Remix
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A remix is an alternative version of a song, different from the original version. A record producer or audio engineer uses audio mixing to alter the original tracks of a song, adding or subtracting elements, changing the relative frequency, volume, length, or almost any other aspect of the various musical components. A song may be remixed to give a song that wasn't popular a second chance, to create a song that will be played in dance clubs, or to alter a song to suit a different music genre or radio format.
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[edit] Roots of the remix
Since the beginnings of recorded sound in the late 19th century, certain people have enjoyed the ability to rearrange the normal listening experience with technology. With the advent of easily editable magnetic tape in the 1940s and 1950s, such alterations became more common. In those decades the experimental genre of musique concrète used tape loops of music and environmental sounds to create sound compositions that were the forerunners of electronic music. Less artistically lofty edits produced medleys or novelty recordings of various types.
Modern remixing had its roots in the dance hall culture of late-1960s/early-1970s Jamaica. The fluid evolution of music that encompassed ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub was embraced by local mixing wizards who deconstructed and rebuilt tracks to suit the tastes of their audience. Producers and engineers like Ruddy Redwood, King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry popularized stripped-down instrumental mixes (which they called "versions") of reggae tunes. At first they simply dropped the vocal tracks, but soon more sophisticated effects were created, dropping separate instrumental tracks in and out of the mix, isolating and repeating hooks, and adding various effects like echo, reverb and delay.
At the same time, DJs in New York City were performing similar tricks with disco songs (using loops and tape edits) to get dancers on the floor and keep them there. Tom Moulton invented the 12-inch single vinyl format to allow for punchier sound and greater length. Walter Gibbons remixed the first commercial 12-inch single ("10 Percent", by Double Exposure), and one of the most successful early American remixes, "Doin' the Best That I Can" by Betty Lavette.
In the mid-1970s, the Jamaican and Bronx remix cultures met, energizing both. Key figures included Kool DJ Herc and DJ Grandmaster Flash. Cutting (alternating between duplicate copies of the same record) and scratching (manually moving the vinyl record beneath the turntable needle) became part of the culture, creating what Slate magazine called "real-time, live-action collage". One of the first mainstream successes of this style of remix was the 1983 track "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock, as remixed by Grand Mixer D.ST.
[edit] Electronic music
Early pop remixes were fairly simple; in the 1980s, "extended mixes" of songs were released to clubs and commercial outlets on vinyl 12-inch singles. These typically had a duration of six to seven minutes, and often consisted of the original song with 8 or 16 bars of instruments inserted, often after the second chorus; some were as simplistic as two copies of the song stitched end to end. As the cost and availability of new technologies allowed, many of the bands who were involved in their own production (such as Depeche Mode and Duran Duran) experimented with more intricate versions of the extended mix. Madonna began her career writing music for dance clubs and used remixes extensively to propel her career; one of her early boyfriends was noted DJ John Jellybean Benitez, who created several memorable mixes of her work. The Art of Noise took the remix styles to an extreme -- creating new music entirely using samples.
After the rise of dance music in the late 1980s, a new form of remix was popularised, where the vocals would be kept and the instruments would be replaced, often with matching backing in the house music or Hi-NRG idiom. The art of the remix gradually evolved, and soon avant-garde artists such as Aphex Twin were creating more experimental remixes of songs, which varied radically from their original sound and yet were not guided by pragmatic considerations such as sales or danceability.
In the 1990s, with the rise of powerful home computers with audio capabilities came the mash-up, an unsolicited, unofficial (and often legally dubious) remix created by "underground remixers" who edit two or more recordings (often of wildly different songs) together. This method is more difficult to work with, because clean copies of separated tracks such as vocals or individual instruments are usually not available to the public. Some artists (such as Björk and Public Enemy) embraced this trend and outspokenly sanctioned fan remixing of their work; there was once a web site which hosted dozens of unofficial remixes of Björk's songs, all made using only various officially-sanctioned mixes.
