I'll set up an instrument track.
| | 02:21 | I'll actually setup two instrument tracks,
as well as a master fader track, just so
| | 02:29 | I have control over the
volume of the entire mix.
| | 02:33 | I'll name the first instrument bass
and the second instrument piano. And I'll
| | 02:41 | choose Pro Tools Xpand2, and I'll quickly
dial up a bass sound. And in the browser
| | 02:49 | here, you can see that all the
instruments are categorized by their instrument
| | 02:52 | type, so I will find Synth Basses,
and let's just hear what these sound like.
| | 03:00 | (music playing)
| | 03:04 | I like that. It sort of has an old-school
feel to it, but not literally, a little bit
| | 03:10 | of retro feel to it.
| | 03:11 | Again, it's got nice attack and should
support the vocal well, because that has
| | 03:14 | a little bit of punch in it. It might
not end up being the final bass sound, but
| | 03:17 | for now we'll use it, and then I will
pull up a piano sound, also from Xpand, just
| | 03:27 | go to Standard Rock Acoustic Piano. Great!
| | 03:34 | So, let's go back to the original and
just take a listen to what the chords are
| | 03:39 | doing and get a handle on
what key this song is in.
| | 03:41 | (music playing)
| | 04:06 | So I can already tell by just
noodling around the piano that the song is in
| | 04:09 | C-sharp minor, and now I've a sense of
the chord changes that were used in the
| | 04:13 | original version. I'll mute the original,
go back to the bass, and begin to play
| | 04:18 | along with the vocals and
my two stylus RMX loops.
| | 04:22 | (music playing)
| | 04:47 | I like that. That will be my verse
bassline for the moment. And it looks like
| | 04:51 | verse one is starting at measure 7,
| | 04:54 | so we'll put Pro Tools in Grid mode.
And yes, so I'll set a one bar before.
| | 05:01 | I know I can set a preroll on the
transport, but I'm just going to roll it back
| | 05:04 | to one bar before. It's a personal
preference whether you use preroll or just
| | 05:08 | move the cursor to one measure before.
| | 05:09 | (music playing)
| | 05:32 | I like the second four bars that I
have played better than the first.
| | 05:36 | Let's quantize the MIDI region to 16th notes,
but I'm going to use Logic 16A Swing.
| | 05:41 | I know that swing pretty well, and it's just
a slight variation of a straight 16th
| | 05:45 | note quantization. So I'll apply that.
And we're in Grid mode, and I'll go on the
| | 05:52 | last four bars I played,
which should be right at 11.
| | 05:55 | (music playing)
| | 06:06 | And I'll delete what I don't need
and delete this extra bar here, and we
| | 06:10 | should wind up with a four-bar MIDI region.
Option+Drag this back now we have an 8-bar loop.
| | 06:16 | (music playing)
| | 06:19 | Oops! And that was mispasted, so let's zoom
in here on what happened. There we go.
| | 06:27 | I have one extra beat.
| | 06:28 | Now we have four. You can see up here,
it says 400. Bring this back, Option+Drag.
| | 06:35 | (music playing)
| | 06:47 | Excellent! So let's paste this throughout the
verse, up to the chorus, and see what's
| | 06:52 | happening in the chorus.
| | 06:53 | (music playing)
| | 07:03 | Okay, let's take a listen to the chorus.
| | 07:04 | (music playing)
| | 07:19 | Okay, obviously I'm going to need to do
some different bass notes than I did in
| | 07:23 | the verse; it's not going to be the
same notes throughout the whole song.
| | 07:26 | But I'll come back to that in an upcoming movie.
| | 07:28 | Now I'm going to lay down some piano
changes so that I have a handle on
| | 07:32 | what the chords are going to be when
I lay down my synth parts. I'll start at
| | 07:36 | measure 6 and here we go.
(music playing)
| | 07:42 | (music playing)
| | 07:57 | And I'll quickly quantize those notes
into 16A Swing, trim off what I don't
| | 08:05 | need, and we wind up with a four-bar loop.
| | 08:10 | So even though I'm not on the chorus
yet, this is enough of a sketch for me to
| | 08:15 | understand what the vibe, what the
direction of the arrangement is going to be.
| | 08:19 | So by no means do you have to
necessarily play in all your part during the
| | 08:23 | sketching process, but if you get a
verse or a chorus or just a portion of the
| | 08:27 | song, it will help you develop a
blueprint for where to go as you begin to
| | 08:31 | develop your drums and bass, and
then eventually add synths and guitars.
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| Developing the drums and bass| 00:00 | One of my philosophies when it comes
to building remix arrangements for full
| | 00:04 | vocal remixes, either radio or club, is
that the arrangement should almost be
| | 00:09 | able to stand on its own,
with drums, bass, and vocals.
| | 00:12 | Let me elaborate on this concept for
a moment, because it may offer you a
| | 00:16 | different perspective on
creating drum and bass parts.
| | 00:19 | The drum and bass parts of an
arrangement are what I consider to be foundational
| | 00:23 | parts of the arrangement, and I
typically spend the most amount of time at this
| | 00:27 | juncture of the arranging process.
| | 00:30 | So we have our sketch bass and sketch
piano here occupying a 16-bar verse here.
| | 00:35 | I will mute the piano.
| | 00:37 | I'll keep the chords just in case I
forget what I played, but I do remember them.
| | 00:42 | And I have a bassline here that just
covers the verse, so I will need to address
| | 00:46 | the chorus, but before I do any of that,
I need to build up the drums little bit.
| | 00:50 | So I'll import some drum loops, and
these are from my private library: Josh
| | 00:58 | Harris drums volume 1 and a kick drum.
| | 01:01 | Copy them so that everything lives
in the same audio folder, and I will
| | 01:06 | assign them to a new track.
| | 01:07 | I'll move the move bass down here.
| | 01:11 | You'll notice as I begin
to build the arrangement,
| | 01:13 | I like to view my arrangement vocals,
drums, bass, keyboards, guitars, all the way
| | 01:19 | up to the master fader.
That's just my personal preference.
| | 01:22 | But I do believe that it is important
to keep the arrangement window organized
| | 01:26 | by instrument groups.
| | 01:28 | So whether you like drums, guitars,
vocals, bass, it doesn't really matter. But it's
| | 01:33 | a little bit challenging when you're
looking into Pro Tools session, or any
| | 01:36 | session in any DAW, and you have a kick
drum next to a lead vocal next to a snare
| | 01:41 | drum next to a keyboard part.
| | 01:42 | It's very difficult to navigate
through 10, 15, 20, 30 tracks when it's
| | 01:47 | presented in that way.
| | 01:48 | So before I listen to the other loops,
let's take a look at the kick drum,
| | 01:54 | because the kick drum is one of the most
important pieces that I'm about to add.
| | 01:59 | I'll mute out these other loops, but
we'll listen to those in a few minutes.
| | 02:04 | And here I have just a kick drum
sample, what I call a single shot.
| | 02:07 | (music playing)
A nice healthy kick.
| | 02:09 | (music playing)
| | 02:10 | Now if I listen to the beat of my rmx loops--
| | 02:15 | (music playing)
| | 02:21 | --the first rmx loop really is
dictating the kick drum pattern.
| | 02:25 | The second one is a little bit of just layering.
| | 02:27 | So let's zoom in on this and take a
look at what's happening, because what
| | 02:31 | I'm about to is take this kick drum
and edit it to match the kick drum
| | 02:38 | pattern of the rmx 1 loop.
| | 02:40 | In other words, I'm
going to create a kick layer.
| | 02:43 | Now, you could do certainly do this by
programming with MIDI, but I happen to be
| | 02:46 | very comfortable programming drums in
this manner, and I think it's important to
| | 02:50 | let everyone see how you can cut and
paste audio and "program audio" in the same
| | 02:56 | way that you would MIDI.
| | 02:58 | So we've got our kick on the downbeat,
and I'll shorten the grid denomination so
| | 03:06 | I can easily move this kick drum around.
| | 03:09 | And let's take a listen to
the kick in the rmx loop.
| | 03:12 | (music playing)
| | 03:14 | So we can see there's another beat right there.
| | 03:17 | (music playing)
Let's bring this kick in. Unmute it.
| | 03:23 | (music playing)
| | 03:26 | So I'm simply going to copy and paste
this kick drum so that it lands where the
| | 03:31 | kick drum in the rmx 1 loop lands
and see how this blend works.
| | 03:34 | (music playing)
| | 03:37 | And that's a snare, so I don't need it there.
| | 03:39 | (music playing)
| | 03:43 | So that's working, but this kick
right here is a little bit loud.
| | 03:47 | So let's simply lower the volume here
in the clip window and take a listen now.
| | 03:52 | (music playing)
| | 03:56 | That's a little too much.
Let's return it to normal.
| | 03:58 | It's actually the second kick here that
I'd like to lower, so that the kick drum
| | 04:02 | that I'm cutting up and pasting here
with this single shot matches the dynamics
| | 04:07 | of the kick in the rmx 1 loop.
| | 04:09 | (music playing)
That's nice.
| | 04:12 | That's a little bit more
in line with the rmx 1 loop.
| | 04:16 | So now let's copy this kick drum over and
repeat the process for the next measure.
| | 04:23 | Let's just take a listen, double-check
and make sure the pattern hasn't changed.
| | 04:25 | (music playing)
| | 04:29 | Oops! That's too much, going back here.
| | 04:31 | (music playing)
| | 04:34 | A slightly busier pattern over here in
the second half of this four-bar loop, and
| | 04:41 | let's just take a listen.
| | 04:42 | (music playing)
| | 04:44 | I'm just going to highlight these
couple of kick hits within these four kick
| | 04:49 | hits, punctuation of sorts, and
this takes me up to measure three.
| | 04:54 | So very quickly I can just highlight
this as a two-bar phrase, and let's go back
| | 04:59 | to a full-measure grid so that I'm not
highlighting the incorrect length of the region.
| | 05:06 | This is what I want, a four-bar loop.
| | 05:08 | We'll take a listen.
| | 05:09 | (music playing)
And I like that.
| | 05:19 | So now what I'll do is consolidate
all of these clips so that they're
| | 05:23 | one continuous clip.
| | 05:25 | There we go. Much easier to work
with, visually, when copying and pasting.
| | 05:28 | So now I will paste this kick drum
all the way through the arrangement,
| | 05:36 | shrink the screen down.
| | 05:37 | Let's just listen to this kick
drum underneath the two loops.
| | 05:41 | (music playing)
| | 06:10 | It's sounding good except I
need to go back and fix something.
| | 06:12 | I'm going to undo this, because it's
not exactly as I'm hearing it in my head.
| | 06:18 | So let's zoom back in on the area here
and take another look at this kick drum.
| | 06:23 | And again, as I mentioned at the top of
this movie, I spend the most amount of
| | 06:26 | time during this process.
| | 06:28 | You get your drums right, you get your
bass right, and the rest of the track will
| | 06:32 | take care of itself.
| | 06:33 | So I'm not a fan of what's
happening here on this second kick drum,
| | 06:37 | so let's get down here to a finer grid.
| | 06:40 | (music playing)
| | 06:46 | What I really want is just a
repetition of this one bar. So let's take a listen.
| | 06:52 | (music playing)
| | 06:58 | And I will let these extra kick drums here
just be flourishes that blend with my kick layer.
| | 07:03 | Reconsolidate this and repaste.
| | 07:11 | Shrink everything down.
| | 07:12 | (music playing)
And we'll go right up to verse 1.
| | 07:18 | (music playing)
| | 07:38 | Excellent! Let's take a listen to some of these
loops that I've brought in, and I'll move
| | 07:42 | them over to start at measure 7.
| | 07:44 | Let's go back and change the grid.
| | 07:50 | (music playing)
| | 08:00 | Now I like part of that.
