2 posts tagged “production”

I've spent the last month or so finishing up some remixes. A couple are covers of classic songs that I redid with a vocalist that I work with and a couple are originals that were in need of some new ideas.

As much as I love songwriting, I also love remixing. I think the reason being is because I look forward to taking something and putting a whole new slant on it. I like taking songs that are meant for one genre and remixing it for another. I think that when we think of remixes, we think of dance music but I tend to think remixes as rearranging in the biggest sense of the word. The word 'arranging' itself has many different connotations that I think is limiting. In this way I think of remixing, producing and arranging in the same terms.

Most of the originals that I have written have at least one remix; sometimes many. I try to write the best melody and lyric I can initially. Sometimes I have a general feel of the song when I start but then when I do the remix, I try to do something completely different.

If you've written some songs, I urge you to try a couple of remixes. Try to make a ambient piece out of a rock tune, or a sparse acoustic tune from a dance number. You may surprise yourself, I know I have. If remixing isn't your thing, giving your bare vocal tracks to another musician can sometimes result in some great sounding tracks. I know quite a few musicians out there are looking for material like this to hone their remixing chops and you'll

never know where it'll lead. At the least, you'll have some interesting new content to put on your site and may get some new fans in the meantime.

Sorry for the big gap in the posts but I had to take time out writing and recording the flamenco project to do some remixes for some clients. I’m sure I’m like most of the musicians out there who are trying to get their stuff out while keeping other projects on the go (I write about this a lot in my other blog…see link in my links section). At least these were dances remixes and weren’t that far from what I was doing with the flamenco project.

Like I mentioned, it’s a mix of flamenco and dance music and the challenge has been what to keep traditional and what to change. In the end it’s a matter of taste and I ended up making decisions based on the sound in my head. Not very technical, I know but it’s how I operate most of the time. Keep in mind that it took me a long time to get the music to how I wanted it in the first place. If that sounds confusing, the best analogy I can think of is when you’re looking for a gift for a good friend and you want to get them something that’s ‘just right’. The problem is that you don’t know what this is until you see it. I had the same thing with this flamenco project. I kept on writing and making quick demos until I came up with something that I ‘felt’ was what I was looking for. I took many demos and wasn’t a linear process. I’d come up with something that I liked, then the next two songs I’d hate. This process still goes on but I have a better idea of what I want.

Two of the areas where I spent most of the time rewriting were the chord progressions and the beats. These formed the overall feel of the music and I felt that if I got this right, the rest would fall in place. Since I’ve been playing flamenco guitar for so many years, there were other areas where I didn’t need to do as much work simply because I had practiced the genre for so long already. I had already developed a lot of technique. It was all of these years playing songs by the masters that really allowed me to create this CD in the first place since there is no better way to learn than through these great works. It was also the making the ‘rigid’ dance beats to gel with the flamenco rhythms which tend to vary in tempo and timing depending on the song and dancer.  I wanted it to be ‘straight with a live’ feeling. In other words no too overproduced like some dance music.

I ended up using a lot of the house and trance type beats that I had used in remixes that I had done but rearranged the bass lines so they augmented the beat and the guitar. I also used big dance pads and acid type arpeggios. I just made sure that they didn’t get in the way of the guitar and the overall rhythm.

Like I mentioned in my last post, coming up with the chord progressions where a bit more of a problem. I wanted to steer clear of simple repeating 4 bar progressions and include some interesting chord tensions. I didn’t go too crazy with over the top chords and extensions but I wanted to keep that tension that flamenco music has.  I also wanted to extend the form a bit and didn’t stick to traditional flamenco song forms. Flamenco music has strict forms and you can tell the kind of song and where it’s from simply from the form. (I’ll talk about these forms in an upcoming post). I used some of the things that I learned from playing music of Paco Pena, and Paco DeLucia plus added some things of my own that I learnt from playing jazz standards and pop. In short, I ended up listening to and making notes on a lot of different music before finally coming up with something that I was happy with.