[edit] Industrial music
Remixing has become very prevalent in heavily synthesized electronic and experimental music circles. Many of the people who create cutting edge music in such genres as darkwave, synthpop, elektro, and EBM are solo artists or pairs. They will often use remixers to help them with skills or equipment that they do not have. Artists such as Delobbo and DJ Ram are sought out for their remixing skill and have impressive lists of collaborations, yet no solo albums. It is not uncommon for industrial bands to release albums which have half the songs as remixes. Indeed, there have been popular singles that have been expanded to an entire album of remixes by other well-known artists.
Some industrial groups allow, and often encourage, their fans to remix their music, notably Nine Inch Nails, whose website contains a list of downloadable songs that can be remixed using Apple Computer's GarageBand software. Some artists have started releasing their songs in the Umyx format, which allows the buyers to mix songs and share them on the Umyx website.
[edit] Hip hop, rap and R&B music
Remixes have become the norm in modern dance music, allowing one song the ability to appeal across many different musical genres or dancefloors. Such remixes often include "featured" artists, adding new vocalists or musicians to the original mix. The remix is also widely used in hip-hop and rap music. An R&B remix usually has the same music as the original song but has added or altered verses that are rapped or sung by the featured artists. It usually contains some if not all of the original verses of the song however, these verses may be arranged in a different order depending on how the producers decided to remix the song.
In the early 1990s, Mariah Carey became one of the first mainstream artists who re-recorded vocals for a remix, and by 1993 most of her major dance and urban remixes had been re-sung, e.g. "Dreamlover" as remixed by David Morales for the clubs. This trend would be the norm up to the 2000s, as many major artist would contribute new vocals for the different versions of their songs. Carey also spearheaded the norm of including guest appearances on her urban remixes.
Another well-known example is R. Kelly, who recorded two different versions of "Ignition" for his 2003 album Chocolate Factory. The song is unique in that it segues from the end of the original to the beginning of the remixed version (accompanied by the line "Now, I don't usually do this, but go ahead, give me a little taste of the remix"). In addition, the original version's beginning line "You remind me of something/I just don't know what it is" is actually sampled from an older Kelly song, "You Remind Me of Something".
Many hip-hop remixes arose either from the need for a pop/R&B singer to add more of an urban, rap edge to one of their slower songs, or from the need for a rapper to gain more pop appeal by getting an R&B singer to sing some lines here and there. When a song by a solo artist does not take off, a remix with additional performers can give the song a second chance.
Slow ballads and R&B songs can be remixed by techno producers and DJ's in order to give the song appeal to the club scene and to rhythmic radio. Up-tempo, dance-oriented songs tend to perform better than slow songs on mainstream American radio as well.
- Further information: List of remixers
[edit] Broader context
John Von Seggern of the ethnomusicology department at the University of California, Riverside says that the remix "is a major conceptual leap: making music on a meta-structural level, drawing together and making sense of a much larger body of information by threading a continuous narrative through it. This is what begins to emerge very early in the hiphop tradition in works such as Grandmaster Flash's pioneering mix recording Adventures on the Wheels of Steel. The importance of this cannot be overstated: in an era of information overload, the art of remixing and sampling as practiced by hiphop DJs and producers points to ways of working with information on higher levels of organization, pulling together the efforts of others into a multilayered multireferential whole which is much more than the sum of its parts." [1]
A remix may also refer to a non-linear re-interpretation of a given work or media other than audio. Such as a hybridizing process combining fragments of various works. The process of combining and re-contextualizing will often produce unique results independent of the intentions and vision of the original designer/artist. Thus the concept of a remix can be applied to visual or video arts, and even things farther afield. The disjointed novel House of Leaves has been compared by some to the remix concept.
In recent years the concept of the remix has been applied analogously to other media and products. In 2000, the British Channel 4 television program Jaaaaam was produced as a remix of the sketches from the comedy show Jam. In 2003 the Coca-Cola Corporation released a new version of their soft drink Sprite with tropical flavors under the name Sprite Remix.
[edit] References
- Postdigital Remix Culture and Online Performance - exhibition at University of California at Riverside
- "The Remixmasters", Slate (July 29, 2002)
- Remix Services - Past & Present
- DJ Remix Service Music Database
- hotdiscomix :: Remix Services
- hotdiscomix :: DJ Interviews
[edit] See also
- Multitracking
- Remix culture
- Cover version
- Ccmixter.org