It's a little too much going on for me.
| | 08:04 | So what I'll do is I'll do a quick edit,
and I will keep a percentage of this loop.
| | 08:09 | This clap over here is a little much,
| | 08:11 | so let's take the first bar and just
paste it, and take a listen to this.
| | 08:16 | (song playing)
| | 08:21 | The triangle that's hitting on the
downbeat is a little much as well.
| | 08:24 | So let's take half of the bar.
| | 08:27 | Do a quick copy and paste and listen.
| | 08:31 | (song playing)
| | 08:40 | Excellent! That shaker pattern is nice.
| | 08:43 | It pulses the track. And before I
leave this area let's consolidate this
| | 08:48 | so that it is also a four-bar loop and go
ahead and paste this throughout the song.
| | 08:54 | (music playing)
| | 09:06 | Let's quickly take a listen to
these other loops that are in here.
| | 09:08 | (music playing)
| | 09:12 | And that's a little bit much.
| | 09:13 | (music playing)
I do like that.
| | 09:21 | I'll probably edit it.
| | 09:22 | Let's take a listen to loop four.
| | 09:24 | (music playing)
| | 09:30 | Perhaps I'll save that later
for an intro loop of sorts.
| | 09:32 | (music playing)
| | 09:38 | And it's not appropriate
for the style of the track.
| | 09:40 | (music playing)
| | 09:47 | That's also not feeling
appropriate to me for the style of the track.
| | 09:50 | So, right now loop three
feels like the best candidate.
| | 09:54 | (music playing)
| | 09:58 | I'll think about putting that in the
chorus, so let's go up to the chorus
| | 10:01 | and just take a listen.
| | 10:02 | (song playing)
| | 10:11 | Okay. So let's move this to measure 23.
| | 10:16 | (song playing)
I like that.
| | 10:27 | We'll paste that the length of
the chorus, which I believe is 16 bars.
| | 10:31 | (music playing)
No, it's only 8 bars in the first chorus.
| | 10:34 | (music playing)
| | 10:50 | Excellent! Moving my bass right below my last
drum loop, and I'm going to now create a
| | 10:56 | duplicate bass track using the same sound,
but I'm putting it on a different track.
| | 11:02 | So let's label this bass 1, and I'll
explain why I'm doing this in a moment, and
| | 11:10 | just copy the plugin over to the next track.
| | 11:13 | (music playing)
Same sound.
| | 11:15 | (music playing)
| | 11:17 | So we have different chord changes for the chorus.
| | 11:18 | So let's quickly take a listen to this
8-bar chorus and see what may or may not work.
| | 11:23 | (music playing)
| | 11:42 | Okay. So I've an idea of what I'm going to
play in, so I'll just go ahead and play it
| | 11:47 | in, and again keeping with the R&B vibe,
I want the bassline to bounce a little
| | 11:52 | bit and I want to honor what the
background vocals are doing. But before I play
| | 11:55 | that in, I'd like to hear the last bar
of the verse bass. So we unmute that.
| | 12:00 | (music playing)
| | 12:02 | And that's not quite right,
so undo that, one more time.
| | 12:12 | (music playing)
| | 12:34 | That should work. Let's quantize those notes and scope
it out, trim up the one bar pre-roll
| | 12:45 | and trim off the last.
Now let's just take a listen.
| | 12:48 | (music playing)
| | 13:08 | That works for me. That's keeping this as a
perfect 8-bar loop, and there we go.
| | 13:14 | Some of you may already approach this
part of your ranging in this manner.
| | 13:19 | But for those of you who do not,
I highly encourage you to take time to craft
| | 13:23 | the drum and bass parts, because so
much of building out the remainder of the
| | 13:26 | arrangement will stem
from creating a great groove.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding synths| 00:00 | Now that we have a bassline and working
drums--at least through the verse and the
| | 00:05 | chorus--it's time to add synth parts.
| | 00:08 | Since I already know what the chord
changes are going to be, I actually don't
| | 00:11 | need this piano part more, but I want
to leave the track. I'll simply delete the
| | 00:15 | data and retitle or repurpose this track.
| | 00:19 | I'll call this Synth 1. And underneath, I
will choose some sort of a stab-type sound.
| | 00:29 | You know this is an R&B track that has
a lot of background vocals so I want to
| | 00:33 | honor that and I want to come up with
parts that have maybe more rhythm to them
| | 00:38 | than texture, parts that will help
pulse the track along, create accents and
| | 00:43 | punctuations at various
points in the arrangement.
| | 00:46 | So the very first song I'm going to
choose is something that I will probably
| | 00:51 | use in the verse. Let's see this Attack
Choir sound, and I'll unmute this.
| | 00:56 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | That's a nice sound.
| | 01:07 | So let's loop the verse and just come up
with a part and then I'll record it in.
| | 01:11 | (music playing)
| | 01:25 | That works for me. It just highlights
the chord changes ever so slightly.
| | 01:28 | (music playing)
| | 01:30 | So let's record that in.
| | 01:35 | (music playing)
| | 01:49 | I will just record those four bars.
| | 01:50 | One of the reasons that I'm recording
everything in four-bar chunks is because
| | 01:55 | when it comes to working on remixes, I almost
like the parts to feel like they're sampled.
| | 02:00 | In the old days of remixing, a lot of
times people who couldn't play would bite
| | 02:05 | a sample from a record and they would
combine multiple samples from one record
| | 02:09 | and another record and another record
and they would layer all these samples,
| | 02:13 | and a lot times those samples were
short one- or two- or four-bar phrases.
| | 02:17 | So I like to incorporate a little
bit of that philosophy into my keyboard
| | 02:20 | programming with remixes.
| | 02:22 | Paste this through the verse.
| | 02:23 | (music playing)
| | 02:35 | Excellent! Moving on to the second synth part, create
another stereo instrument track. I'll call this Synth 2.
| | 02:47 | And I'll turn my
attention to the chorus right now.
| | 02:50 | I know I need something with some
movement, something to add a little bit of
| | 02:54 | excitement in the chorus,
| | 02:56 | so I'm going to look for what I would call
a motion sound or in a arpeggiated sound.
| | 03:01 | So going back to Xpand, there is bank
here called Action Pads, and here's this
| | 03:09 | sound Dreamy Basic Pad,
which is a nice lushness to it.
| | 03:14 | (music playing)
And arpeggiated-type pattern.
| | 03:19 | Let's take a listen to the chorus and I
will play around with the sound to see
| | 03:22 | if I can come up with part that will fit.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:43 | We'll play that again.
| | 03:44 | (music playing)
| | 04:04 | I think that works.
| | 04:05 | I'll clean it up a little bit as I play it in.
| | 04:07 | (music playing)
| | 04:20 | Now I went for it and it didn't
really work, so let's do it again.
| | 04:24 | (music playing)
| | 04:45 | One more time. I'm recording as I
noodle around, because I just might get the
| | 04:49 | part is I'm experimenting,
during the recording process.
| | 04:52 | (music playing)
| | 05:13 | I like the last four bars
better than the first four bars.
| | 05:16 | I followed the bassline a
little bit more accurately.
| | 05:20 | So let's quantize that,
and let's take the last four bars.
| | 05:25 | We can get rid of this, get rid of
this extra bar here. We have our four-bar
| | 05:30 | region and bring it back to the
beginning, and just checking to make sure
| | 05:34 | everything is in order.
| | 05:35 | (music playing)
| | 05:54 | Excellent! So it's time to add another synth part.
| | 05:59 | We'll call this Synth 3.
| | 06:03 | Stereo, Instrument Track, and I will
Option+Drag over here so that Xpand is already open.
| | 06:12 | I've obviously go the same sound,
because I copied the plugin, but I'll quickly
| | 06:17 | move to something that's like a lead sound.
| | 06:21 | So let's look under Soft Leads
and here's this Air Phase One sound.
| | 06:28 | (music playing)
| | 06:32 | And that's kind of nice.
| | 06:33 | Just add a little bit of
keyboard melody in the choruses.
| | 06:36 | (music playing)
| | 06:56 | So this part may actually be somewhat of a
layer with the part I just added, Synth 2.
| | 07:00 | But it's going to introduce a
different set of frequencies that will help the
| | 07:04 | chorus feel a little bit
thicker, a little bit lusher.
| | 07:07 | So let's go ahead and record.
| | 07:08 | (music playing)
| | 07:24 | One more time. It's feeling like an actual doubling of
the part is really what's needed here.
| | 07:30 | So without even playing it in again,
I'll copy and paste my MIDI down here and
| | 07:35 | see how these two sounds sound together.
(music playing)
| | 07:55 | Those sound nice. Let's listen to them in
contact with the rest of the track.
| | 07:59 | (song playing)
| | 08:18 | Excellent! As you can hear, the rhythmic subtleties
of these new parts enhance the groove of
| | 08:24 | the track and also serve to fill in
some sonic holes that needed filling.
| | 08:29 | Remember, there is a very fine
line between just enough and too busy.
| | 08:33 | I'm not just adding parts to add parts;
the rhythms of these parts are very
| | 08:38 | deliberate, and I'm always keeping
the end goal of a finished radio
| | 08:41 | arrangement in mind.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding guitars| 00:00 | In keeping with the R&B spirit of this
radio remix, I'd like to add guitars,
| | 00:05 | and I'd like the guitars to have a
little bit of that classic R&B feel that you
| | 00:09 | hear on old R&B songs.
| | 00:11 | With me in the booth, I have fellow
author, David Franz. David has been
| | 00:15 | kind enough to lend his guitar-playing
skills to several tracks here in this arrangement.
| | 00:20 | So we're starting about two
bars out from the chorus.
| | 00:22 | I'll go ahead and record and David is
going to lay down a couple of tracks, and
| | 00:27 | then we'll put them in context with the
rest of our arrangement. So here we go.
| | 00:31 | (music playing)
| | 00:56 | Excellent! So that rhythm part will most likely be
panned off to one side, maybe the left
| | 01:02 | side when the final mix is put together.
| | 01:04 | The next guitar part we're going to add is
going to center around the tonic of the song, C#.
| | 01:10 | So I'll start from 2 bars out again,
we have our other part in, and I'll turn
| | 01:14 | the first guitar part down a little
bit so that it's not a distraction, and
| | 01:20 | let's go ahead and record the second part in.
| | 01:22 | (music playing)
| | 01:49 | Now that we have a couple of tracks of
guitars added to the arrangement, let's
| | 01:53 | zoom in on them and make sure that
rhythmically everything is tight and what it needs to be.
| | 02:01 | I'll increase the View Size of the
clips and take a listen to them in
| | 02:07 | context, one at a time.
| | 02:09 | So we'll take the first guitar part
and I'll back it up one bar before and just
| | 02:16 | pan it off to the left a little bit.
