Week #29 - Bulgarian Chicks Remix

I'm getting away from my script again this week. Ever since they made the tracks available a few months ago, I've really wanted to try my hand at remixing the song Bulgarian Chicks by Balkan Beat Box. You can hear the original at either http://www.balkanbeatbox.com or http://www.mypace.com/balkanbeatbox. I haven't had time to work on it, but I wasn't very inspired to write something new this week, so it seemed like the right time.

It hasn't been mixed yet, I'm still fiddling with fills and edits, and the guitar and keyboard sounds need work, but as an arrangement I think it's pretty much finished. After meticulously cutting up the original tracks and pulling out about 20 or so clips I had a go at putting the song back together again. I recorded my own bass, guitar, keyboard and drum parts, to go with the horns, vocals and percussion from the original. And here it is so far:



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Description:

As I haven't done much in the way of remixing before, I wanted to keep pretty true to the original while giving it my own treatment. As such I didn't do to much editing of the clips from the original on my first pass. Instead I took those bits and built my parts around them. Once I had an idea of what worked together and came up with a structure, I started evolving my own parts and bending the originals to mesh with them.

Tools:

Propellerhead Record beta
Propellerhead Reason 4
Propellerhead Recycle 2.1
Fender Jazz bass
Epiphone Les Paul electric guitar

Notes:

- As mentioned above, this still needs a lot of work to become a finished track. Aside from the bass, I'm not satisfied with the sounds.

- The guitar tone is wrong for most of the track. I think I need to actually use different amp/FX setups for different sections.

- I also need to automate the delay/reverb on the keyboard as it's really doing different things in different parts of the track.

- I'm not certain I like the drum kit I used so I might switch out those sounds, and I need to work on fills and edits to the beat.

- I might add more percussion or replace some of the percussion lifted from the original, at least in certain sections. Another alternative since I recycled the loops would be to use the original clips, but play in new parts for them via MIDI. i did do a bit of editing to the original in this way, specifically around some transitions.

- I'd also like to do more with the horn clips from the original. As is I didn't really touch them.

- I'm not sure about the vocals. The longer sustained parts are okay, but the verses didn't work out so well. I split the original vocal into 3 parts and tried to work them out sort of like verses, but only one really worked so I ended up using it all three times.

- And then there's mixing which I haven't even begun. General levels and pan and a touch of reverb here and there, but for the most part it's still raw. The bass is compressed, but little else is, and I haven't touched the EQs outside trying to get the keyboard and guitar to sit together (to no avail).


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