Remixed And Loving It

Apologies for not sticking to the "song a day" mantra I set out to do last week. Living the life of a full time student and composer doesn't leave me with very much free time; none at all, to be exact. This weekend was exceptionally hectic, between rehearsals with the Salvation Denied ensemble (it sounds so much more badass when I say it like that), beginning the production of arrangements for Alice Unraveled, and realizing that the Amanda Palmer remix was due a lot earlier than I expected.

It's a great feeling, opening the contest page on Saturday and realizing that the song has to be submitted by Monday. Panic set in, I didn't leave my room for a good 5 or 6 hours at a time, and through the sheer power of will and the magic of copy/paste, the remix was completed. Mixing occurred the following day, on Monday, thanks to my housemate and longtime friend and collaborator James Perrella, to give it that extra grit, drive and side chain compression, and I submitted with a little over 2 hours until the completion of the contest. Whew. I work best under pressure.

The remix is an amalgamation of Paul Van Dyk esque trance, Salvation Denied's own eccentric brand of electronica and my first foray into dubstep. Dubstepping bass sounds was one of the most exciting parts of this project, as I had never done it before. Running into problems with getting my LFOs to work (which is how most dubstep musicians get that WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP that's so prevalent in the genre), I devised a simple workaround: FILTER PLUGIN. It's not the smoothest, but it gets the idea across and works wonderfully.

James provided me with additional amusement with his frustration at mixing in Logic. It's somewhat of an oxymoron; Logic is completely illogical with the way its set up. I don't think I've heard the phrase "piece of shit" used more times than in that hour of mixing. Quite humorous, to say the least.

Download It Here. Additionally, if you want to check out any of the other submissions, click here. There's quite a few of them, some of which are incredibly good, some of which are... not so good, shall we say. But then again, I'm a cranky music major.

As for Alice Unraveled, I'll have to talk to Kelly, but I'm sure she won't be opposed to posting some scratch arrangements that we did up on here.

Also, thanks a bunch for reading. I've noticed I've been getting hits every day. From who, I'm not sure (I have to find the little widget that shows me where my readers are coming from), but it means a lot that you care about my ramblings and music. I promise I'll bring you goodies from the archives of music on my computer soon.