(music playing)
| | 02:40 | The part itself feels pretty tight,
but I'm not crazy about this note that's
| | 02:45 | hanging over here, so I'll actually
delete that, and do the same thing at the
| | 02:50 | end of the phrase and just
see if that makes a difference.
| | 02:53 | The ringing of the notes was not working for me;
| | 02:56 | it was clashing a little bit
with the descending bass line.
| | 02:59 | (music playing)
| | 03:13 | Hearing that one part removed gives me
an idea for how to edit the front part of
| | 03:17 | the phrase, which will open up
even more space around the vocal.
| | 03:20 | (music playing)
| | 03:24 | An edit point right there.
| | 03:26 | (music playing)
| | 03:34 | And one nice way to go about this is to
actually mute this part of the clip, as
| | 03:38 | opposed to deleting it. Just in case I
don't like what I did, all I have to do is
| | 03:43 | unmute this part of the clip
and I'm back to where I was.
| | 03:46 | (music playing)
| | 03:56 | That sounds much better to me.
| | 03:59 | And so I want the parts to be exactly
the same, from the first four bars and
| | 04:03 | the last four bars.
| | 04:05 | So I will highlight a 4-bar section and
copy and paste it, and I can trim off this
| | 04:12 | 1 bar preroll here.
| | 04:13 | So now let's take a listen to guitar
one all the way through the end of the
| | 04:16 | chorus, and we don't need this extra bit here.
| | 04:19 | (music playing)
| | 04:37 | I'll zoom in here and take out these last
two chords as that bass line begins to descend.
| | 04:42 | (music playing)
| | 04:47 | This guitar part feels a lot tighter to
me, and it's not clashing with the other
| | 04:52 | instrumentation that we
currently have in the arrangement.
| | 04:54 | (music playing)
| | 05:16 | So now it's time to move on to guitar
number two, and I'll leave guitar one in
| | 05:22 | because both of these parts need to
work together, but I will pan it off to the
| | 05:25 | left even more and I'll pan guitar
number two over to the right a little bit so
| | 05:30 | that there's some
separation between the two parts.
| | 05:32 | Let's take a listen.
| | 05:34 | (music playing)
| | 05:47 | Right away I can tell that I need to
apply the same treatment to this part as I
| | 05:51 | did to guitar number one.
| | 05:53 | So I'll cut out the same areas that I
did in guitar one, and let's take a listen
| | 06:01 | to just these first couple of bars.
| | 06:02 | (music playing)
| | 06:12 | I think I like these first two bars the
best, and I will just commit to them right now.
| | 06:19 | That felt very tight, both those
parts together. We can solo them out and
| | 06:23 | listen to them together.
| | 06:24 | (music playing)
That's very tight.
| | 06:31 | So I will just use the first two
bars of the guitar and paste them.
| | 06:35 | Again, it will feel like a sample,
something that was maybe sampled off of
| | 06:40 | an old record. And now we can listen to our
chorus with both guitar parts in, and here we go.
| | 06:47 | (music playing)
| | 07:06 | I need to go in here and get rid of
these last couple of notes and just
| | 07:12 | double-check and make sure
that these are ending together.
| | 07:13 | (music playing)
That works for me.
| | 07:21 | So the important take-home is that
even after a couple of guitar parts are
| | 07:25 | tracked, you certainly should spend
some time zooming and editing, cutting
| | 07:29 | and pasting, and experimenting with
tightening the parts up to give them a
| | 07:33 | slightly different feel.
| | 07:35 | I want a live player on the track,
but I also would like the guitar parts to
| | 07:40 | feel like maybe I grabbed them out of an
old sample library, and the best way to
| | 07:44 | achieve that is to zoom in and edit
out certain parts of the performance.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Arranging the rest of the song| 00:00 | We have spent most of our time so far
working in a 16- to 24-bar section of the
| | 00:04 | arrangement and now it's time to
build out the remaining sections.
| | 00:07 | The finished arrangement should not
feel forced or edited, but natural.
| | 00:11 | All sections need to make sense with one
another, especially during the transitions.
| | 00:16 | Radio arrangements have no wasted space,
and if that means your arrangement is
| | 00:20 | three minutes and twenty seconds, as
opposed to three minutes and thirty
| | 00:22 | seconds, that's fine.
| | 00:24 | Don't get hung up on the length of time,
but do keep in mind that most radio
| | 00:28 | stations won't play
songs over four minutes long.
| | 00:31 | My ideal time is somewhere between
three minutes and twenty seconds and three
| | 00:35 | minutes and forty-five seconds.
| | 00:37 | Although you won't be able to follow
along with me step by step, I will now
| | 00:40 | provide you with an overview of
how I build out a radio arrangement.
| | 00:44 | (music playing)
| | 02:08 | Let's spend the next few minutes taking a
look at how I built out the radio arrangement.
| | 02:12 | We'll start up here at the vocals, and
you'll notice that there's an edit point
| | 02:16 | in the background vocals
right here towards the end.
| | 02:18 | I felt that the background vocals went
one cycle through the course too long,
| | 02:22 | and that they should end with the lead vocals.
| | 02:25 | So, I cut out 8 bars of background
vocals and shoved the last 8 bars of
| | 02:30 | background vocals over to the left
| | 02:31 | so now, the background vocals and the
lead vocals start and end at the same place.
| | 02:36 | I built out the rest of the drums and
added some programming on top of the loops
| | 02:41 | that we had had previously in the arrangement.
| | 02:43 | Let's solo out the drums and take a listen.
| | 02:46 | Primarily on the chorus is where you
will hear the elements that I added.
| | 02:57 | So this is a few bars before chorus 1.
| | 02:59 | (music playing)
| | 03:12 | So, you can see that I added a ride
cymbal and a tambourine and a crash cymbal
| | 03:16 | happening every four bars here.
| | 03:18 | And I'm adding a little bit of metal
up top in the drums. Those frequencies
| | 03:21 | help the chorus punch a little bit, pop
a little bit, feel like it elevates and
| | 03:25 | lifts to another level.
| | 03:26 | I recorded this synth bass part in the
bridge. Previously, that section of the
| | 03:32 | arrangement was empty.
| | 03:33 | (music playing)
| | 03:57 | You probably noticed as that section
played that there's a little bass fall, or
| | 04:00 | what we call a glissando, something
that you would hear in old funk and R&B
| | 04:04 | records. It's sliding your hand down
the keyboard very quickly to add a waul
| | 04:09 | sound and let's solo it
out, we can take a listen.
| | 04:11 | (music playing)
| | 04:13 | And it adds a little bit of flavor,
I think a bit as a transitional part,
| | 04:17 | leading from one section to another.
| | 04:21 | I worked on an intro that's four bars
long, with verse one starting to measure five.
| | 04:25 | (music playing)
| | 04:38 | And we can take a listen to the
last few bars and hear the cold ending.
| | 04:41 | (music playing)
| | 04:53 | The arrangement clocks in at just over
three and a half minutes long, which is a
| | 04:55 | perfect amount of time for a radio edit.
| | 04:58 | Now keep in mind that later in the
course, I'm going to be adding just a few
| | 05:02 | more elements of ear candy.
| | 05:04 | So, I would say that this arrangement
in its current form is about 95% done, and
| | 05:09 | we'll take some time to
add the last 5% later on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Arranging for the ClubReferencing the original or demo version of the song| 00:00 | When I reference the original version
or demo version of a song before working
| | 00:05 | on a club mix, it's a somewhat
similar process to that of a radio remix.
| | 00:10 | With a club mix, however, my goal is
for the chord changes to be a bit more
| | 00:14 | minimal, more static, as I'm
looking to create more tension and release
| | 00:18 | within the arrangement.
| | 00:20 | So, as I listen to the original,
I think about whether or not the song lends
| | 00:24 | itself to that sort of treatment.
| | 00:26 | And if the answer is no, then I
may even pass on doing the remix.
| | 00:29 | I'll begin by importing the original
version of the song, and I will change my
| | 00:35 | view in Ableton from Clip view to
Arrange view, by hitting the Tab key.
| | 00:41 | Inside the Assets folder, I have
Waiting in the Road. That's the name of the
| | 00:46 | song. And Ableton will take a moment to
populate the waveform, and there we go.
| | 00:52 | I will double-click on the audio file
up here, and you can see that Ableton went
| | 00:57 | ahead and added all these warp markers into
the track. It just automatically did this.
| | 01:03 | So, I'm going to turn off the Warp
feature and slide the starting point all the
| | 01:09 | way to the left of the audio file.
| | 01:11 | As you can see, there was a little bit of room
there, and I pulled it all the way to the left.
| | 01:14 | Now this will enable us to listen to
the original version of the song without
| | 01:19 | any sort of time stretching.
| | 01:21 | We are basically
listening to the raw audio file.
| | 01:24 | So let's play it for a moment.
| | 01:25 | (music playing)
| | 02:59 | That gives me a good idea of what
the song is about, in terms of chord
| | 03:03 | progressions, the melody
of the lead vocal, the BPM.
| | 03:07 | For those of you who have
watched my course, Remix Techniques:
| | 03:10 | Time Stretching, you may recognize this song.
It's called Waiting in the Road, by Jody Nardone.
| | 03:15 | And there's a chapter in that course
dedicated to taking a vocal that's in a
| | 03:19 | different time signature--in the case
of this song, it's in six-eight time--
| | 03:24 | and modifying it to fit a four-four time or
what we call four-on-the-floor dance feel.
| | 03:30 | So, I encourage you to reference
that course when it comes to this song,
| | 03:33 | because as we move into the next movie where I
bring vocal in, that work has already been done.
| | 03:38 | But before we move on, let's just take a
moment and think about what's going on musically.
| | 03:43 | It's the same set of chord changes
really cycling through the whole song.
| | 03:47 | This is exactly the kind of song I
like to sink my teeth into for remixing.
| | 03:52 | Because this song incorporates the
same chord changes through basically the
| | 03:56 | entire song, I know that I can fairly
easily re-harmonize these if I choose to
| | 04:01 | do so, for a club mix setting.
| | 04:03 | In other words, there are no key
changes in this song, there aren't a whole
| | 04:07 | bunch of chord changes happening in
the course of the chorus or the verse of
| | 04:11 | the prechorus that will force me to have to
use those same chord changes in a club mix.
| | 04:16 | I'm going for a more minimal or static,
basically less musical changes. I would
| | 04:21 | like to have that option when doing a remix.
| | 04:24 | And as I listen to the original, I can
already tell, because of the repetition
| | 04:28 | of chords in the original, that I'll be able
to approach the club remix in a similar fashion.
| | 04:32 | For those of you who are trained
musicians, this mindset can sometimes be
| | 04:36 | elusive, because we are so used to making
our parts "musical" and melodic, not static.
| | 04:43 | But you have to keep in mind that the
end goal of a club remix is to get people
| | 04:47 | to dance and keep them dancing,
especially if the dance floor is already full.
| | 04:52 | It's a completely different setting
than listening to the radio in your car or
| | 04:55 | home, and it's actually very
important to spend some time in clubs prior to
| | 05:00 | working on remixing, so that you can
experience first-hand what the energy of a
| | 05:04 | packed dance floor feels like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Listening to stems and deciding on the musical direction| 00:01 | Just like the chapter on creating a radio
mix arrangement, it's time to import our stems.
| | 00:06 | In the case of this song, we only have
one stem, as you can see in the Audio
| | 00:10 | folder to the left, Dry_Vocal_128 bpm.
| | 00:14 | Before I import that stem, I will remove
the original version of the song, and I
| | 00:20 | will hit the Stop button, which
will return the cursor to measure 1.
| | 00:24 | Fortunately, in this scenario, the BPM
of the vocal was provided for me. Again,
| | 00:30 | referencing my course Remixing and
Techniques: Time Stretching, this vocal is the
| | 00:34 | end result of changing the
vocal from 6/8 time to 4/4.
| | 00:39 | Ableton automatically turns the Warp
marker on as I import the file, and I'm
| | 00:43 | going to turn it off, pull my Start
point all the way to the left, and this will
| | 00:48 | allow me to listen to the raw audio file.
| | 00:51 | It says it's at 128 BPM and I will
change my Tempo to 128.00 BPM, turn on the
| | 00:58 | metronome, and just have a listen, making
sure that everything sounds in beat.
| | 01:03 | Hitting the Stop button to return the
cursor to measure 1, and here we go.
| | 01:06 | (song playing)
| | 01:21 | Everything sounds in beat so far.
| | 01:23 | I'll hit the Tab button, go back to my
Clip view, and I am going to turn this
| | 01:28 | up a little bit. The vocal feels a little quiet
right now. Hit the tab button and I am back.
| | 01:34 | And I'll scan further up into the song,
just to make sure that everything stays
| | 01:38 | in time over the
several-minute duration of the song.
| | 01:41 | (song playing)
| | 02:08 | Excellent! Everything seems to be in order.
| | 02:11 | The vocal is truly locked to
grid at 120 beats per minute.
| | 02:14 | I'll turn the metronome off, and I'll
scan around the song just to listen to some
| | 02:19 | of the peaks and valleys of the vocal
performance and begin to think about what
| | 02:23 | I would like the musical
direction of my club mix to be.
| | 02:25 | (song playing)
| | 02:56 | So you can tell by looking at the
waveform, even if we didn't listen to anything,
| | 03:00 | there's a lot of space around this vocal.
