what if other songfighters remixed an Octothorpe song?
PRESENTING "Too Goth To Rock": The Remixes
| octothorpe original submission | The original submission to songfight.org. There are essentially seven tracks: Drums, Bass, Strings, Horn, Synth, Lead Vocals, and Interlude Vocals w/ shaker and noise. Only the levels and panning were adjusted during the original mixdown. No effects or compression were applied. These tracks were distributed to the participants. |
| first octothorpe remix | This is the second version, currently posted at songfight.org, to which a little reverb was added (both to the vocals and then to the overall mix) at the suggestion of JBB, and the levels were all backed off in the mix, responding to a comment by King Arthur (you will need to turn up the volume in your mp3 player if you just listed to the original mix). |
| remix by blue lang | I didn't
add anything... Just panned stuff out so you could hear everything, put one
tiny smidgeon of verb on the vocal, got mad with the EQ to give things a little
more space, and put my patented rock-improving move on it: Turn The Damn Drums
Up. Oh, yeah, and some flange on the synth. * Interlude vocals: I wanted them to have kind of an AM radio / phoned in sound, so I cranked up about 1.4khz and cut all the bass out. I guess I should call it a 'mix' more than a 'remix.' But.. I am too goth to remix. Any grit you hear is either something you recorded or my mp3 encoder. * The only other things I did were to normalize the vocal track and put a little compression on it, and cut out all of the big spaces where no music was, so there isn't a phantom signal to drive whatever EQ or effect is on the track. * Er, one more edit: I put a tiny bit of bright distortion on the drums to sharpen them up a little. * in response to question about how he got the lead vocal so "out front" - Combination of level, EQ (which is really the same as level), and compression, in my case. What you do is make the lead vocal just a little bit louder than everything else.. so it still 'sits' in the mix, but is a little more pronounced. Then you compress the whole mix a little, so that the loudest thing becomes more pronounced, and the rest of the tracks sit back a little. It usually takes me 3 or 4 tries to get that part right. The compression also 'spreads' the sound and kinda smears everything together. If you can't get that to work, like if the vocal is competing with a guitar or something, but you want to hear them both, I go to the EQ and put a notch in one and a rise in the other at around the same freq. * the mix i did is what i'd consider a "car commercial" mix. over time, it's pretty hard on the ears, very loud, with probly too much treble and no transients. but that's how i mix all of our songfight stuff, so it'll stand out in a crowd. if i were mixing it for an album, it would probably sound more like what steve did, with a clear and lower-volume mix. i'm usually trying to bend ears quickly, not mixing for repeated, long-term listening. |
| first remix by jack shite | this is a pretty slick way to get folks to like your song. i've listened to it at least 20 times now and it grows on you..... but i'll bet you knew that...i added a bit more reverb to the lead vox than the other tracks and i brought the level down in the overall mix. i noticed the signal on your lead vocal track was very high and felt that by bringing it down a bit, the other parts would shine through better...and as blue said, tweaking the EQ and compression really adds alot.... |
| second remix by jack shite | 2 bonus tracks....one is the infamous brody eggshaker and one is a wah guitar part to the middle vocals.... |
| remix by smu | Now that's a remix. It's sped up to 133bpm and is made 100% from the original tracks, diced and marinated using CoolEditPro1.2, arranged in Acid4.0 then fully baked in T-Racks24 |
| remix by jb | I had two
goals with my mix: a)make all the parts cohere and b)add interest To these ends
I did the following: * Averaged the channels for the wavs. As they were sent, the right side was a little higher than the left. * Compressed the lead vocal. * Copied "Too goth to rock!" and doubled it with echo on the second part. * Compressed the bridge vocal thing. * Multifreq-stereo panned the bridge thing, so it should be wider and more pervasive in the mix. If I had thought about it, I'd have separated the barking dog out and made the whole mix stop for the bark, but I didn't think of that until today. * Added delay to the lead vocal. Just a smidge to make it sound fuller. Didn't spend a lot of time on it, so of course it's not perfect. Also, moved the lead voc a little to the right. * Added chorus to the "string" synth track. * Added delay to the "horn" synth, and moved it a little to the left. * Increased the low freqs on the "bass" synth. The sound isn't as round as I would like, but I think the source is a limiting factor. * Compressed the drums, looking for punch. I think the kick drum sound here is pretty weak, so I couldn't get a nice thump, but it's a little higher in the mix. * Panned the hell out of that beeping track, so now it's moving all over the place in the stereo field. Whee! I did master the mixdown, but didn't play with it a whole lot. Added some mids, did some loudness maximizing, added a little exciter crap, did some multi-band compressing, and a teensy bit of reverb. That's where Izotope Ozone excells. I had fun. Feels like I could do another whole mix that's much more subdued, more coffee-house than bar-band.Done in Cool Edit Pro 2 and Izotop Ozone. I am now officially sick of this song. Heh. |
| remix by o.0 | I put in some extra drumbeats... I think it can be best described as "cut and paste" and "odd". Freaky and decomposed. |
| remix by magenta | All I did was rearrange things a bunch, change some levels, and fuck with the vocals a bit (mostly putting on random flanges and filters, with a bit of vocoder towards the end). |
| stream all |