Easiest/Best way to do a mashup?
Hey guys, I’ve been wanting to make a “real” mashup ( a remix ) where I include sounds that I’ve created and put together myself. I’ve heard that ableton is the way to go, but please tell me why, and are there other options as Logic Pro 9? Which one is the easiest to getting started with?
Best Regards Jack H.
/rant
i dont get why people dont get to call things what there supose to be
remix: Elaborating on the original with your OWN sounds added to give it a diffrent feel or make it diffrent
Mashup: two+ songs mashed togeather to apease the top 40 crowd
/endrant
depends if u have a mac seeing logic is mac only
both are HARD to get started with seeing it takes along time to get into production but there is no easy answer as to which is easier…there both diffrent yet extreamly similar and suite diffrent people…best way is to pick one and just stick with it though and after a year if its not working try ableton or vise versa
there isn’t a best way.
you have to use the software you feel most comfortable with. if you don’t have any software, which sounds like it, you will need to download demos and have at it.
Remixes and Mashups
Honestly I don’t do any mashes. But you can accomplish this easy enough in Traktor. Click FX2’s arrow to switch to global record, click record.
Using your hot cues, samples, fx, and 2-3 tracks, make something new while recording.
As for remixes:
Get a copy of Ableton, Reason, Logic, Garage Band, or FL. Spend several months learning the basics of bussing, side-chaining, level mixing, equing, of course, synth theory.
Break the original track into phrases on the arrangement window.
Add new Drum Tracks, side-chaining and parallel compression, effects sends and inserts.
Add in your own drum breaks and breakdowns.
Sample the original track and use that to create new melodies and harmonies.
Mix it down and then have someone master it for you, release on your facebook, youtube, and bandpage.
Market market market. Build fans, succeed!
www.facebook/the.electro.dream
www.dreamr.xxx
Okey, but do you think it’s a good idea to start with Logic, or is Live better for remixes and Logic better for totally new songs? And let’s say I get a macbook ( gonna get it anyway) and then buy Logic Pro 9 Express. What do I need else? A midi-keyboard I guess, but is there anything else that’s essentail?
Best Regards, Jack H.
Honestly, your DAW doesn’t matter. I like Ableton, because it is soo multi-functional. I use it for production, remixes, and as a signal processor/effect system while I DJ. (I run traktor into ableton for my own “sound” and routines.)
A piece of hardware with real keys, a couple of buttons and faders, and knobs will be enough to start with.
Spend lots of time on youtube and the interweb searching for how to make X bass, how to sidechain, how to bus tracks, how to eq and mix, how to automate.
That will get you going.
With Live: Replace the auto filter and compressor with fabfilters, and get Massive. I also LOVE rewiring Reason into Live for it’s synths, which I love to use.
Good luck, remember, until you have put in 10k hours, you are a student. If you don’t have 10k hours to spend over the next 2 years, give up now 
10 000 hours.
2 years = 364*2 = 728 days.
10 000 / 728 = 13 ish.
No one can produce for 13 hours a day every single day, even if you are jobless.
And even if you can, i don’t think that’s the good way to see things.
I just began learning Live, I know i won’t pull out anything good before a year or so, but what i’ve learned is that sometimes you need to step back from your work and come back later, because if you are too involved, your work is garbage at the end.
It’s ok to stress how important and long the learning process is, but please be realistic.
My advice to the OP would be : YouTube for tutorials, but also a big part is to discover things from yourself, roaming around and testing stuff.
Don’t be to hard with yourself, and give yourself some time. You can’t become a pro in a week.
And last but not least, you should bookmark this vid (that someone dropped here a while ago) and that will help you go back to work when you think it’s too hard :
[ame=“Ira Glass on Storytelling”]Ira Glass on Storytelling on Vimeo[/ame]
I’m not saying its easy, and unless you are nuts about it, you cant do it in two years. But like it or not, 10k hours is the magic number. Immersion is always key if you want to be GREAT.
Show me a master of their trade, and I will show you someone with 10k hours in or else they arent a jedi.
Many people HAVE done it in 2-3 years, myself - programming, the beatles - duh, Woz - computer engineer, and more. You give up 1 life for another.
I spent 3 years cooped up in my closet (office) every night, and after 6 months, at my job all day, and I am top in my field (NameBright - Coming Soon)
However, I have been working with music production (ie, no real instruments) for 4 year, with a much smaller bandwidth for investment time, so I am only about half-way there.
Hope it helps, I don’t like to postulate things briefly and then not back them up.
I think it partly depends on what type of mashups you want to make also. To me Ableton has always been a little more sample based so if you want a Girl Talk vibe I would recommend Ableton. If you like full songs that are mashups, I would recommend something like Logic (if you have Mac) or Sony Acid (PC).
