Six essential skills for remixing

Get the technical know-how behind any remix with the tips in our accompanying video

01

Timestretching, pitchshifting and conforming audio and MIDI tracks to chords are essential skills for remixing or bootlegging. In the video, we show you how they can bring three seemingly disparate elements into harmony.

02 If a track’s made up of layers, with one new element added every few bars, there’s a chance you can duplicate the channel and use phase inversion to isolate elements from each other. In the video, we show you how it’s done. 03

With a mid/side plugin like Voxengo MSED, you can mute the mid or side signals, helping isolate certain elements. The mid information comprises any audio that’s exactly the same in both speakers at any given point (mono), whereas the side signal represents what’s different in both speakers. The point being, as you’ll see, certain mono elements can be extracted from stems or full tracks.

04

Many DAWs have some form of Audio to MIDI conversion, meaning you can take an audio file and spit out a MIDI representation of it. Naturally, this is great for remixing, helping you quickly layer or replace recorded parts with virtual instruments. In the video, we also show you how to make sure the audio’s in tip-top shape for its journey into MIDI-city.

05

With a full beat, there are ways to isolate individual hits: phase-inversion and mid/side techniques, and the act of chopping and slicing the beat played. In this video we use some filter enveloping to extract the kick.

06

Finally, groove templates help you steal the exact feel (ie, the swing) of an original piece of audio. By imprinting the exact swing or ‘groove’ of the track and putting it into your own audio or MIDI clips, you can make your re-imagining feel a little more authentic. Again, we demonstrate how it’s done in the video on FileSilo!