NI Maschine Remix Contest: THE RESULTS!

Hi All:

Christmas comes early this year....

Very exctied to deliver the results of NI's first unofficial remix contest on your very own NI maschine forums. All of the submission are great, and also very different in their own way. Props to the producers who took the time and met the challenge!

I'm sure everyone's anxious to here the results, so I'll get on with the links

The original tune: http://debbieneigher.bandcamp.com/track/frames

(Special thanks to Debbie Neigher for making her stems available)

Our community's remixes: https://soundcloud.com/ni-remix-contest

(click each track to read the producer's notes on each track)

(add: if you want to listen to all the songs as a set, go here: https://soundcloud.com/ni-remix-contest/sets/december-2012-entries)


I am almost finished with my voting script that will allow you guys to vote for your favorite remixes, but I figured I'd leave the door open in case there are any more last-minute submissions. (send them to me asap: ak.slavepod@gmail.com)

I will post the voting script once its finished.

I reccomend listening to all the remixes, perhaps even a couple of times each, before you decide which you like best.

I also encourage folks to ask questions here and on soundcloud; more than deciding on a winner, I hope that this activity promotes meaningful discussion on how particular things are acheieved inside of maschine's workflow.


Sowari, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to get this stickied; you can unsticky the rules and format post.


For folks late to the game, this is the initial thread where the remix rules, content, and format were originally discussed: http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=183072&page=6

(note to producers: if I screwed up you description or song title or image, just PM me and I will fix it... soundcloud likes to add the artist image to any tracks without pics, so if you didn't include one and would like to, just PM me)


Thanks to all invovled! I hope we can start a tradition of doing this!

Enjoy the holiday!

 

My old neighbour just knocked on my door asking what was going on. Metropolik's bass lololol.

Wow, Widowmaker, that's chillin'.

Aporia sick and I like it.

Vaiman's remix reminds of great NIN moments. Very cool.

I really can't decide. And wow, my sound sucks. Sounds great in my headphones but with my cheap logitech 2.1 system... just f***ing bad.

 

Ya I mixed in headphones

ear buds, actually. :-/



@DerKasten: I liked the tempo you brought your track up too... its orchestral quality is an interesting take on the original is especially cool. it reminds me of music from a sweet video game or the matrix... is rob D and influence of yours? I think you'd like him.

 

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metropolik - hectic as f**k, sub blaster !

der karsten i am lovin that - i recognise them drums as well, which kit was that.

aporia - serious programmin huh? nice .work

Vaiman gets my vote absolutely no doubt - iI agree with derkarsten, it does have a certain NIN kick to it on the breaks, love it.

 

Wow. I have to say they are all awesome and I love how they are all very different. Well done guys.
I've only listened to them on my PC so I need to blast them properly on the studio today.

metropolik - that's some lovely low end! Nice and laid back track that is also scary at the same time.

der karsten - Very good use of vocals and love the track. Looking forward to "An Evening with Debbie"

Widowmaker - On repeat last night with a drink/smoke, lights out. Great work man. Reminds me of Massive Attack.

aporia - This makes me smile and feel great. Loving it! You can tell some quality time was spent on this.

 

It's a shame that there weren't more, wondering if many were put off by the difficulty of the original...

let's try to gain some momentum though with something else....i suppose we need vocals and stems so will run and look for some online that can be used unless someone has something ready to go?

 

Yeah it's a shame and I think you may be right. It did throw me at first and i was thinking I may have to pass on this. Glad I didn't.

Currently blowing the cones out of my monitors with Metropolik's bass

 

Sub wub

 

i was put of by how bad the orginal vocals were ..no offence..they were badly recorded and the melody she was singing was very very monotinus it didnt change..i did a remix of it but could only do what you all did and by that i mean they took a very small snippit of the vocal and just repeated it (i think thats all anyone could actually do with the source material) it was very hard too play with the vocals just in maschine if it was in cubase itd be much much easier as it has better timestretch algorithms and tools to use but in maschine to keep her vocal in pitch and time was hard work.

i hope next time we get to remix a proper song and singer if it was madonna or britney you would have had more entries.

but my hats of too you guys who submitted theres some really leftfield tracks there i especially like widowmakers track that reminded me of lamb/unkle/portishead i really liked the effects you used.

 

thanks waxxy, all fx used were maschine internal - I just made some multi's that suited a laid back track, loads of verb and delays etc.

we need some new stems

 

yep i agree ..new stems

 

upon second listen; vaiman is going to get my vote; almost finished the voting script, will post the link when I am finished.

@djwaxxy: I tried to perserve verses and recreate a chorus out of the original verse - all that aside - the whole reason for using this tune was that it is solely owned by the artists and therefore no copyright/licensing issues came into play for NI.

If you know artists who own their own music and would willing to make stems available to us, feel free to lead the next entry. I'll gladly give you the password for the soundcloud account.

