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Hidden tracks on CDs, an increasingly annoying thing it seems. Often with the last track being 30 minutes long - 4 minutes of song, 23 minutes of silence, 3 minutes of "hidden track".

 

WTF is the point?

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Don't know but they always make me jump - CD finishes, room is quiet, just nodding off to sleep and eek.gif the hidden track kicks in and scares the living daylights out of me.

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One of the funniest ones I ever came across was of snoring. It was on an album that a guy I know mixed. When he was mixing my own album he warned me, after I fell asleep in one of our graveyard shift sessions, that if he caught me snoring he would record me because he said he records all snorers in his studio. Fortunately, it seems, I didn't.

Sometime afterwards I bought the other album I mentioned, and when I suddenly heard someone snoring it cracked me right up cos it was obvious what had happened and I realised the snorer was the musician/producer of that artist's album. Very funny. Fit right in with their madcap sense of humour.

 

There's another album I have, by an African guy, who put about 30 seconds of must have been a home ping-pong match in the middle of the album, with the track title Ping-Pong. That was it, no song afterward, straight onto the next track. I always think of Slow everytime I hear it cos she's a such dangerous ping-pong player, but that's another story.

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sunrise, can you enlighten me a bit about "mixing" an album and what is involved. Is that done after everything is recorded? etc?

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Yes, once all the tracks are recorded the mix stage is where you place each instrument/sound on what's like a virtual 3D sound stage, as well as where you can adjust the sound using EQ, and add (or don't add) effects.

 

This page gives a reasonable overall description of the wheres, whens, whys and hows of the mixing process. Just skip over anything if it seems too technical and keep reading.

 

A good mix is a vital part of the production process. A good mix might not be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but a bad mix can kill a great recording and a great mix can make it shine even more.

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Thanks sunrise. Interesting. Do many bands go back into recording once mixing has started as they find out they don't have what they want?

 

Lots of "remixes" I have heard recently are almost "re-recordings" - with hardly any elements of the original in there. Where's the line drawn?

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I don't think it's the norm, but it's true that some songs just don't turn out the way you're hoping. In that case if you're able it's a good idea to record a few more songs than needed and choose from the best of what you have. But actually that kinda stuff tends to get weeded out before the mix stage - even though a song isn't properly mixed until later on, during the recording process you're always doing rough mixes of the recording so you can get a good idea of what's going on, including whether something's working or not so one tends to be able to make those necessary decisions before you get something mixed. That goes whether the recording is a big budget one or a home-grown home recorded and mixed project, (though in the latter case the artist/engineer will tend to be partially mixing along the way, as would any engineer who does both the recording and the mix.)

 

Bands with big budgets who may not have a clue about recording will have producers to work with. And indies will work with engineers (and possibly producers) to record and mix their projects or, if they have engineering skills themselves they may do it themselves (though some will still get it mixed in a bigger studio with a mixing engineer cos they can get a better sound that way than from their home studios).

 

It's not always the case, though. The engineer I mentioned has told me stories where record companies have given him tracks to mix and it's been a nightmare for him - ie - badly recorded (including distortion or whatever), badly played so he's had to edit heavily (such as putting things in time, or pitch), plus in those circumstances he's been given a stack of tracks where things that are supposed to be there are missing, and/or he's not sure what's supposed to go where (perhaps too many vocal/instrumental takes with no info on them) and then he's got to make the choices as to which tracks to leave out cos otherwise the music wouldn't work, etc etc etc... He said he much prefers it when he works with the artist - particularly indie artists - rather than having tracks sent to him by a record company cos he said they always knows where everything is and of course they really care about what they're doing.

 

Remixing is a different kettle of fish - it's an artform in itself.

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There's other folk up here that would know a lot more about the art and criteria of remixing than I do. Mr Wiggles, for instance, and at least a handful of others could probably point you in that direction far better than I...

 

Me? Never having really delved into the world of remixing (well, not so far, anyway) I thought remixes were remixes and covers were covers.... hmmmm.... confused.gif

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Interesting topic that one.

 

When my fave band Depeche Mode produced their majestic Violator (1990), it was produced by Flood and mixed by Francis Kervokian. Kervokian then went on to do lots of the mixes for the singles and they were generally superb. They basically used the original tracks with perhaps small parts of extra production on top, but were top quality.

 

For the last few albums though they have gone with outside "remixers" - many trendy peeps (often before they become famous) like FLO, CJ Bolland, DJ Shadow, Air, Kid 606, Danny Tenglia, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Speedy J, Underworld. On the whole they are sadly just rubbish and totally destroy the original song. Some of them hardly even seem to use any parts of the original song, so they are almost like covers not remixes.

 

The worst offender is a 9 minute "remix" of the track Barrel of a Gun by Underworld. I think the only thing they use from the origianl DM recording is 1 short vocal phrase! All of the rest is basically Underworld! There's a few others that are basically the vocals plus completely new sounds.

 

It seems wierd calling them remixes. But are they cover versions?

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That happened in a part-time chillout project I do - one song got remixed - it sounded great - though the only recognizable part of the song was one phrase of the chorus melody once or twice in the song. I figured it was the remixer's perogative. I'd call that his "artistic rendition" of it rather than a cover version.

 

Covers to me are about unrelated artists redoing their own version of a song, not people who have been given original tracks to remix/recreate in their own way. However due to my scant knowledge of the remixing world for all I know people might now be calling those more unrecognizable remixes "covers" as the 'norm'. Is that what you call them happyhappy?

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I should have mentioned some of these "remixes" not only didn't contain the original sounds at all, but they didn't even have the melody either!

 

So in the case of the Underworld one, it was basically an Underworld track on a DM single - with absolutely nothing to connect it to DM other than than 10 words at the beginning! Madness. And totally garbage as well I might add. I hope with the new material they're doing now they drop these trendy 'destroyers' and release some great mixes of the tracks like they used to.

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