There are no background vocals; it's
| | 03:04 | just a solitary lead vocal.
| | 03:06 | As I listen to this, the first
thoughts that come to my mind are something
| | 03:10 | spatial, somewhat textural, not
anything that's too hard or anthemic, but
| | 03:16 | something that just has a nice
almost melancholy-type texture to it.
| | 03:20 | And those are the first musical
ideas that pop into my head. Much like
| | 03:25 | working on a radio mix taking
inventory of the provided audio files, as well
| | 03:30 | as being 100% certain of the BPM of
the stems that were given to you, is
| | 03:35 | extremely important.
| | 03:36 | You always want to have a musical
game plan before you begin working on
| | 03:40 | your sketch arrangement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Time stretching stems and creating a sketch arrangement| 00:00 | I like to take care of all the
necessary time stretching before I lay down a
| | 00:05 | preliminary or sketch parts.
| | 00:07 | I'll turn Warping back on in Ableton
and now my audio file, my solitary Lead
| | 00:12 | Vocal, will follow my BPM change. Move
this up to 130, quickly check it with the
| | 00:18 | metronome, make sure everything is in order.
| | 00:20 | (song playing)
| | 00:35 | Excellent! I can turn the metronome off, rename my
track, and begin to bring in some drums.
| | 00:47 | One thing that I like to do is
actually not program kick drums using MIDI or a
| | 00:52 | sampler or anything like that.
| | 00:54 | I'll bring in three single-shot kick drums.
(music playing)
| | 00:57 | Which are basically just single hits.
| | 01:00 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | Bring in one, bring in the
next, and bring in the next.
| | 01:14 | And I essentially want to put a kick
drum on every downbeat: right here, right
| | 01:17 | here, right here, and right here;
it's 1, 2, 3, and 4. So, Option+Drag.
| | 01:23 | We have 1 bar. Do the same thing with
the second kick drum, and with the third.
| | 01:33 | Rename our tracks, resize the screen,
and I will quickly consolidate these into
| | 01:56 | 1 4-bar audio region. Okay.
| | 02:08 | Now, let's paste this all the way
through the song and begin to audition each
| | 02:21 | kick drum. Bring the volume down a
little bit and I'll start up into the song.
| | 02:29 | (song playing)
| | 02:38 | And I'll audition these as the song plays.
| | 02:40 | (song playing)
| | 03:11 | I like kick 3 the best. There is
something round and deep in the sound, and I
| | 03:15 | think that'll work the best with our vocal.
| | 03:17 | So, I can remove the first two kicks,
and we just have one kick, which I will
| | 03:25 | rename kick 1, so that there's
no confusion. Resize my vocal.
| | 03:30 | Now it's time to bring in a sketch bass line.
| | 03:34 | I'll create a new MIDI track, call it bass.
I'm using the Nexus 2 Audio Units plugin.
| | 03:46 | I am very familiar with this plugin, so
I'll move right to a bass sound that
| | 03:52 | I believe will work.
| | 03:53 | In the Bass category, here's Deltabass.
| | 03:58 | (music playing)
| | 04:01 | I like this bass sound because it has attack,
a little bit of body, and it's not muddy-sounding.
| | 04:06 | I'll set up my metronome. I can create a
count-in by right-clicking--it's already
| | 04:11 | set to 1 Bar--and I'll begin by double-
checking the Record Quantization, which I
| | 04:16 | have set the Sixteenth-Note so that as
I play, my MIDI data will be quantized.
| | 04:21 | Since I already know the original chord
changes of the original song, it helps
| | 04:27 | me in determining what chord changes
I will most likely use for this mix.
| | 04:31 | I am looking for something that has a
bit of mood and vibe to it, something
| | 04:35 | that's a little melancholy that will work
with the vocal and support the vocal.
| | 04:39 | At the end of the day when I work on a
club remix, I almost want it to feel like
| | 04:44 | the singer cut their vocals or
recorded their vocals to my track.
| | 04:47 | So, I go for that sort of
relationship between the music that I create
| | 04:52 | underneath the vocal, the song, the
song structure--just basically capturing
| | 04:57 | some amount of integrity of the
original song, so that people might not even
| | 05:00 | that this is a remix.
| | 05:02 | (song playing)
| | 05:24 | Let's take a quick listen to that and
make sure that everything is in beat, turn
| | 05:31 | the loop play on, bring the
playhead back to measure 3.
| | 05:35 | (music playing)
Turn the click off.
| | 05:41 | (song playing)
| | 05:52 | Turn this back so that we have a perfect
8-bar loop and paste it throughout the song.
| | 05:59 | Now you'll notice that I played the
bass line in before adding any other drums
| | 06:03 | beside the kick drum.
| | 06:04 | Now it's time to bring in what
I would call a top-end loop.
| | 06:08 | So, I'll look in our Exercise File
folder. And I have some loops from my own
| | 06:12 | personal library, joshharris_dance_
volume1 and Joshharis_drums_volume1, and these
| | 06:17 | are all royalty-free loops that I
created several years ago that have helped me
| | 06:21 | with my workflow, because I have a lot
of loops here that don't have kick drums
| | 06:25 | in them and I can quickly bring them
into sessions and get up and running.
| | 06:29 | (music playing)
| | 06:45 | I'll bring this loop in.
I like the way this sounds.
| | 06:48 | I think it's got space in it. It should
help the vocal breathe a bit. I'll rename
| | 06:53 | this top 1, for top loop 1, move the
track, and copy and paste this throughout
| | 07:01 | the entire arrangement, pull the volume
down a little bit, and let's scan around
| | 07:12 | the song and just see how it sounds.
| | 07:14 | (song playing)
| | 07:19 | Let's take that back a little bit.
| | 07:21 | (song playing)
| | 07:29 | I can see that I made a mistake in my
pasting right here. I was a little bit
| | 07:34 | hasty, so I'll redo this.
| | 07:46 | (song playing)
Bring this back to the beginning.
| | 07:50 | (song playing)
| | 08:05 | And the same thing happened when I
pasted the bass line, so you can see I've
| | 08:09 | accidentally trimmed too much off.
| | 08:12 | So, let's correct that. Let's see
if that takes cares of the problem.
| | 08:17 | We can move up further into
the song and we will know.
| | 08:20 | (song playing)
| | 08:33 | That sounds in order.
| | 08:34 | Now let's add one more keyboard part
to give us some chord definition, add
| | 08:39 | another MIDI track, go back to
Nexus, and I'll move into the Plucked
| | 08:45 | category. These are sounds that have short
attacks and have a punchiness to their character.
| | 08:54 | (music playing)
| | 08:56 | And there is our sound.
Take it back to the beginning.
| | 08:59 | (song playing)
| | 09:11 | I'll redo that because I need to play
that an octave higher on my keyboard.
| | 09:15 | (song playing)
| | 09:40 | Excellent! Trim up the font, trim them back.
We have an 8-bar MIDI region. Copy and paste
| | 09:50 | that throughout arrangement of the song.
And I can see something is not quite
| | 09:57 | right, because it doesn't line up with my bass.
| | 10:00 | So, let's undo that and take a closer
look. And I can see in this is not exactly--
| | 10:07 | there we go--now it's exact.
| | 10:08 | I'll continue pasting.
| | 10:14 | That looks better. Rename this pluck 1 and
let's take a listen. We'll scan around the song.
| | 10:20 | (song playing)
| | 10:42 | I hope this shows you just how
important working out a sketch arrangement is.
| | 10:46 | Certain bass lines and grooves feel
better at certain BPMs than others.
| | 10:51 | We may have only pushed this track up
2 beats per minute, but 2 beats per minute
| | 10:56 | can make a difference.
| | 10:57 | Remember that with full vocal
remixes the main goal is to support the
| | 11:01 | vocal with your track,
| | 11:02 | so spending a few minutes
experimenting with different ideas, much like we did
| | 11:06 | in this movie, is extremely important.
| | 11:09 | As I move forward, I now have a bass
and drum groove that I know works, and I'm
| | 11:14 | not going to be fumbling around
later on down the road and backtracking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Developing the drums and bass| 00:01 | Now that we have our sketch arrangement
in order, let's dive in and develop the
| | 00:04 | drums and bass a bit further.
| | 00:07 | Go back to my Exercise File
folder and audition a few more loops.
| | 00:11 | (music playing)
I like this loop.
| | 00:22 | What I'm looking for at this point is
something that has a bit of movement to
| | 00:25 | it, that will help pulse the
track a little bit, give it a bounce.
| | 00:28 | I'll bring this loop in. And we'll call
this top 2, move it here. And visually I
| | 00:39 | want to move this kick drum over so
that everything looks even, and I'll
| | 00:53 | actually trim the vocal a little bit too.
| | 00:56 | Whenever possible, I like to do this bit
of housekeeping as I build the arrangement.
| | 01:02 | It just streamlines the workflow process.
| | 01:04 | When you see something you can
quickly edit, move, shift around,
| | 01:08 | you take care of it then and there.
| | 01:10 | So now I'll move this back. We'll
just take listen to this loop, copy and
| | 01:18 | paste it for about 16, 24 bars, and
take a listen to it from the beginning.
| | 01:24 | (music playing)
| | 01:41 | That's working nicely.
| | 01:42 | I don't know that we're going to
have it in the verse, but it's working
| | 01:45 | nicely with the vocal.
| | 01:46 | So I'll leave that in.
| | 01:48 | And just go through a couple of more of
these to see if there is another loop I
| | 01:51 | might want to add, or if it's time to
just shift gears and program a little bit
| | 01:55 | of drums via MIDI on top.
| | 01:58 | (music playing)
| | 02:16 | I'll bring this loop in, just as an extra.
It might be a good one to throw on top of
| | 02:20 | the chorus for just that extra bit of movement.
| | 02:22 | I'll call this top 3, place it up here,
and I'll copy and paste these throughout
| | 02:33 | the entire arrangement.
| | 02:34 | One of the things that I like to do
with arranging club music is to almost take
| | 02:40 | a hip-hop approach and copy and paste
things throughout the entire song, and then
| | 02:44 | do what's called mute arranging, or
just delete things as I don't need them.
| | 02:49 | So let's take an enlarged view of the
vocals, just so that I have an idea of
| | 02:53 | where I am in the song,
because there is so much space.
| | 02:56 | And I'm going to Select All right now.
| | 02:58 | I'd like all my audio clips to
start firing right at measure 5.
| | 03:02 | I like the way that looks.
| | 03:03 | So we've got three drum loops on top
of a kick drum, and we know we're not
| | 03:09 | going to be using those for the whole
song, so I'll quickly listen through the
| | 03:13 | song. And this is not a
straightforward verse-chorus song; the chorus is sort
| | 03:17 | of a subtle chorus.
| | 03:18 | So where I hear the chorus is
"I'm waiting, waiting in the road."
| | 03:21 | For now I'll mute out the top two loops,
and I'm going to do a quick edit on the first loop.
| | 03:30 | There is a little bit of noise in this loop.
| | 03:33 | (music playing)
| | 03:35 | Right there. I want to
take that out of the verse;
| | 03:38 | I don't think it's appropriate.
| | 03:39 | I'll splice the file and take this
section out and then replace it with what was
| | 03:47 | going on just a few beats before.
| | 03:49 | So now let's listen.
| | 03:50 | (music playing)
| | 03:58 | So I like the way that sounds. It it's a
little bit cleaner. There is space for the vocal.
| | 04:03 | I'll bring this back. Now we have a
2-bar drum loop. And I'll consolidate these
| | 04:07 | regions into a new region, begin to delete
what I don't need, and map this out a little bit.
| | 04:17 | (music playing)
| | 04:48 | That's what I'm going to call a chorus.
| | 04:50 | So, at this point, let's have a second
loop come in. We'll have our loop 2, top 2.
| | 04:58 | And let's just quickly go to a
couple of bars before that section.
| | 05:01 | (music playing)
| | 05:11 | That's nice! That loop picks it up a bit and
actually, at this point, let's bring in the
| | 05:19 | version A of our top one, that has
that little bit of noise in there that we
| | 05:22 | caught out just a few minutes ago.
| | 05:24 | (music playing)
| | 05:31 | It's the subtleties that make the
difference when it comes to arranging.
| | 05:35 | So what we just did here is we
edited our audio loop so that the loop is
| | 05:40 | slightly different in the verses, and
then it returns to what it was when we
| | 05:45 | originally brought it into the session
at the chorus, and I work my way through.
| | 05:49 | (music playing)
| | 06:04 | There's verse 2. So I'll just grab
these, and I'll just delete a little more
| | 06:11 | over here to give myself some room.
| | 06:13 | So I'm almost arranging on the fly a little bit.
| | 06:15 | As I listen to this song, I'm quickly
making edits, adding and dropping things,
| | 06:20 | and this is the groove that you'd
like to be in eventually when it comes to
| | 06:23 | arranging: just making these snap
decisions as you're hearing things.
| | 06:26 | (music playing)
| | 07:01 | Okay. So I'll bring this loop back in, and I'll
add, since we're now in chorus 2, top 3.
| | 07:09 | Now, I don't know what it sounds like
yet; it may be a little redundant, but
| | 07:13 | we'll take a quick listen, and
probably we'll pull it down.
| | 07:15 | I don't want there to be too
much hi-hat happening in the mix.
| | 07:19 | (music playing)
| | 07:32 | There is a little something happening
in the back of that loop that I like,
| | 07:37 | a little bit of splashiness that I think
adds some nice frequencies on the chorus.
| | 07:41 | So chorus 2 I'd like to be a little
bit different than chorus 1. That's what
| | 07:46 | we're doing here by adding the third
loop at chorus 2 and just listening on.
| | 07:50 | (music playing)
| | 08:22 | Continuing on.
