UP IN THE CLUB
Apr 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Paul Taylor
LOW-END THEORY
A wide-toned electro-bass sound is currently one of the most requested sounds for a club remix, but as long as you have a solid sub tone in place, the mid and high areas of your bass are completely up for grabs in terms of creativity. Packages such as the ever-reliable Spectrasonics Trilogy might help you out in a bind, but also try picking a nice raw sound from something like Logic's ES2 to build on.
You'll probably be rolling your kick off at around 60 Hz, but try to find some room for sub in your bass tone, and spend time working with getting the kick and bass sitting effectively. A bit of valve tone from something like PSP Vintage Warmer 2 ($149; www.pspaudioware.com) or Ableton Live's Saturator will add some midrange, and you can always experiment with classic EQ emulation such as those available on the Focusrite Liquid Mix to really get at the touchy 120 to 160 Hz area. Changing the tonal characteristic of the bass part by adding a highpass-filtered sound above the sub is a great trick from drum 'n' bass engineering. Along similar lines, layering up multiple detuned instances of utility synths such as Novation's V-station and then sampling the resultant überpatch can be superb for an aggressive bass line. Consider using two or three different bass “stabs” to compose your bass line or running existing parts through chained autofilters and then sampling the results. Reversing samples works well on bass and is useful for creating sweeping and dramatic tones.
Try compressing with something powerful, such as an SSL emulation, or limiting after adding a slight 60 to 100 Hz boost to the whole tone to bring out the bottom end. Splitting the patch in two and applying different effects to the top and bottom can also be a good idea.
In terms of arrangement, keeping the bass regular but avoiding standard root-note plodding will help with a traditional dance groove. Tracks Such as “Yeah Yeah” by Bodyrox and Tiga's “You Gonna Want Me” will give you a good idea of how a lot of danceable tension can be built up with a simple bass pattern: The Detroit techno influence is prevalent.
If your original track has a decent bass line, consider augmenting it or turning it into an off-beat bass pattern. Listen to Liam Howlett of The Prodigy's work for a primer on how to create a lot of tonal interest in a record without moving the chord or bass note around a lot; too much movement out of a very defined frequency range will significantly impact the pace of your track. If you do try a bass line that leaps out of its defined octave, you'll need some careful layering in the top end to get that just right, and probably a separate sub. Again, careful monitoring is required.
Your track should still work when reduced to just bass and drums. If you've tried to follow the original bass line, then strip out all the elements and listen to just a drum and bass mix. If it still holds up, great; but it's likely that you'll want to simplify things and tighten it up.
STRIKE A CHORD
The extent to which you use pads or chord sounds of any kind in your remix is, once again, highly genre specific. Don't be afraid to break some boundaries. A lot of great club remixes revolve around guitar parts in tracks that previously didn't have them.
Complex and dynamic sounds work best in club mixes, so go crazy with processing. Tools such as Native Instruments Reaktor, Prosoniq Morph ($179; www.prosoniq.com) and Camel Audio CamelPhat 3 ($149; www.camelaudio.com) will help to introduce some chunkiness into your sounds. Using filters with sharp attacks on pads can really help give them impact; judicious limiting will also lift them.
If you're running pads through a breakdown section, be sure to place a sub bass tone under it. The “bass-drop” effect can be useful, but keep it under control unless you want your mix to lose energy.
Stereo-width effects are vital on pads, but great widening plug-ins are strikingly hard to come by. Waves S1 is the professional VST choice, with cheaper competitors such as PSP's suite of stereo plug-ins falling behind somewhat because they have a propensity to introduce phase-y sounding artifacts. Logic's built-in stereo plug-ins are superb, however, so Mac users have yet another thing to be thankful for. Less fluid plug-ins are best used sparingly, but wide chord sounds really do need to be stretched out as much as possible, so experiment with reverb and delay times as well as width settings. Trying your mix on headphones is a great way to get an alternative stereo perspective, and don't forget to stick everything into mono as well to see if you're using impact from the center.
Musically, you'll want to keep changes to a minimum unless you're working on an epic progressive-trance odyssey. Listen to the effectively dense motion of trance classics like Ferry Corsten's “Adagio for Strings” remix if you are planning on taking things in a melodic direction.
