LPA Monthly Mix-Up October: Dance Pop/Dance-Hop/Electro-Pop

Prior to you posting this, at least a small part of me thought "Hey, it is somewhat possible that I could win this thing." If nothing else, it was anyone's game, to say the least. It is now your game. This was amazing.

I am also very mad, you ruined my Friday with this entry. lol, i kid.

 

Winner. Maybe the best entry of any month so far.

 

How'd you do the harmonies? Did you use Antares Harmony Plug in or something? It's amazing! Love the instrumentation.

The drums could've had different sounds (especially the kick), but it doesn't really matter. I prefer this to the original to be honest.

 

I would also like to know this for future reference... I tried to make harmonies on my remix and I couldn't get it right... I'm still a remixing noob.

 

m_macdonald winner epic remix.

 

Ah shit. That track just blew me away. Great job m_macdonald!

 

Speechless.

 

I never would have thought that Given Up could work as a dance pop track but you killed it.
Best entry by far.

 

Guys, thanks so much for the kind comments on the remix, I'm flattered that you're enjoying it!

Thank you! But don't knock your Burning In The Skies remix, I downloaded it and ripped it to mp3 for my iPod. The mood/vibe of the track when Mike's first verse comes in over those synths is very cool. It's completely different from the original Burning In The Skies, but somehow it still fits the mood of the song/lyrics in my opinion. Plus you've got some synth melodies near the end – I'm all for a good synth line!

Thanks! There have been some great entries over the last three months, mine is by no means the best, but that's awesome of you to say.

Thanks! It's great to have a previous winner compliment my track. I'll take your suggestion in future and experiment more with my drum sound!

The harmonies: I started by writing and arranging the harmonies. I just pulled up a blank session in my DAW for this and thrashed out some ideas for harmonies in MIDI. I had a 5 hour train journey where I just sat with my laptop and came up with some harmony ideas.

Then I set about trying to get rid of the clapping which is in the Given Up acapella. It was very hard to try and tune the vocals with the clapping in the way. It was a bit of a nightmare, but I got rid of a lot of the clapping. I took the first two bar loop of clapping from the start of the song, which loops throughout the chorus. I laid that two bar loop over the top of the chorus, and I lined up the claps. Then I inverted the phase of the clapping loop using the phase/polarity button on my DAW mixer. That cancelled out most of the clapping and left the vocals untouched. It's not perfect, you can still hear some clapping, but it's not bad.

Then all that was left to do was copy the acapella and then tune each one to the harmonies I'd written. For this I used the in-built Variaudio in Cubase. It works a bit like Melodyne, you can adjust the pitch of notes by hand, as if they're MIDI notes. You could probably use similar autotuning stuff from Antares and similar to get he same result.

I hope that makes sense and that we'll maybe have some killer harmonies in a future Best Asian Ever remix!

Thanks Derek, it would be my pleasure! I'm new to Soundcloud but I've sorted out the setting for allowing downloads. You should be able to download the Wave version from Soundcloud now, or if that's a bit large, I've included a link to the mp3 in the comments. Thanks again for your positive comments on my remix!

 

My Wretches and Kings remix was weird in the beginning
so i messed up first
i made an kinda slow electro remix of in the end
http://soundcloud.com/xsfremix/linkin-park-in-the-end
my new entry

 

thanks a lot :3
i think so too x)
even if this is not my personal favorite type (electro, dance etc) i will join every contest i think
really cool to try other things :3

 

Thanks! It's great to have a previous winner compliment my track. I'll take your suggestion in future and experiment more with my drum sound!

The harmonies: I started by writing and arranging the harmonies. I just pulled up a blank session in my DAW for this and thrashed out some ideas for harmonies in MIDI. I had a 5 hour train journey where I just sat with my laptop and came up with some harmony ideas.

Then I set about trying to get rid of the clapping which is in the Given Up acapella. It was very hard to try and tune the vocals with the clapping in the way. It was a bit of a nightmare, but I got rid of a lot of the clapping. I took the first two bar loop of clapping from the start of the song, which loops throughout the chorus. I laid that two bar loop over the top of the chorus, and I lined up the claps. Then I inverted the phase of the clapping loop using the phase/polarity button on my DAW mixer. That cancelled out most of the clapping and left the vocals untouched. It's not perfect, you can still hear some clapping, but it's not bad.

Then all that was left to do was copy the acapella and then tune each one to the harmonies I'd written. For this I used the in-built Variaudio in Cubase. It works a bit like Melodyne, you can adjust the pitch of notes by hand, as if they're MIDI notes. You could probably use similar autotuning stuff from Antares and similar to get he same result.

I hope that makes sense and that we'll maybe have some killer harmonies in a future Best Asian Ever remix!

Aah, Variaudio. I've heard of that. FL Studio has a similar program called Newtone, but the quality of the recording gets really lowered.

That's so cool by the way. Do you think switching from FL to Cubase is worth it? It seems way more advanced.

And about the drums - I guess it's not just the samples themselves. Did you add compression and a bit of reverb to them? That will really help the sounds feel more "alive".

 

Wow, I really think m_macdonald will win, your remix is great!


Hey Derek I got a question,

How will the winner be chosen? Do you do choose the winner, or will there be a poll or something like that?

 

Okay, I get your point.
And when will you reveal next month's theme?

 

;D