(music playing)
| | 08:39 | So now I'll just delete all this
copying and pasting that I did a few minutes
| | 08:43 | ago, now that I'm beginning to
build an arrangement in the drums.
| | 08:46 | And the bass is working for me.
| | 08:49 | Now that I'm hearing it with some drum
arrangement in progress this far into the
| | 08:53 | song, the bass is working.
| | 08:54 | I actually don't think the
bass line needs to change.
| | 08:56 | I believe it can be this 8-bar
figure that just repeats the whole song.
| | 09:00 | The drums and other keyboard elements
are going to change as the arrangement
| | 09:04 | unfolds, and that will give it some
variety from section to section. So, moving on.
| | 09:08 | (music playing)
| | 09:21 | I'll probably leave this just like this for now.
| | 09:23 | (music playing)
| | 09:43 | I'll bring back to verse drums.
| | 09:44 | (music playing)
| | 09:57 | Bringing these drums in.
(music playing)
| | 10:40 | I'm going to delete that out there.
Save these extra drums for this section.
| | 10:44 | (music playing)
| | 10:56 | As you can see, in just several minutes
we were able to knock out the majority of
| | 11:00 | the drum arrangement, and as the rest
of the arrangement unfolds and I add
| | 11:03 | keyboard parts, I will then go back and
fill in some of the holes that I've left
| | 11:07 | deliberately in the current drum arrangement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding synths| 00:01 | Now it's time to add
some additional synth parts.
| | 00:03 | I'll begin by adding the texture--
synth pads, things of that nature.
| | 00:08 | Create a new MIDI track. And I will
move towards some of Ableton's built-in
| | 00:14 | synth sounds for this portion.
| | 00:17 | Right away I'll move to the Synth Pad
folder and this Amped sound, just by
| | 00:24 | its name alone, is intriguing to me, so I'm
bringing this in, and take a listen to it.
| | 00:32 | (music playing)
| | 00:36 | It's a very vibey spatial sound. I like it.
| | 00:39 | (music playing)
| | 00:45 | Go ahead and lay that in.
| | 00:48 | And I'll start right round the first chorus.
| | 00:51 | (music playing)
| | 01:19 | That works. It almost has a
Brian Eno-type vibe, which I like.
| | 01:24 | And again, a nice 8-bar
region here to work with.
| | 01:27 | And I already know that's a chorus part,
and I'll quickly distribute that to the
| | 01:31 | other chorus sections of the
song, and taking a quick listen.
| | 01:39 | (music playing)
| | 01:54 | Excellent! I like the sound, but I'm going to
apply a very cool remixing technique that
| | 01:59 | you actually hear in quite a few songs, even
on the radio today: side chaining a compressor.
| | 02:05 | So the first thing I do is I go into the
Audio Effects folder and I choose Compressor.
| | 02:19 | And I open it up so that I have the
ability to get into some of these other
| | 02:23 | parameters, and I'll turn on the Sidechain.
| | 02:26 | Then I'll create an extra audio
track, which I will call kick trigger.
| | 02:31 | Now, there are several ways to do this, but I
feel that this actually makes the most sense.
| | 02:39 | I'll copy and paste the kick drum
onto the kick trigger track, mute the kick
| | 02:43 | trigger track, go back to the pad
track that we just added, and select kick
| | 02:50 | trigger as the Input
source to trigger the sidechain.
| | 02:53 | So now what's going to happen is the
kick drum that's playing every quarter note
| | 02:57 | is going to pump the compressor,
and the pad will respond accordingly.
| | 03:01 | (music playing)
| | 03:03 | We'll go right up to the
chorus so we can hear it.
| | 03:06 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | And as we solo it out, we can hear it.
It has a pumping breathing effect. Pretty cool!
| | 03:24 | It adds a little bit of
rhythm to the track, pulses it.
| | 03:27 | Unsolo that. And now I'll
just fill in some holes here.
| | 03:34 | I like what the bass is doing, but I
think there could be some more movement, so
| | 03:38 | I'll create another MIDI track.
| | 03:39 | Go into the Synth
Rhythmic and choose Bass Groove.
| | 03:46 | Just to hear what this is doing.
| | 03:47 | (music playing)
It's like an arpeggiated bass sound.
| | 03:52 | (music playing)
| | 03:53 | It's a little bit low.
Let's move it up an octave.
| | 03:55 | (music playing)
| | 04:02 | I'll just play that in and see how that feels.
| | 04:06 | But I'll do this on the verses.
| | 04:08 | It's not something I only want for the choruses.
| | 04:10 | I'll go back to measure 5,
and do our 1-bar count in.
| | 04:16 | (music playing)
| | 04:34 | Let's trim that region up there.
And I need to bring this back because it's
| | 04:40 | actually pretty loud and
it's kind of in the way.
| | 04:43 | So let's quickly loop this 8-bar
section here and play it from measure 5.
| | 04:51 | (music playing)
| | 05:13 | Bring it back that much, because I just want
to actually feel it more than I can hear it.
| | 05:18 | So let's take the loop play-off and copy
and paste this throughout the whole song.
| | 05:25 | We may drop it out, but for now
we'll paste it throughout the whole song.
| | 05:29 | Let's add another layer.
| | 05:31 | Let's add a layer to this pad.
| | 05:33 | I like this pad here, but I think it could
be a little bit thicker; it can be enhanced.
| | 05:38 | (music playing)
| | 05:46 | So I'll create another
track, and this is very easy.
| | 05:49 | We'll select another pad sound.
| | 05:55 | I'll go into the Synthetic Voice folder,
look for something that almost has like
| | 05:59 | a choir-type sound, and
Additive Choir, double-click on that.
| | 06:03 | We'll listen to it.
(music playing)
| | 06:08 | Now, that sound doesn't sound so cool
on its own, but what we're going to do
| | 06:12 | is copy and paste the MIDI from the other
pad part down to this track and create a layer.
| | 06:18 | This is something I like to do to
thicken and just create different textures.
| | 06:24 | Now, what we'll also do is add the
compressor, just like we did on the other pad
| | 06:30 | track, and choose Compressor.
| | 06:34 | Open up the parameters, choose
Sidechain, and assign kick trigger.
| | 06:38 | I'll need to lower the threshold to
actually engage the compressor, because
| | 06:42 | right now it's all the way up at the top.
| | 06:44 | (music playing)
| | 06:56 | Now, I like that, but it's an octave too low.
| | 07:01 | So I'll erase what I pasted,
double-click on these notes here, and we can see the
| | 07:06 | MIDI data, and highlight them,
and move them up an octave.
| | 07:17 | And I know that my first note was G, and you
can see on the side there, the piano roll.
| | 07:22 | That should do it. Taking a listen.
| | 07:26 | (music playing)
| | 07:37 | Something didn't move correctly there,
so I'm going to undo that, and I can see
| | 07:40 | that my notes moved.
| | 07:43 | So again, you have to be careful
when doing some of this editing that
| | 07:46 | things stay in place.
| | 07:48 | I'll just do Select All and move this up to D4.
| | 07:58 | Let's take another listen.
| | 07:59 | (music playing)
| | 08:15 | Excellent! That sounds much better.
| | 08:19 | Copy and paste this to the other choruses.
| | 08:21 | So I'll leave the MIDI notes
area, go back to my vocal here.
| | 08:28 | Resize the screen a little bit.
| | 08:32 | And actually, at this juncture,
I'll very quickly put the vocal in some sort of
| | 08:37 | context, as far as adding a quick
delay to it. And actually, I'll add a
| | 08:42 | compressor to it as well, just
something very basic. Turn my sends up.
| | 08:49 | Throw a reverb on Return A and a
delay on Return B, just so that we're not
| | 08:58 | listening to a dry, boring vocal.
| | 09:00 | I like Filter Delay. And I'll
set this so that it has kind of an
| | 09:07 | interesting rhythm to it.
I'll just quickly take a listen to the vocal.
| | 09:10 | (music playing)
| | 09:14 | I'll turn the metronome off.
| | 09:16 | (music playing)
| | 09:22 | It gives a little depth to the vocal, so,
putting everything back in the mix. There we go.
| | 09:30 | (music playing)
| | 09:41 | Obviously, when I mix it for real I'll
clean that up a little bit, but that just
| | 09:44 | gives us a little bit of context.
| | 09:46 | Again, the delay's echo adds a little
bit of rhythm and pulse into the track.
| | 09:49 | So now we have more or less the
synths that we're going to use in the song.
| | 09:54 | One thing I'm going to add in the next
movie is what I would call a hype, but
| | 09:58 | right now you can see that as with the
drums, it just took a few minutes to add
| | 10:01 | some parts, do some layering, do some
transposition, and all of a sudden we have
| | 10:05 | a pretty full sounding
arrangement that's unfolding.
| | 10:08 | Now that we have a few foundational
synth parts in place, you can really hear
| | 10:12 | the arrangement coming together.
| | 10:14 | I generally like to leave my synth
parts as MIDI all the way up through
| | 10:18 | the final mix down.
| | 10:20 | The one disclaimer is if I am
working on a laptop and using CPU-intensive
| | 10:24 | sounds, at which point I will print
them as audio and just bring them back
| | 10:28 | into the session.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working from the hype backwards| 00:00 | The hype section of a club remix
is designed to excite the crowd.
| | 00:04 | Sometimes it is 8 bars, sometimes it
is 16 bars, and generally it's a keyboard
| | 00:09 | sound, some sort of a lead line or
arpeggiated synth line in the higher register
| | 00:14 | that has an exciting feel to it.
| | 00:16 | I'll add a MIDI track, go back to
Nexus, and in the Arpeggios category, I will
| | 00:25 | choose Phantasmic Sequence.
| | 00:31 | (music playing)
| | 00:38 | I like that sound; that has a nice energy to it and the
effects are great, the delays and the reverb.
| | 00:44 | So I'll punch in at the chorus, and
typically the hype, for me, is not always the
| | 00:50 | chorus; sometimes it's the 8 bars after
the chorus or it might be 8 bars into a
| | 00:54 | long chorus, like in the case of this song.
| | 00:57 | So let's just start the track at this
double chorus here at measure 45, and I
| | 01:03 | will play in a part where
I feel it should come in.
| | 01:05 | (music playing)
| | 01:38 | We'll trim this so that it's a perfect
8-bar region, and I will turn it down a
| | 01:44 | little bit, as well as
renaming the track. I'll call it hype arp 1.
| | 01:53 | Go back and take a listen to it.
