Remix of Andrew Huang's "Yours"

[Mighty Motif Max]

Hi everyone,

Native Instruments and Andrew Huang (youtube) hosted a remix competition this month on Metapop for Huang's new release "Yours". Here's his original track (not anything special IMO):

[video:youtube]

I thought I'd give it a go for fun, never having done one. Now keep in mind that I don't do much of anything with virtual instruments or that type of thing, I generally record my hardware stuff in software and that's about it, and I wanted to see how much I could do with non-computer-based instruments. So, as you'd imagine, this track is full of stuff from my gear.

[video:youtube]

From my entry:

Ok. Here's my submission for the remix contest. 37 audio tracks, 13 midi tracks (my own), and 46 project files later. Lots of time went into this. I started working on it on March 5th, and finished it tonight, March 19th. A few hours per day when I could. I'm not really sure what to categorize this as, perhaps "fusion" would best describe it...I just played the original a few times, and started improvising ideas.

The result is basically what I had in my head musically. Sort of is my band take on Andrew's lyrics and melody. I used the stems provided as the project file did not work with my Cubase configuration. I run Cubase AI 9.5, so I have a limited number of audio tracks, midi tracks, vst/instrument tracks, and group/fx channels. So I had to pick and choose a lot. Where you see, for example, a "pluck 1" track from the stems, that's actually a bunch of pieces from other original stems put onto the same track, due to the limit on total track count. That holds true for most of the stem tracks you see, they're mixed from lots of other stems. That way I could keep most of the pieces I liked but still have enough tracks left to record my own stuff.

Here's what's in the remix: Stems used: a few pieces of the drums; snaps, the chorus guitar, the electric funk guitar riff, the right side of the palm muted guitar, one of the synth brass tracks, the pluck track, the synth lead track, the "fx" track, and all the vocal tracks. Komplete Start items: Guitar Rig 5 used for my electric guitar track and a vocal run track, Hit The Key from Carbon 2 (modified), and "Fundamentool" from TRK-01 Bass as a lead. I added the rest from my gear; it's 90% from hardware gear with a few elements from plugins like the tambourine, 2nd hihat, toms, and cymbal. The hardware used was: Korg Krome 61, Yamaha Motif XF8, Yamaha YS200, and a Roland JV-1000 for keyboards (drums, bass, synths, pads, strings, etc) and a Yamaha Pacifica 112V electric guitar. Assorted factory effects, and a few free third-party plugins (Waves H-Comp compressor {from Black Friday promotional offer), Melda pitch corrector). I'm primarily a musician, so everything you hear except for the stems and the tambourine and cymbal was played from a keyboard by myself, or the guitar (I'm pretty new to guitar though).

I recorded midi tracks along with the audio for the keyboards, edited them in Cubase, and then re-recorded the audio with the modified midi data. The synth that seems to have a sidechain on it does not have a sidechain, as my software does not allow me to do that (not able to route for that, one of the limitations). Instead it's an expression pedal being used to raise and lower the volume in time with the kick. Time signatures were interesting too. Like the 2/4 section between the first chorus and second verse, and the bridge. While the first part of my bridge sounds like it's in 4/4, it actually stays in 6/8. Then 12/8 later on, then back to 4/4 for the chorus. I kept the tempo at 89bpm in 4/4 or its equivalent in the other signatures.

I hope you all like this. I've never done a remix before and am just learning mixing. Just lots of reference tracks and testing on different playback systems. I don't have any monitors, only a pair of K240 Studio headphones. Plus car cd players, etc that I use for testing. I'm sure there's a lot of room for improvement. It was fun though since I've never done one before. Let me know what you think.

Hope you get a kick out of it anyways. It was fun, since I played everything you hear except for the stems (vocals, some synth arps, some guitar, and the snaps/deep kick that's layered on in a few spots/beat snippet at the end of the second verse). Took a fair amount of time (a few hours a day was all I could spare, and that definitely not every day). Background image created in Terragen 4 free version, and track art based on that, edited in GIMP. Video put together in Davinci Resolve. Hope you like it. I had fun at least.

 

[Becky]

That's a great remix!

 

[CowboyNQ]

Really great job Max!

 

[Biggles]

Wow, what a lot of work

Good luck in the contest.

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Thank you all!

 

[Mark Bransfield]

Love it ..it Flows

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Thanks! Was definitely going for a "smooth" sound.

 

[JonD]

That was very nice Max well played and mixed.