IN THE LEAD
A distinctive lead sound is a difficult commodity: As soon as you create one, it will be cloned and copied to death until a new trend emerges, so there's no point in attempting to re-create great leads of the past. If you're using vocals, you'll need something that sits around them well, so take that into consideration when programming. As you'll likely have individual tracks from the original, it's often best to lay down the vocal track first before working on the lead, thus creating something complementary rather than too dominant.
You'll need a powerful soft synth capable of large unison sounds, such as reFX Vanguard ($90; www.refx.net) or Native Instruments Massive. Modern hardware classics like the Access Virus, Roland JP-8080 and others may be starting to sound a little dated now, so this is one area where being up-to-date with your gear can really help. Mix up your filter types, oscillator waveforms and effects; once you have a solid body to your sound, experiment with the surrounding frequencies. Give your lead space to breathe; filling out the middle of your mix is tempting, but just as kick and bass have to relate well, so do chords and lead sounds.
The pattern played by the lead will define your whole track — you need it to carry a memorable tune. Keeping that short, repetitive and tight will help you avoid too much wandering around and keep things driving forward. It can also be effective to play out the main melody of your original track on a different sound or with a slightly different rhythm. Question-and-answer phrases placed around a vocal hook can work particularly well, as can partially replaying the vocal melody. But avoid being too cute: Club records work best when the melody helps drive the pace along.
Again, the emphasis should be on improvement. If your remix isn't making the lead line sound better, then use the original lead line if at all possible. Stamping your identity on a tune should always come second to making it sound good.
GET IT RIGHT, GET IT TIGHT
When arranging, deviating from the traditional multiples of eight bars used in club music won't win you many friends among DJs; ditto for failing to provide a decent beat intro and outro. The rest of your mix can be as crazy as you like, but if your record is annoying to mix, it may not get much play.
The intro of your remix should do one of two things: It can either establish early on that it's a version of another track, or it can completely define its own feel, surprising the listener with a recognizable element later in the record. Play with the distinctive parts of the original. If there's a well-known chorus, delay it and build up the tension before it hits; edit the best lines together; and tweak the arrangement so that it's more efficient. Sometimes a little speed boost will be necessary: Going for the most accurate time-stretching algorithm you can find is best in these cases because you don't want artifacts spoiling the mix.
Get your arrangement down quickly and don't go into too much detail, initially. As soon as you get a sound that's working, move right on to the next element. That is the best way to create a club mix where the elements complement each other — overall solidity is paramount. At a later stage, you can define the more distinctive elements, add or remove parts or tweak sounds to taste.
There's little room for expressive playing in a club mix, so quantize harshly and even out your note lengths and velocities; that will really help you when it comes to mixing. Your choice of DAW will matter here: The ease of Logic's editing compared to the slightly more fiddly implementation in Live, Cubase and even Pro Tools makes it ideally suited for dance programming.
Remember that you're making club music, so push everything! Adding a touch of high-quality overdrive on synth sounds and a bit of extra level and emphasis on those key sounds will work when it's time to mixdown. Make the kick drum as loud as you can; the track should be built around it to get that weighty sound.
At mixdown, you'll want to even out the middle ranges and ensure that the percussion has a “glued-together” feel. Skittering closed hi-hats and an overly loud ride cymbal will make everything seem too dynamic. Monitor both loudly and at normal levels; the track will be played loudly, so that's how you should judge it. You're looking for EQ tweaks that will introduce motion: The tops of sounds like bass parts should really cut through the mix and have an up-front quality to them. Don't let the mix sound too “digital.” Cuts around 7.5 kHz will help with harshness, but roll off higher frequencies if they're offensive at high volumes. You're looking for a punch, not a nasty shrieking, shredding tone created by too many high-frequency drum hits.
Atmosphere and emotion are vital qualities of a strong club mix, so your remix should be about accentuating the most epic qualities of the original. Listen to it a few times and mentally plan out changes as you go, rather than impose a template of your own onto the record. It can be tempting to approach remixing like you are making one of your own tunes, with a few samples that you're required to use. But that isn't the best way of getting the most out of the project. Picture yourself in a club listening to the original: What would you change? That sounds simplistic, and it is; but actually doing it might surprise you. Your aim is to excite the listener with what you've done to the original material. Achieve that, and you'll win acclaim for yourself and for the artists you remixed.
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