Teft’s Blog

So you’re a DJ and you love a radio hit that’s currently topping the charts. But you don’t have a club’ish remix …. Why not make one! I remixed Rihanna’s Umbrella track (sorry, it’s rough … I spent about 2 hours on it) to give it a more housey 4 to the floor flavor. I YouTubed it .. check it out:

So let’s take a look at the process of remixing from a radio master …. First, a checklist of some must haves:

• An application like Live or Acid
• Some loops or drum sounds
• A synth a two

The very first step is to get the song into Live … import it off your CD and load it up. Live will start analyzing it and hopefully detects the correct BPM. Umbrella came up as 87bpm .. I pushed it to 100bpm. After it’s locked in, you’ll typically need to roll off the bass and potentially some highs of the master track. Why? Because we’re converting the core rythm to a 4 to the floor house rythm.

Next, pick a FAT bass and start picking out the key and chord structure of the song. Once you’ve got it, try switching up the harmony and see what happens to the verse and/or chorus of the song. You never know what happens! So, figure out a cool bass rythm and lay it down.

Now, you need to work out those drums … try different loops … make it crazy … make it cool … whatever works. Just make sure it’s beefy for a club.

Supporting synths are very important. Try experimenting with new synth lines and see how the song feels. Again, you never know what happens! Dial in those synths so they really help move the song in a club sense.

Finishing touches are usually effects … meaning eq and phasey effects, and some cool synth effects. I added swooshishes all over the place on the Rihanna remix.

Oh yeah, one last tip … strap a compressor to the bass and master track and trigger it with the 4 to the floor kicks to make the song PUMP! Check out my Umbrella remix to hear what I mean by the pumping of the compressor.

Have Fun

Photo Credits in the Video:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=114311823&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielleblue/177773556/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solo_munechika/192847585/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sookie/96601739/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabyu/199919513/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/icanteachyouhowtodoit/1008652758/