Probably stupid but oh well

Question (I'm a noob): is it possible to import already made tracks and remix them? Or if I want to remix a track, do I have to try and copy it again? I use Reason/Ableton.

Thanks.

PS: if anyone knows of any good websites that offer tips or guidelines for music production, feel free to share them thanks.

First off. Are you talking like just a normal track? Like 1 track. Because you can easily do this in ableton, just find the folder inside abelton and drag and drop.

If you mean like the bass, lead, drums and vocals split up into separate tracks, then youre speaking of "stems". Which you have to find (if the exist) on the internet somewhere. Generally, they dont exist.

Dont know about reason tbh.

Thanks Mt. Kimbie.

It depends on how you define remix. If you are asking if there is a way to actually separate out layers (bass drum, vocals, synth line, etc) from an already existing finished song it's not possible. There are tricks like phase-canceling you can do to extract vocals from about a good number of existing songs, but beyond that you're mostly stuff with just chopping up pieces of the final song. Ableton or Cubase is good for reconstructing loops or parts chopped from a finished song. edit: nm, chassis established this above.

There is another more beta technique that seems to work pretty well for certain types of music. Melodyne DNA editor can take a song (the longer the piece you give it the longer it will take to process, i'd advise only putting in a 30 seconds - 1 minute section) and extract a midi file from it. In most cases even if the song has chords in it, it's 90% accurate. The only problem with it is you'll get some junk data, like 2 layers for one keyboard instrument, one will accidentally transcribe the harmonics, not the fundmental frequencies. This might take a little more music making experience than remixing a song on Ableton by cutting loops from it.

The end result with this technique would be to bring the midi file into ableton or cubase, fruity, whatever any program makes this fairly straight forward. Then replace all the tracks with synths or instruments in the program you are using. Some clean up is going to be in order, mostly deleting midi and quantizing parts of it.

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:43 PM, Awepittance said:

There are tricks like phase-canceling you can do to extract vocals from about a good number of existing songs

i'd like to know some more about this please.

manually??? a vst pluggin???

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:43 PM, Awepittance said:

 

There is another more beta technique that seems to work pretty well for certain types of music. Melodyne DNA editor can take a song (the longer the piece you give it the longer it will take to process, i'd advise only putting in a 30 seconds - 1 minute section) and extract a midi file from it. In most cases even if the song has chords in it, it's 90% accurate. The only problem with it is you'll get some junk data, like 2 layers for one keyboard instrument, one will accidentally transcribe the harmonics, not the fundmental frequencies. This might take a little more music making experience than remixing a song on Ableton by cutting loops from it.

The end result with this technique would be to bring the midi file into ableton or cubase, fruity, whatever any program makes this fairly straight forward. Then replace all the tracks with synths or instruments in the program you are using. Some clean up is going to be in order, mostly deleting midi and quantizing parts of it.

wow, that seems more useful than I thought it would've been. I'm guff at figuring out chord progressions... and it sounds like it would be handy.. maybe in a few more years some cunning fellow will have come up with a cheaper alternative to the same task. I couldn't justify the expense.

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:47 PM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:43 PM, Awepittance said:

There are tricks like phase-canceling you can do to extract vocals from about a good number of existing songs

i'd like to know some more about this please.

 

manually??? a vst pluggin???

Destructive interference.

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:50 PM, chassis said:

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:47 PM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

  On 2/14/2011 at 11:43 PM, Awepittance said:

There are tricks like phase-canceling you can do to extract vocals from about a good number of existing songs

i'd like to know some more about this please.

 

manually??? a vst pluggin???

 

Destructive interference.

Yes, really.

so, uh, you like, destroy? stuff? with, per say, interferences???

far off dude!

You get the original and put it out of phase with the instrumental.

Doesnt work sometimes.

  On 2/15/2011 at 12:19 AM, chassis said:

You get the original and put it out of phase with the instrumental.

 

Doesnt work sometimes.

are you really trying to be helpful??

Fine then, why dont you fuck off.

Audio Scientology.

*kindly fucking off*

I love you guys.

When you invert the phase you basically flip the waveform upside down (+1 becomes -1). It sounds identical, but if you do some simple math (1 + [-1] = 0) you will find that placing an original track over top of it's phase inverted copy track, if everything else is the exact same, it will cancel itself out completely. What Awepittance was suggesting was that you can isolate vocals if you have a complete version of a track AND an instrumental version of it. Using this technique (inverting the phase on one of them, doesn't matter which) you can cancel out everything that is the same about the two tracks, leaving only the vocals (which should be the only difference). In theory this works, but quite often in practice you will run into artifacts resulting from mixing/mastering fluctuations in the two tracks. But you can get pretty damn close.

  On 2/15/2011 at 2:08 AM, ryanmcallister said:

if you have a complete version of a track AND an instrumental version of it.

are instrumentals easier to find than vocals???

Goddamn, learning Reason is so damn hard lol. Only my second day anyways

Thinking of getting this for Ableton.. comments?

http://www.amazon.ca/Ableton-Live-Power-Jon-Margulies/dp/1598639757/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1297742161&sr=8-2

  On 2/15/2011 at 4:57 AM, halisray said:

Thinking of getting this for Ableton.. comments?

http://www.amazon.ca/Ableton-Live-Power-Jon-Margulies/dp/1598639757/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1297742161&sr=8-2

might want to try THIS first. page is screwed up right now for me, dunno if he's maybe under construction or if it's my browser, but this has been my most valuable resource over the last year. i haven't read the book, but i imagine he recycled quite a bit here, and it's free.

  On 2/15/2011 at 4:10 AM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

  On 2/15/2011 at 2:08 AM, ryanmcallister said:

if you have a complete version of a track AND an instrumental version of it.

 

are instrumentals easier to find than vocals???

yes.

  On 2/15/2011 at 7:05 AM, ryanmcallister said:

yes.

great! thanks :thumbsup:

  On 2/15/2011 at 8:30 AM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

great! thanks :thumbsup:

or you could just sign up at Acapellas4U but i think there's a download limit and most of it is shit.

wow thanks for the 365 tips!!! No idea where to start, but thanks a lot!

books! pah! for highly technical stuff, or if you're a grandma learning microsoft word, then maybe.

i think the best way to learn any of this stuff is a consistent routine of dicking about. then later if you have a specific question, someone on youtube has probably answered it already. you don't really have to spend money for information nowadays.

also, cheers for that link, ryan.

  On 2/15/2011 at 4:59 PM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 2/15/2011 at 8:30 AM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

great! thanks :thumbsup:

or you could just sign up at Acapellas4U but i think there's a download limit and most of it is shit.

Thank for the link.

Michael, useless as usual.