(music playing)
| | 02:12 | I like that. That works. Copy and paste that and
distribute that into the other chorus sections.
| | 02:20 | Since the first chorus is only 8 bars
long, I'm not going to copy and paste it
| | 02:26 | over to this section of the
arrangement, but rather leave it for the second
| | 02:29 | chorus and the third chorus, and
actually have a come it in on the very last
| | 02:34 | chorus, just for little bit of variety.
| | 02:37 | Now, in the spirit of layering and
creating more depth, I'm going to add another
| | 02:41 | MIDI track and see if there's
another arpeggiated pattern that might work
| | 02:47 | as a supplemental sound.
| | 02:49 | (music playing)
| | 02:56 | I like this first sound, After Midnight.
| | 03:00 | So I'll copy and paste the MIDI from the
track above it and call this hype arp layer.
| | 03:07 | And we'll just solo these
out and take a listen to them.
| | 03:12 | Blend them together so that
they sound like one sound.
| | 03:16 | (music playing)
| | 03:43 | That's a nice layer.
| | 03:44 | It adds a little bit of thickness, to the
hype arp 1, just a little bit of that
| | 03:49 | what I call front to back depth.
And there is definitely a lot of energy
| | 03:53 | going on right now. The vocal is at its peak.
| | 03:56 | And this is exactly what the hype section
should be, the exciting part of the arrangement.
| | 04:01 | It doesn't matter if it happens once or
twice; it's just that payoff moment. And so
| | 04:06 | as you work through the rest of your
arrangement, it's important that everything
| | 04:10 | leads up to this moment.
| | 04:12 | And so constructing and deconstructing
is really the guiding principle here,
| | 04:17 | when it comes to working
through a club arrangement.
| | 04:21 | And as you'll see in the next movie,
we will fill in the holes and finish
| | 04:25 | off the arrangement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Arranging the rest of the song| 00:01 | Now it's time to fill in the holes of
the arrangement, as well as creating an
| | 00:04 | intro and an outro.
| | 00:06 | A club mix is generally 5-7 minutes in
length and should take the listener on a journey.
| | 00:12 | So now I'll work through each
instrument section--drums, bass, keyboards--as
| | 00:16 | well as add some vocal samples to create some
ear candy and special moments in the arrangement.
| | 00:22 | You won't be able to follow along
with me step by step, but you will get an
| | 00:26 | overview of how to
complete this part of the process.
| | 00:29 | (music playing)
| | 01:06 | Now that we have a completely finished
arrangement, I'll spend a few minutes
| | 01:10 | taking you on a tour of what I added.
| | 01:12 | We will start at the vocal.
| | 01:14 | I cut out a word, just a syllable
actually of the word waiting, and I created what
| | 01:20 | I call a vocal sample or vox chop--that
is my nickname for it--and I will solo
| | 01:26 | this out so you can take a
listen to what it sounds like.
| | 01:29 | I cut out just the wait of the word
waiting and I placed it on the and of the beat.
| | 01:35 | And then I consolidated 8
bars of it into one audio file.
| | 01:40 | And here it is, from the beginning.
| | 01:41 | (music playing)
| | 01:46 | And you can see, the delay has a
rhythm and then I filtered the delay, so the
| | 01:53 | echo has a darkness to it.
(audio playing)
| | 01:58 | And that runs underneath the lead vocal
and we listen to the lead vocal and the
| | 02:04 | vox chop together in the chorus and
| | 02:06 | it is a pretty cool combination.
| | 02:07 | (music playing)
| | 02:29 | It's a nice bit of ear candy that just sits
underneath the vocal. It has some rhythm
| | 02:33 | to it so it does help pulse
the track along. Unsolo those.
| | 02:38 | Next up are crash symbols and drum
fills and what I call sfx, sound effects,
| | 02:44 | sweeps, things of that nature.
| | 02:45 | So you will notice that when the
track starts as a crash symbol at the
| | 02:49 | very beginning, and I continue it for almost
every 8 bars throughout the whole arrangement.
| | 02:53 | This is nice. It's a splash of frequencies on
the downbeat of a new section.
| | 02:57 | (music playing)
| | 03:08 | And I also created an intro and an outro, and
the first verse of song begins at measure 33.
| | 03:13 | So let's take a listen to the buildup
to what I would call the drop, right
| | 03:18 | before verse 1 begins.
| | 03:19 | (music playing)
| | 03:50 | So what I did is I created an 8-bar
moment, a hype section if you will, using
| | 03:55 | the hype sound that I
programmed in a couple of movies back.
| | 03:59 | So no new keyboard parts have been added.
| | 04:01 | Things have just been redistributed, and
I've added higher-end frequencies like
| | 04:06 | crash cymbals and white-noise-type
sweeps to help build tension and release in
| | 04:10 | different sections of the song.
| | 04:12 | I also cut up some of the kick drum file
to create these kick fills, along with a
| | 04:18 | clap here at what I would
consider to be apex of the song.
| | 04:22 | (music playing)
| | 04:50 | And you can hear that I added a ride
cymbal in the last chorus, just to add
| | 04:54 | another set of frequencies on top.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:08 | So the idea behind working in this
arrangement was to create seamless sections.
| | 05:13 | In other words, one section seamlessly
leads into the next, into the next, into
| | 05:17 | the next, from start to finish.
| | 05:19 | There is no moments that feel choppy or
no sections that don't feel like they
| | 05:22 | belong next one another.
| | 05:24 | So I hope this gives you some insight
into how to work your way through a club
| | 05:29 | mix from the shell--the sketch, the blueprint--
| | 05:32 | add parts, begin to feel in the holes,
and then finesse it until the arrangement
| | 05:37 | makes sense from start to finish.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Creating a Radio Edit from a Club MixTrimming down the club version| 00:00 | What you're looking at are the
exported stems from the club mix that was
| | 00:04 | created in Ableton Live.
| | 00:06 | I decided to export the stems and
create the radio edit of the club arrangement
| | 00:10 | and logic because over the years I've
had projects come across my desk where an
| | 00:15 | artist needs to club mix edited for
radio and they feel confident in their own
| | 00:19 | abilities to do it, so they
reach out for outside help.
| | 00:23 | In other words, don't feel that you
have to be in any specific DAW to create a
| | 00:28 | radio edit from stems that were
created in a club mix in another program.
| | 00:33 | As long as you have all the files
starting at the same point and you are able to
| | 00:37 | line them up in your DAW of choice,
then you simply go in and edit, as we are
| | 00:41 | about to do with this song.
| | 00:43 | I'll double-check and make sure that
everything is lined up in measure 1, and
| | 00:46 | right away I realize that this
hype main sound is 1 bar off,
| | 00:50 | so I need to adjust that. And I'll zoom
in on the Lead Vocal track so that I can
| | 00:55 | see where verse 1 starts: measure 33.
| | 01:00 | I'll place the playhead there, shrink
the screen, and I will insert an edit point
| | 01:05 | using my Scissors tool.
| | 01:06 | What I am doing is identifying where the
song starts, and I'll do the same at the
| | 01:14 | end here where the vocal ends: 161.
| | 01:15 | Shrink the screen, highlight, and there we go.
| | 01:26 | So this is our outro from the club mix
and this is our intro from the club mix.
| | 01:32 | And I like to take
advantage of color coding things,
| | 01:36 | so I will do that here.
| | 01:37 | As you can see, the blue is the body of
the song, and that's essentially what we
| | 01:43 | are going to be working
with for our radio arrangement.
| | 01:46 | If I place the playhead here at measure
33 and I look down at the transport, I
| | 01:50 | can see that the song is already 1
minute in, and as a place the playhead over
| | 01:54 | here at 161 and I see that that
time is 4 minutes and 55 seconds,
| | 01:58 | I am working within almost a
four-minute window for a radio edit.
| | 02:02 | It's a little bit on the long side, but
remember that a radio edit of a club mix
| | 02:07 | takes on a little bit of a
different feel than just a radio mix.
| | 02:11 | So next I'll mute these
regions on the intro and outro,
| | 02:17 | and I simply play the
song, starting at measure 33.
| | 02:19 | Now I know this edit is not clean, and
I'll need to create some sort of an intro
| | 02:24 | or a lead-in before verse 1 starts, but
that's okay. I'll come back to that in a minute.
| | 02:28 | The point of this movie is to identify
where the intro and outro start and end
| | 02:33 | and look at the duration of time that
you're able to trim off by muting them and
| | 02:37 | taking a look at the body of the song.
| | 02:40 | Now, I'm leaving the body of the song
at measure 33 and I'm not moving it yet,
| | 02:45 | because in the event that I need to go
back to any of these regions or do any
| | 02:49 | additional editing to clean up my
edit points, I want to be able to take
| | 02:54 | advantage of the full stem of the file.
| | 02:56 | In other words, if I get rid of this and
I shove all of this over to the left, I
| | 03:04 | am merely going to have to move all
that over to the right to create my intro.
| | 03:09 | As you'll see in subsequent movies,
as we begin to dial in the final arrangement
| | 03:13 | for the radio edit, I will move the body
of the song over to the left and closer
| | 03:18 | to the start point of the session, so
that we can get a more accurate handle on
| | 03:22 | how long the radio edit is in length.
| | 03:25 | But for now, let's leave all of these
files as they sat in the full, longer
| | 03:30 | club arrangement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Identifying arrangement changes within the body of the song| 00:00 | Let's spend a few minutes listening
through the track from our new start point,
| | 00:04 | and identifying the sections
that will require some editing.
| | 00:08 | This part of the process is sometimes
overlooked by remixers, resulting in radio
| | 00:12 | edits that contain unnecessary sections.
| | 00:16 | Now, because these stems were bounced
out with all of the faders in Ableton
| | 00:20 | Live at 0 DB, there will be some
volume adjustments that I'll make as we're
| | 00:25 | listening through, so you'll see me
toggling back and forth between the mixer
| | 00:29 | and the Arrange window.
| | 00:31 | (music playing)
| | 01:26 | Because I'm familiar with the song, I
know that I don't want to cut out anything
| | 01:29 | in the first part of it, but towards
the end here there might be a section or
| | 01:32 | two that I can trim down or remove
that will help trim down the time.
| | 01:37 | Remember, we're sitting in around 4
minutes before the intro is even worked out,
| | 01:41 | because I'm not going to start
the arrangement just like this.
| | 01:44 | (music playing)
| | 01:46 | There needs to be at least a 4-bar
build into that section, maybe an 8-bar
| | 01:50 | build, if at the end of the arranging
process we find ourselves with enough time
| | 01:53 | to incorporate that.
| | 01:55 | So right up here I can see that I have
this 16-bar drop section in the club mix.
| | 02:00 | That's the first section of the song
that I zoom in on after I mute out the club
| | 02:04 | intro and outro. So from 97 to
113, let's take a listen to this.
| | 02:09 | (music playing)
| | 02:43 | I feel confident cutting out
this drop section, along with verse 3.
| | 02:47 | Now, again, you have to feel this out.
It's somewhat of an internal thing.
| | 02:52 | You're listening through, you're
asking yourself, do I need this, do I need
| | 02:56 | this, do I need this?
| | 02:57 | Can I somehow streamline or compact
this 5-6 minute arrangement from the club
| | 03:02 | down into a 3.5 minute radio edit.
| | 03:05 | So the very first thing I'll do as I
begin to remove sections from within the
| | 03:09 | body of the song is highlight everything,
and then I'll go back up to the vocal,
| | 03:15 | and I'll use my scissors, and this I
believe is where the last chorus begins.
| | 03:23 | (music playing)
| | 03:29 | So all of this is going to be removed.
| | 03:37 | Remember, it's nondestructive editing,
so if something doesn't sound right, I can
| | 03:40 | always undo it and bring
it back to the way it was.
| | 03:43 | Slide this over, and now let's take a listen.
| | 03:47 | Again, I will clean up these edit
points. Because the vocal is being chopped,
| | 03:50 | there is a pickup note.
| | 03:52 | (music playing)
| | 04:09 | So let's address that issue right now.
| | 04:12 | Zoom back in on the vocal. And all I
need to do is trim this region to the left
| | 04:18 | and then bring this region over a
little bit more. And I'll look at the edit
| | 04:22 | points on other tracks to see if
something looks like it's chopped:
| | 04:25 | the Reverse Crash perhaps--just to be safe--
| | 04:30 | the SFX definitely.
| | 04:35 | So I'm merely expanding and contracting
audio regions so that none of the audio
| | 04:42 | is being cut off at this edit point.
| | 04:45 | So let's take a listen now.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
| | 05:09 | And I'll scan up here to the end.
| | 05:11 | Then I can already see that the vocal is
getting cut off here at 121, so I'll unmute that.
| | 05:16 | And again, going back to the previous
movie, this is why I didn't delete the
| | 05:20 | intro and outro audio regions, because
you never know what you might want to
| | 05:24 | pull from as you begin to condense
this club mix into a radio edit. So it's a
| | 05:30 | lot easier on the editor to have all
of the audio files and their regions
| | 05:34 | available at any time
during this part of the process.
| | 05:38 | (music playing)
Okay, so that vocal is no longer chopped.
| | 05:44 | And I think that I'm going to extend
this section 8 bars here, so I'll take this
| | 05:47 | all the way up to measure 129, and I'll
highlight all of these files and create
| | 05:54 | another edit point. And let's take a listen.
| | 05:56 | (music playing)
Now I need to unmute them.
| | 06:03 | (music playing)
| | 06:20 | Okay, I like that build, but I'm not
going to end the arrangement that cold.
| | 06:25 | There needs to be a crash cymbal or
something, and I can already see I have a
| | 06:31 | crash cymbal right here. And I can
merely cut that, unmute that region, and
| | 06:36 | let's take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 06:38 | Okay, that should be in there,
and I can now go to the SFX.
| | 06:46 | The SFX carryover might be enough for
this transition into the ending to work.
| | 06:51 | (music playing)
| | 06:57 | Okay, so there are some instruments
here that have some delays, and we can just
| | 07:01 | unmute these and see how it sounds now.
| | 07:04 | (music playing)
| | 07:10 | I think I'll take that crash cymbal out.