I also would like to try working with something that was played to a click track as well... I wouldn't call debbie's tune monotonous at all... it was just challenging because it wasn't made on a sequencer nor was it recorded digitally... im guessing you don't know Brittany or madonna.

 

Madonna or Britney, I couldn't think of anything worse :lol:
But I'll have a stab at anything.

But that's the point isn't it?
As an audio engineer you don't always get to work with what you love, and sometimes the material isn't perfect. Getting stems that another engineer has auto-tuned, EQ'd and chopped up to 120BPM is taking away part of our work.

That's just my take on it anyway. I enjoyed the challenge of getting the vocals to sit in the mix, as vocals are always one of the most difficult aspects.

Just wanted to say thanks to aporia for all the work you have put in. Cheers man, it's much appreciated. Also to Debbie for supplying the source material, cheers Debbie!

 

i wasnt calling anyones remix minotinus i was calling the orginal vocal stems as monotinus she sang the same melody over and over again also it was badly recorded and there was some tuning problems too.

i think all the remixs are great and to be honest i prefer the remixs to the orginal.

i bet im not the only one that thinks this as well.

what i ment in my orginal commments was the tune we were given had limited parts that were usuable to remix..so the only way you could get a workable dance mix was too take little pieces and either chop them up and repeat them and make the vocal cuts part of the groove or take take cuts and use fx too make them useable but too take most of the stems and remix it would be impossible to do in maschine.
if you had the choice to use the parts in another daw such as cubase you could do so much more with the given stems to clean them up ,tune the badly sang notes,clean up the badly recorded vocals...etc but in maschine the arranging is basic and what you can do with vocals is also basic.

and thats why you only got a handful of submissions...i appreciate what you were trying to do but im betting you thought youd get hundreds of entrys and you would have if youd listened to some of the comments people made when the competetion was thrown about on the forums.

a few people said get samples from a website (i forgot the name)and remix the samples from there ...i and others also said why not remix and song which native instruments included in the project files..now i thought that would have been better because every user of maschine has those parts to start with and you would have got some outstanding remixs from alot of the members of these forums ..in fact it may have been hard to judge but it would have made a great competetion.

and no i dont know britney or madonna but im betting you dont either
---
yep i agree vaiman sometimes you dont get to work on tracks youd like too but i think the orginal stems put a lot of people of in the first place which is a real shame

but too everyone whos works is in the comp i salute you and enjoyed hearing your work

 

Yea waxxy don't mistake my brevity for hostility...


I totally dig what you were saying and would like to maybe try doing something a little more newb. friendly next time.


To vaiman's point though, vocals are indeed always the great challenge, and I think, though not a pristine recording, there were many subtle differences in Debbie's voice and therefore a number of possibilities to exploit in a remix that chops up a vocal track to use it as an instrument.


Everyone seemed to employ this technique to various ends, but I think vaiman does this the best... That's why I like his.


@Vaiman: do you have one eq on the entire group of vocal clips? What did you do?

I boosted around 3k and 1k and cut all the lows on my vocal group. Then doubled up tracks and offset for steroewideness, but I think vaiman's vox mix cuts through perfectly...

 

Vaiman, very good classic remix. Sometimes remixing needs to keep an element of truth to the original and not just sample it.

DerKarsten, really enjoyed this, right up my street. Smooth flows.

Aporia, liked these sounds too, some great little cuts between vocal samples.

All entries were ace, I'm really impressed with you guys!

 

Ahh cheers guys for the kind comments.

The intro vox had around 1db boost at 2k and a high pass filter, just on this sound.
The rest were chops between 3 sounds on the same 1 group. All 3 individuals had compression. The group EQ, another high pass at around 150hz and EQ cut at 400 ish and boost around 2k area. I think that makes sense lol

The other hard part for me was only using waveforms, I was gagging to use Massive or other vsts's/AU's! But I ended up with a few synth sounds of my own so hey ho.

Yeah, these discussions are cool. That's another great thing about this kind of event. Although I love helping folk, just talking about technical issues or the latest software releases are not always the best topic.

To be honest I wanted something like aporia's chopped up vocals on the verses but time/talent did not permit. I love the way you have so much more flow than mine on most parts.
Did you just cut the vocals up to smaller parts?

derkarsten, still loving that change at 1.17. Awesome.

Oh... it's christmas. Happy christmas folks !

 

@vaiman: yes i cut all the main vox I wanted to use ahead if time and put them on separate pads... "Static on the radio"... "I can sing it anyway" etc... Only when I had a completed group of vocal samples (time stretched to 90 bpm) did I begin to actually arrange the mix.

Started with my 'chorus' then build verses and finally used oohs and ahhs from the vox to make live instruments.

I think I approached this mix as I would any other... Find some possibilities, then build around the first thing you make that you like.


I obviously gave into the temptation to use massive; proud to say that all those dub step synths are my own creations.

 

Also, props to flux.

I'm using the dirty mix kit (from his dystopia pack) for most of my drums and percussion. The hats on that kit are soooo cool.