Royk and Royl
Inventive and tasty band Royksopp had a remix thing lately. This is my take on their “Tricky.”
Phixer
A remix of a Photek thing; I tweaked just about everything, added my own sequenced drums and of course some guitar riffs. Absynth helped out considerably….
Open Fire
For this month’s Guitar Collective task I took a “pella” from the wonderful Kate Lessing and created a kind of metal treatment, if you will, complete with crunching rhythm guitars, ridiculous leads, some lushy synth pads and of course, all in E Minor.
BPBTT
From the Guitar Collective. A remix, or rather, a lead overlaying “Bernamica Progressive Backing track thing.”
Emma
This is another of those that began first with a toying around with soft synths, trying to create some mella, juicy sounds. I got halfway into it and decided it needed a vocal. The whole thing was a downtempo, “Portisheadian” affair, so I went to my remix folder and found Innabar’s “Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child.” The poignant ‘pella worked.
I named the song “Emma” after one of our pet parakeets, who we “rescued.” A friend called one day and said that he had found this yellow baby parakeet in his backyard. He had gone around the neighborhood, trying to find the owner, but to no avail. So he called us. And of course, we took her in. She immediately became one of the flock and is now a permanent member of the family. The lyric “sometimes I feel like a motherless child” reminded me of Emma, how she was abandoned, how frightened she must have been. She had apparently been out for at least a night and it’s surprising she didn’t freeze or fall victim to the many cats and other predators around. But she was tough, and she still has moxy to burn. I’m grateful to have this beautiful, strong little spirit in our flock.
Like a Sunrise
This a Capella by Diane Jessurun languished on my hard drive for a couple years before I finally made something with it. I tried numerous permutations, genres, rhythmic things but was never happy with the mix. At one point I was intent on doing the drums in total breakbeat fashion, but it didn’t gell. So back to the backburner. A couple of weeks ago I played around with some heavy synth pad patterns, laid them down and thought they could possibly be the backing for a good vocal. I went to cc:mixter and didn’t find anything that fit. Then I went to the “vault” on my own computer, pulled up “Like a Sunrise,” and wow, magic. Or at least it was magic for me. The drums however, were always problematic. I couldn’t decide whether to do something acid jazzy, or trip hoppy, or hip hoppy or breakbeat or what. I settled (for I’m still not completely happy with the drums) on some fairly basic rock drum patterns. And for the bridge I fiddled around with a guitar solo, but I didn’t like it. So I jettisoned the guitar solo and chose to add an arpeggiated echoing of the main synth pad chords. So I mastered the thing and “put it to bed.” There are a few “glitches” here and there but as an amateur I reserve the right to be lazy and shine on my perfectionism.
God is Logical
This is not so much of a remix (although it is that) as much of the result of an act of desperation. I wrote a piece for my monthly Guitar Collective task (which had to be acoustic oriented) and found myself with a country-rock sounding thing. Go figure. I knew that I needed a vocal for the song so I scoured the web looking for something suitable, a nice country-fied a cappella I could use. Well, I came up dry (except for a few sites that wanted, get this–money for their samples).
Well I went to my cc:mixter archives on my hard drive and faithful InfraRedHaze provided me with just the pella I needed. I actually did two other remixes of her work early last year, both of which I was happy with. So now this makes the third. Genre-wise, it’s not typically country, nor rock, nor twentieth century classical, but it has all these elements.
Now to get back to my Ravel piece……