I'm not crazy about those frequencies
| | 07:13 | there at the very end.
(music playing)
| | 07:20 | That's great! And I know when I actually mix this I
can take care of this SFX right here and
| | 07:27 | fade the SFX track down a little bit
so that the ending isn't hanging over.
| | 07:32 | (music playing)
| | 07:36 | The decay of that SFX track is a little
bit long, but I'll come back to that later.
| | 07:41 | Now let's focus on the intro.
| | 07:45 | I'll unmute these tracks. But actually,
before I unmute them I'll create an edit
| | 07:50 | point at measure 25, because I
generally like an 8-bar intro on a radio edit.
| | 07:54 | That's just something that I
prefer. It's a personal preference.
| | 07:56 | Some people do 4. It's not right or
wrong; it's what makes sense for the
| | 08:00 | arrangement. And let's take a listen.
| | 08:01 | (music playing)
| | 08:26 | That intro is working for me, except
I'm not crazy about this crash cymbal, so
| | 08:30 | I will pull this region over to the right
a little bit, and let's take another listen.
| | 08:36 | (music playing)
| | 08:47 | Much better! Now I'm going to double-check and make
sure that I'm within that 3 minutes and
| | 08:51 | 15 seconds to 3:45-4 minute time period that
I like to fall within when I do a radio edit.
| | 08:58 | So here is a great way to double-check
and make sure that you're not imagining
| | 09:02 | your radio edit is longer or
shorter than it actually is:
| | 09:06 | Act as if you're going to bounce this
to disk, and you simply select the range,
| | 09:10 | which I've done for measure 25, all the
way up here to the end at 133, And I can
| | 09:14 | see that down here in the transport.
| | 09:17 | I'll hit Bounce and I can see 3
minutes and 19 seconds. Perfect. That's a
| | 09:22 | wonderful amount of time for a radio edit!
| | 09:25 | Radio edits are meant to be short and
to the point, so don't feel compelled to
| | 09:29 | hang on to elements from the club mix
that really don't have a purpose in the
| | 09:32 | shorter arrangement.
| | 09:34 | Again, wait until you have zeroed in on
exactly what your arrangement is going
| | 09:38 | to be before you begin to delete
some of these audio regions that you no
| | 09:42 | longer need.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Listening through the final arrangement| 00:00 | It's time to listen through the radio
edit from start to finish, paying careful
| | 00:04 | attention to the sections that have been edited.
| | 00:07 | I like to double- and triple-check these
sections for any pops, clicks, missing
| | 00:11 | crash cymbals, or things of that nature.
| | 00:14 | At this time I will remove the intro and outer
regions from the club mix that we no longer need.
| | 00:21 | Select all and move
everything over to Measure 1.
| | 00:25 | As we listen through, keep in mind
that we are not listening to a final mix;
| | 00:30 | what we are listening to is a final arrangement.
| | 00:34 | So we are simply listening through to
make sure that all the parts that we want
| | 00:38 | in this radio edit are there, and that
there is a seamless flow at each edit
| | 00:42 | point that I created in the previous movie.
| | 00:44 | (song playing)
| | 04:02 | Excellent! I am happy with all of that. The one
thing that caught me right here is I think
| | 04:08 | it would be a better ending if I
copied and pasted in this clap pattern that
| | 04:15 | happens at measure 79 over to the very end.
| | 04:19 | I think it sets up the ending a little
bit better. It just builds, doesn't just end.
| | 04:23 | So, let's take a listen from measure 97.
| | 04:24 | (song playing)
| | 04:41 | Much better. Just that a little bit of
a fill there with the claps sets up the
| | 04:46 | ending a lot better to my ears.
| | 04:48 | So, this is where I will leave the
radio edit until it's time to mix it.
| | 04:53 | I hope that this process provides
some new information and offers new
| | 04:57 | perspective on creating radio edits
from your longer club mix counterparts.
| | 05:02 | You should not assume that everyone
who ends up listening to a radio edit
| | 05:06 | has heard the club mix.
| | 05:07 | I've had many occasions where people
have emailed me asking for club versions of
| | 05:11 | the song after they've heard the radio edit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Adding Arrangement Ear CandyAdding a vocoder| 00:00 | I exported a few stems out of the
Pro Tools radio mix session into Reason for
| | 00:05 | this next portion of the course.
| | 00:07 | These stems are roughly mixed, and as
you can see by looking at the Mixer
| | 00:10 | section in Reason, I have lead vocals,
background vocals, drums, bass,
| | 00:16 | synths, and guitars.
| | 00:18 | To the right of the guitars, I have a
copy of the lead vocal track and a mixer,
| | 00:23 | which is acting as a submixer for all
of the vocoding that I'm about to add.
| | 00:29 | For those of you who might not be
familiar with vocoders, I feel confident that
| | 00:33 | you've heard them before, as they rose
to popularity in the 1970s on many funk
| | 00:38 | and disco records and have a few
periods of resurgence since then.
| | 00:42 | The most popular vocoder sound is the
robot voice. And before I begin to record
| | 00:47 | the vocoder part, let me briefly
take you on a tour of the setup.
| | 00:51 | In the most basic terms, a vocoder
has an input for a carrier input and an
| | 00:56 | input for a modulator input.
| | 00:58 | As we can see on the back of the
Reason BV12 vocoder, the carrier input has a
| | 01:03 | little keyboard icon by it and the
modulator input has a microphone by it.
| | 01:08 | The Lead Vocal track is routed to the
modulator input, and the Thor Polyphonic
| | 01:14 | Synth is routed to the carrier input.
| | 01:17 | Now the trick to using a vocoder in
this setup is that the track has to be
| | 01:22 | playing or else the lead vocal won't be able
to send its signal to the modulator input.
| | 01:27 | I'll begin by recording
MIDI on the Thor Synth track.
| | 01:32 | I've got a 1-bar precount setup on
the sequencer, and I will scroll down a
| | 01:38 | little bit so I can look at the Thor
Polyphonic Synth. And let's record our part in.
| | 01:44 | The vocoder part that I am going to
add will mirror the bass line, in terms of
| | 01:49 | note changes and when those note changes happen.
| | 01:51 | (song playing)
| | 02:34 | As you take a look at the MIDI data,
you can see that I've added sixteenth
| | 02:38 | notes, basically bup, bup, bup, bup,
bup, bup, bup, bup, following the bass
| | 02:43 | line, and I feel that this is an
appropriate pattern to add because the point
| | 02:48 | of adding the vocoder is to use it as a
thickening tool, a layer with the lead
| | 02:52 | vocal. It's not meant to be a
part that stands out on its own.
| | 02:55 | Let's get out of Edit mode, and I'll
increase the size of this view. And all I
| | 03:02 | need to do to incorporate the vocoder
into verse 2 is copy and paste the MIDI
| | 03:07 | data. Option+Drag it. I know that verse
2 begins at measure 29. And let's take a
| | 03:13 | listen to make sure that the MIDI
data from verse 1 works with verse 2.
| | 03:18 | (song playing)
| | 03:40 | And it sounds like it is working.
| | 03:42 | Now, for those of you whose ears might
not be finally tuned to the sound of a
| | 03:46 | vocoder, I'll play verse 2 again,
but I will mute out the lead vocal.
| | 03:51 | We'll go to our mixer and I'll mute
out lead vocal on the mixer, and we would
| | 03:55 | just hear the Lead Vox
copy trigger in the vocoder.
| | 03:59 | (song playing)
| | 04:16 | As you can hear, it adds a
really cool texture to the Vocal.
| | 04:20 | (song playing)
I'll put the Lead Vocal back in.
| | 04:23 | (song playing)
| | 04:32 | And a word of caution when using
vocoders: a huge piece of the equation is the
| | 04:37 | patch you're using from the synth.
In this case I though that Asian Poly was an
| | 04:41 | appropriate sound to layer
underneath the lead vocal.
| | 04:45 | You have to decide what role you want
the vocoder to play when you put in the
| | 04:48 | track: Is it going to act as a lead
vocal or as a lead sound, a hook line of
| | 04:53 | some sort, or is it merely going to
serve as a textural layer, which is what we
| | 04:58 | are doing in this case?
| | 05:00 | In order to bring this part back into
my radio mix session that I started in
| | 05:04 | Pro Tools, I will need to stem out just
the vocoder part by itself from measure
| | 05:09 | 1 until the end of the file.
| | 05:11 | If you happen to be working on your
entire track within one DAW, then you need
| | 05:15 | not include this step in the process.
| | 05:18 | I hope this process helps you think of
a vocoder as something other than a cool
| | 05:22 | effect on a lead vocal.
| | 05:23 | I mostly use them for layering and
thickening, and I believe it provides that
| | 05:28 | extra bit of depth that may not jump out
at you at first, but if it were muted
| | 05:32 | in the track, you would certainly
notice that something was missing.
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| Adding filtered delays to vocals| 00:01 | Filter delays a one of my favorite
effects to use on lead vocals, mostly because
| | 00:06 | they provide a nice
combination of rhythm and color.
| | 00:08 | Delays are echoes that can be set to
different durations of time, either in
| | 00:13 | milliseconds or note values, and
filters are adjustable EQ settings.
| | 00:18 | My favorite note value delay is a dotted
eighth note, and for the filter, I like
| | 00:22 | to use either low-pass or a high-pass setting.
| | 00:25 | A low-pass filter removes the high
frequencies and a high-pass filter removes
| | 00:29 | the low frequencies, depending upon where
the frequency cutoff knob or slider is set.
| | 00:35 | As we look at the Arrange window here
in Reason, I've set up a filter delay, and
| | 00:40 | as we take a look at the mixer,
underneath Lead Vox copy 2, which is an extra
| | 00:48 | copy of the lead vocal track that I
created, I'm sending it over to the mixer.
| | 00:53 | If we go back to the Arrange window, as
we look at our effects chain, we can see
| | 00:59 | that there is a DDL-1 delay and
ECF-42 envelope-controlled filter.
| | 01:05 | Let's go back down to the Arrange
window, and I will work my way through the
| | 01:11 | entire arrangement, pulling out words
at different points in the song and
| | 01:15 | dragging them down to the Lead Vox
copy 2 track. The Lead Vox copy 2 track is
| | 01:20 | routed to the delay and filter effects chain.
| | 01:23 | Let's go right to measure 10, and I
pull down one word, and let's take a listen,
| | 01:28 | and then I will work my way through the
rest of the song, finding the words that
| | 01:32 | I feel makes sense to apply this treatment to.
| | 01:34 | (song playing)
| | 01:41 | So you can hear that very cool delay
sort of dying out. It has a color to it.
| | 01:46 | It's not clean like the lead vocal;
it's got a little bit of a treatment on it,
| | 01:50 | and that's the low-pass filter
dialed down to remove some of the high
| | 01:54 | frequencies to give it
that little bit of color.
| | 01:56 | Let's listen through the song, and I
will use the Razorblade tool over here to
| | 02:01 | grab words and pull them down onto this track.
| | 02:04 | Now, you could certainly achieve the
same outcome by setting up a lot of
| | 02:09 | automation, but I prefer to do it in
this manner because it allows me to have
| | 02:13 | control over a separate track.
| | 02:16 | Automation definitely can do the job,
but to have a discrete track dedicated to
| | 02:21 | throwing words through a delay and a
filter, to me, it gives me a little bit more
| | 02:26 | flexibility when it comes
time to doing the final mix.
| | 02:29 | (song playing)
| | 02:49 | That verse has a lot going on vocally,
so I am not going to grab another word.
| | 02:53 | "Voicemail" worked; there was space around the
Vocal before the next phrase began. I'll move on.
| | 02:58 | I know I don't want to do the chorus.
| | 03:00 | I want to save this treatment for the
verses. So, I'll scan further up here into
| | 03:04 | verse 2 and take a listen.