But at the end of the day it really comes down to you as you can produce the same sound on virtually any DAW. If you’re looking for a software with a relatively easy learning curve I would recommend Sony Acid.
I currently use Logic for my mashups and I think it’s fantastic but it does take a while to learn.
I personally use Logic but think Abelton is little easier to use (just for me this maybe different for you) and if you don’t already use software to preform live then Abelton can help you out there as well. The out of box effects and mastering tools in Logic are my reason for staying with it so if you don’t see your self spending a lot of time learning to really master then Abelton may be a better place to start. I may end up using Abelton rewired through Logic in the end (if my computer can handle it!).
As everyone keeps saying you just gotta see what DAW has a the best flow for you. Maybe watch a few intro tutorials on both and see which one speaks to you more?
qft
this video may help you out a bit
you can prob use any DAW out there as long as you know how to use it your good.
Logic is the most cost effective. Logic Express doesn’t really exist anymore, and Logic Pro costs $200 on the App Store.
That’s a ridiculously good deal, especially if you can deal with their asinine synth GUIs (I hate them).
If you’re on anything resembling a budget and already use (or are planning to use) a Mac, Logic is by far the cheapest good option. And it grows with you very well. It can use AU and TDM plugins, which might matter less if they don’t eventually update it to use AAX plugins, but that won’t matter for a long time.
Logic Pro also comes with very good plugins. You get several (ugly and hard to use) instruments that sound awesome, lots of processing plugins that sound very good, a nice delay, a reverb that would cost more than Logic Pro to buy on its own, lots of amp/cab models. And all of it sounds pretty darn good. You can get better, but it costs a lot of money.
Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would buy anything else as long as Logic Pro costs $200 unless they have a strong preference for something else.
I think Pro Tools is a better choice, but it’s just a preference. There are a few things that I think are more straightforward in Pro Tools, and I like the UI better. Mostly, when I was shopping around for DAWs, I got the best results with Pro Tools and am very happy that I can finally go back to it…and even happier I don’t have to buy an Avid interface to run it. The only slightly annoying thing is that there aren’t many free RTAS plugins available. Oh well…I haven’t been that impressed with many free plugins anyway…and their new channel strip seems awesome enough that I might just not buy plugins anymore and go towards hardware instead.
If I had Logic Pro instead of Logic Express (I bought it like a year ago after using Ableton for a long time), I might not care about PT, but PT10 is worth the price difference, IMHO, especially if I still qualify for the student discount.
I don’t personally like Ableton, but it’s just workflow things that I don’t like combined with the fact that I kind of hate the way it deals with plugins, IO, and automation. I used it for several years and got decent results out of it, but I think they make too many concessions towards live performance to make it a great production environment. A lot of people disagree with me on that one. Live Studio is a lot more expensive than Logic Pro and about on par with PT10, and I don’t think it’s worth that money.
Reason is a terrible choice if it’s going to be your only software. You’re locked into just their stuff and can’t add anything to it. It’s a really nice synth rack but a terrible DAW. That being said, sometimes people work better within constraints, and a lot of good music has come out of it. And Record is kind of cool…I just think it’s nowhere near as good as other options (like…almost every other option).
Maschine is something worth considering if you think you’ll like working like that. Mikro is a joke and not worth considering, but the full version is really cool. There are limitations…mostly that you can’t actually do everything from the hardware and that it’s really kludgy to work with long elements (vocals, some actual instruments, etc.) and doesn’t really do much audio editing. It also can’t do comps or takes of individual sounds and is a completely different workflow than a lot of people are used to. It’s much easier to think of it as a sequencer and collection of a lot of instruments and effects than it is to think of it as a full DAW, but again, you can produce awesome tracks using nothing but Maschine.
I love using the thing to make beats, which I then record into Pro Tools (I used Logic before about 3 weeks ago) to do mixing and adding elements that don’t make sense with Maschine’s workflow.
But, I also really like hardware. Despite owning a large collection of free or bundled soft synths, I’m saving up for a hardware one just because knobs are awesome. So, take the comments about Maschine with a grain of salt…you definitely don’t need anything but Logic to start. And given the price and the fact that you don’t have any preconceived notions or habits, it’s a very good choice.
If you’re planning on Logic as a stop-gap solution until you can afford something else, don’t bother. Get some free software and work on developing your senses of rhythm, structure, and melody and save up for what you really want.
^ Very good advice there.
Unless you are thinking in a live performance mindset, i’d go for Logic over Ableton. Personally i use both, if i’m recording a straight forward band or a standard track then Logic is better for me, feels more robust and the sound is more professional for my tastes, especially with the plugins. (Apart from the multipressor issues in logic 8, the attack doesnt seem to work, old glitch apparently fixed for 9)
But when im working on my own stuff, especially remixes i like Ableton for the session view and being able to jam clips out with a launchpad to get a general arrangement that can be bought out into the club and manipulated easily.