EMP Remix

For this assignment, I remixed a song recorded in previous trimester by a team-mate Kieran. I have always been into guitars and so, I choose electronic funk genre to remix the song into. I don’t know if I got it right with the remix being my first one, but I did some research regarding that. I heard a couple of songs on Spotify and found out one song that I really enjoyed listening to and it was “Funkin’ On”. I analysed the song’s structure and tried to match my remix along with it.

For my remix, I chose bass and guitars from the original track since those two are the elements which drives an electro-funk song. I messed around with Operator in Ableton Live to find a sound that matches the genre but as I’m new to it, I found it harder to make a useful sound. Still, I was able to get a vinyl-scratch sound out of it which is in the starting of the song itself. I MIDI’d the bass track into an analog synth and used the Operator for the melody as well. I downloaded some samples from different platforms and created a custom drum rack. For example, kick, hats, clap, and synth snares. In my reference track, most of the parts of the song are repetitive and that is what my remix is like too. I added some slices of a long guitar riff as a door from one part of the song to another even if they sound nearly the same. Throughout the song, I had one chord progression or one bass line that went for the entire song.

After submission, I sent the file to Kieran, who recorded the song originally and asked for the feedback. His words were “Actually, it sounds kinda cool! All I can say is that if you layered the kick with another punchier sound and filled out the gaps with reverb and delay, would be chilled!” I expected a better remix but as it was the first time I was using this DAW, little processes slowed me down. There were a lot of challenges that I faced during making the remix but I guess, all of them could be summed up to not having a good hand on Ableton and not having much exposure to electronic music and that is the thing where I faced my challenge.

The link to my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/kashish-mehta-497757461/daydreamers-shiftwork-kash-remix