(song playing)
| | 03:07 | (song playing)
| | 03:47 | Again, verse 2 has a lot going on
vocally as well. This is not a treatment or
| | 03:52 | ear candy that I do just
for the sake of doing it;
| | 03:54 | it has to make sense vocally.
| | 03:56 | There has to be space in the
arrangement to add this, because it's throwing a
| | 04:00 | rhythm. It's a dotted eighth note
syncopated rhythm, almost like adding another
| | 04:05 | drum part or keyboard part.
| | 04:06 | So you don't want to just add it to
add it; it means to truly make sense in
| | 04:11 | terms of the overall arrangement.
Let's move ahead to the bridge.
| | 04:14 | (song playing)
| | 04:24 | Right there, right after
the word world, I'll scan in.
| | 04:28 | (song playing)
| | 04:34 | Take the Razorblade tool, and I will
change the grid, the editing grid, to a
| | 04:39 | sixteenth note. This will give me the ability
to slice around the word and then pull it down.
| | 04:45 | Now if I were to take snap off, I could
just create an Edit point anywhere, but
| | 04:49 | the danger in that is if I pull
this down you saw how that moved.
| | 04:54 | So, when you're moving audio files
around, it's best to be against the grid so
| | 04:59 | that that sort of slight shift doesn't occur.
| | 05:02 | Pull this down. Let's take a listen.
| | 05:04 | (song playing)
| | 05:17 | I'll grab this word. Again, it's world,
but it's sung a little differently;
| | 05:21 | it's a little shorter.
| | 05:24 | (song playing)
| | 05:30 | We can just take a listen.
| | 05:31 | (song playing)
| | 05:35 | Subtle, but I like it. Listening on.
| | 05:37 | (song playing)
| | 06:10 | The word "see" after the phrase "sitesee."
| | 06:12 | (song playing)
| | 06:38 | That takes care of it. I only like to
do three or four words maybe in the course
| | 06:42 | of a whole arrangement. It's not
something that you need to do necessarily
| | 06:46 | every session of the song, and it's
certainly a treatment that can be overdone
| | 06:50 | if you're not careful.
| | 06:52 | For me, adding filter delays on certain
words in certain phrases adds that third
| | 06:57 | dimension to a track, and depending upon
what the project is, you may not want to
| | 07:02 | add any delays or any filter
delays anywhere in the track.
| | 07:05 | But if you're looking to add a
certain glue to your vocal tracks, start by
| | 07:09 | adding delays and
experimenting with different settings:
| | 07:12 | filters on, filters off. And much like
the vocoder track, when I'm done, I will
| | 07:18 | solo this out and export it so that I
can then be import it back into Pro Tools,
| | 07:23 | and of course I will start my
audio file bounce at measure 1.
| | 07:26 | If you happen to be working within one
DAW throughout this entire course, you
| | 07:30 | need not take this step, but again,
if you're interested in experimenting
| | 07:34 | between working in different programs,
this is the way that you would export
| | 07:38 | your audio file to then
import it back into your other DAW.
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| Adding drum fills| 00:00 | Drum fills are a fantastic transitional tool.
| | 00:03 | A 1-bar drum fill before the chorus, or
going into the bridge section, can often
| | 00:08 | add the flavor that causes
the listener's ears to perk up.
| | 00:11 | It also shows that you, the arranger,
took the time to add those last bits and
| | 00:16 | pieces, which, for me, make
an arrangement fill finished.
| | 00:19 | I've added two Kong Drum Designers,
which will be the centerpiece of our fills,
| | 00:24 | and I will program these using MIDI.
| | 00:26 | The first area that I'd like to focus
on is right before the first chorus.
| | 00:31 | So I will set my left and right
locator points to that section of the
| | 00:35 | arrangement, and I'll bring the
playhead to the left start point.
| | 00:41 | (music playing)
| | 00:47 | So we have a bass glissando, that bass sound
that glides down, and there is a drum fill.
| | 00:52 | We can listen to it very quickly.
| | 00:54 | (music playing)
| | 01:01 | There's a slight snare fill, but I'd
like to go a little bit further with that,
| | 01:04 | and our program some additional drum
parts on top so that that 1 bar before the
| | 01:09 | chorus is really highlighted.
| | 01:11 | (music playing)
| | 01:19 | I'd like to go a little bit
further than that, so I'll do that again.
| | 01:22 | (music playing)
| | 01:30 | Listening back.
(music playing)
| | 01:40 | I like that. It takes the 1-bar drum fill
concept just a little bit further than what was
| | 01:44 | previously there, with just an 808 snare fill.
| | 01:48 | The next section that I'll focus on
is going into the second chorus, and
| | 01:52 | for that section I will use Kong
Drum Designer Number 2, which has an
| | 01:56 | entirely different drum kit.
| | 01:57 | (music playing)
| | 02:06 | Let's take a listen back and
make sure that it's working.
| | 02:08 | (music playing)
| | 02:16 | It's a little more of an exciting fill as
we go into the second chorus of the song.
| | 02:19 | So the first drum fill, a little bit
understated, but still, you can tell that
| | 02:23 | something's been added to
what was previously there.
| | 02:26 | Second drum fill has a little bit more
energy, with a slightly different sound.
| | 02:30 | Moving on to the Bridge
section, coming out of the chorus.
| | 02:32 | (music playing)
| | 02:46 | Okay. So I'll set my left
and right locator points.
| | 02:49 | (music playing)
| | 02:53 | Move that over a couple of bars.
| | 02:54 | (music playing)
| | 03:01 | Let's go back to the first Kong
Drum Designer kit and use that drum kit
| | 03:05 | to program this fill.
| | 03:06 | (music playing)
| | 03:13 | A little bit of syncopation
there. Let's listen back.
| | 03:15 | (music playing)
| | 03:23 | Excellent! And going into the final chorus,
I'm going to leave the Bridge into the third verse alone.
| | 03:30 | So let's move up here, move our playhead.
| | 03:35 | (music playing)
| | 03:45 | Moving up a little further.
| | 03:46 | (music playing)
| | 03:52 | Since we're going into the last chorus
of the song, I will program a slightly
| | 03:56 | busier feel than the last 1-bar fill
that was program going into chorus 2.
| | 04:00 | But I will use the same Kong Drum Designer
kit, which is Drum Designer kit Number 2.
| | 04:05 | (music playing)
I will move the playhead back.
| | 04:11 | Make sure our sound is up.
| | 04:12 | (music playing)
| | 04:20 | Listening back.
(music playing)
| | 04:28 | And then finally, I'll add a
fill right at the end of the song.
| | 04:34 | (music playing)
| | 04:42 | I'll move the left locator point there.
| | 04:45 | I'll stay with this drum kit.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
| | 04:49 | Staying with the snare fill.
| | 04:50 | I'll vary it slightly from the last fill.
| | 04:52 | (music playing)
| | 04:59 | I'll do that one more time.
| | 05:00 | I can play that a little bit better.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:11 | (music playing)
Listening back.
| | 05:19 | (music playing)
One more time.
| | 05:37 | That works for me. While this process can sometimes be a
bit tedious, it's a great exercise in
| | 05:43 | knowing your sounds in your sample libraries.
| | 05:46 | The more familiar you are with your
sound set, the less time it will take you to
| | 05:50 | add these 1-bar fills.
| | 05:52 | And this isn't just exclusive to
MIDI: you can certainly apply the same
| | 05:56 | philosophy using a 1-bar drum
fill from your loop library.
| | 05:59 | And like the filter delay track and
the vocoder track that were previously
| | 06:03 | added, I will solo out these drum fills
and export them, starting from measure
| | 06:08 | 1, to bring them back into my Pro
Tools radio mix from earlier in the course.
| | 06:13 | Again, if you're working in one DAW
throughout this entire process, you need
| | 06:18 | not take this step.
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6. Final ListensListening through the final radio mix| 00:00 | Now it's time to listen through
the finished radio mix in Pro Tools.
| | 00:04 | I'll move the playhead to the
beginning of the song and let's listen through.
| | 00:07 | (song playing)
| | 03:43 | Everything sounds great, and hearing the
arrangement in a finished mixed context
| | 03:47 | is extremely gratifying.
| | 03:49 | I'd like to point out how the
choruses of this song are highlighted in both
| | 03:52 | arrangement and mixdown.
| | 03:53 | The chorus is the payoff and it
should really feel like you've arrived at a
| | 03:57 | special moment of the song when it hits.
| | 03:59 | If you're a Premium member and working
along in the included Pro Tools session,
| | 04:03 | please spend a few minutes looking
through the session, because there is a lot
| | 04:07 | of information available to you, in
terms of mix settings and mix approach.
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| Listening through the final club mix| 00:01 | Now it's time to listen through the
finished club mix in Ableton Live.
| | 00:04 | I'll move the playhead to the beginning
of this song and let's listen through.
| | 00:08 | (song playing)
| | 06:21 | I would like to point out that this
arrangement really captures the mood of the song.
| | 06:26 | As I mentioned earlier in the course,
I always strive to make my arrangements
| | 06:29 | fit so naturally with the vocals it's as if
the singer recorded their vocals to my track.
| | 06:34 | If you're a Premium member and
working along in the included Ableton Live
| | 06:38 | session, then please spend a few
minutes looking through the session, because
| | 06:41 | there is a lot of information
available to you, in terms of mix settings and
| | 06:45 | mix approach.
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| Listening through the final radio edit| 00:01 | Now it's time to listen through
the finished radio edit in Logic Pro.
| | 00:04 | I'll move the playhead to the
beginning of the song, and let's listen through.
| | 00:07 | (song playing)
| | 03:21 | This arrangement is perfect for radio,
and I don't miss the sections of the song
| | 03:25 | that were removed during the editing process.
| | 03:28 | It's important to not get attached to
musical parts when editing a club mix
| | 03:31 | down to a radio edit;
| | 03:33 | you have to go with the parts or sections
that will best support the radio medium.
| | 03:37 | If you're a Premium member and working
along in the included Logic session, then
| | 03:41 | please spend a few minutes looking
through the session, because there is a lot
| | 03:44 | of information available to you, in
terms of mix settings and mix approach.
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ConclusionFinal thoughts and next steps| 00:00 | Congratulations on
finishing Remixing Techniques:
| | 00:03 | Arranging and Song Form,
and thanks a lot for watching!
| | 00:06 | I hope that this course has
inspired you to dive deeper into the art of
| | 00:10 | musical arranging, regardless of whether or
not you are creating tracks for radio or clubs.
| | 00:15 | Remember, you can have the coolest 8- or
16-bar idea, but then that idea needs to
| | 00:20 | be developed into a finished arrangement.
| | 00:23 | Please feel free to email me with any
questions at info@joshharrismusic.com and
| | 00:28 | be sure to check out my
other courses here at Lynda.com.
| | 00:32 | Thanks again for watching this course,
and good luck with all of your current
| | 00:35 | and future musical arrangements!
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