Sound Advice: The Art of the Remix

Hal Robertson
December 2007

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You're enjoying a new movie when, suddenly, you hear the start of one of your favorite songs. With a knowing smile, you can't wait to see how the song fits in the context of the movie. But wait, that's not exactly the song you know. It's the original artist, and you recognize some of the instrumentation, but somehow it's all different, strange and maybe wonderful. You're listening to a remix. It happens all the time - on the radio, in the dance clubs and even in video production. Someone edits existing content and combines it with other elements to create something fresh and useable. Now you can do it, too. With a little time, patience and a musical ear, you can repurpose pieces in your music library and give them new life in your current productions.

Remixing isn't editing, although it usually involves a good bit of editing. A typical musical audio edit involves grabbing an opening, a close and a couple of bits in the middle, and then chopping them together to create a custom-length piece. Remixing a piece can include lengthening, shortening, rearranging and, specifically, augmenting with additional materials. Remixed audio is perfect for big openers, closes and project themes. It's also ideal for squeezing more from your buyout tracks. In addition, remixing allows you some creative latitude in your musical choices. You get to decide how simple or complex the theme should be. You can dictate the flow of support pieces, with full control over their length and feel. In short, remixing gives you a level of creative control similar to video editing. Let's do some remixes.

If you're already having nightmares about some grand musical task, don't worry. Not all remixing requires drastic measures. In fact, some remixing is simply editing and adding sound effects. Let's use a 30-second opener as an example. This video is for a motorcycle club, and we've found a downloadable royalty-free piece of music that sounds sufficiently "biker" from CSS Music. Assuming there is no pre-made 30-second version, we'll start by dropping the original piece into an audio editor and setting markers at each musical section. Most popular music is divided into sections of four, eight or sixteen measures or bars. While you can't see the musical divisions in your editor, your ears will help you count them. If you're still not sure, set markers at obvious changes, and you'll be close. Once you've identified the various chunks, create a custom edit with a musical beginning, middle and end that meet your time criteria.

You could continue with the remix in your audio editing software, but it's just as easy to do it in your video editing software. With the newly-edited audio clip on the timeline, it's time to enhance it with sound effects. We find a perfect motorcycle startup in our sound effects library, so let's slide that in at the beginning on another audio track. In the middle, there's an ideal place for a biker drive-by sound, so we'll slide that around until it fits the timing. Finally, there's an explosive logo reveal at the end. An explosion sound effect would be perfect, but let's layer in a gong sound too. The trick now is mixing all these elements so they sound like they belong in the piece - not overpowering, but not too subtle either. Listen several times, with and without the video, and make any necessary adjustments. Nice.

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