Xmas is coming and things have been pretty quiet on the music front here at the Bluevibe studio, SO, I though I’d hit you with a little remix that magOwl did for the St Liquor-ish EP. When the EP was finished we bounced out a few tracks for remix and magOwl came back with this crazy break beat version of Money$ack. I’ve got alot of respect for mag’s skills as a beat maker and he always seems to come up with something unexpected and super fresh on any of his projects, make sure you check out his music and his many remix projects, you won’t be sorry.

St Liqour-Ish – Money$ack (magOwl Remix) by magOwl

The Shades – Wait a minute – Bluevibe remix

The Shades are a great new band from Auckland who I found through myspace. The only track on their page at the time was “Wait a minute” which I thought was a beautiful slow jam and really thought I could give it a Bluevibe rerub. The track had some great elements to it which I knew would be easy to incorporate in to a more upbeat version.

Ben who did the vocals on the track was more than happy for me to do it and sent me all the files through. The original was around 64bpm so I decided to get it up around the 76bpm mark and to mostly use only the vocal, gat and trumpet solo. I actually came up with a whole different version using a heavy funk break but felt that this was a little too busy for this vibe so I started with the simple clap beat and worked some new rhodes on it. The bass came next followed by some live gat and the horn stabs.

After time stretching the trumpet solo and vocal to fit the new bpm I had the basic skeleton done. The real issue with the track was that once the vocal had been stretched to 76bpm Ben’s flow just didn’t quite work for the track. In the end I decided to basically chop up ever word and nudge em into a new flow in certain parts of the tune. It would have been simpler to just redo the vocal but we couldn’t get on the same page to do this. Ben’s since told me that he loves the final mix I did but some advice to any remixers out there, probably not the best idea to cut up the lead vocals flow without warning them first, it may come as a bit of a shock to the vocalist!

The final mix also involved adding some synth and percussion as well a few gat stabs in the end section. I’m real happy with the end result and and the feedback from the band was wicked. It’s actually one of the first remix’s I’ve done and took longer than it should have but for me doing a remix is always about taking the track somewhere else and learning new production techniques along the way.

I’d still actually like to here the original of the track mixed by Russell Elevado and the way the shades are coming along maybe that could happen for them one day!

As a producer and musician I really like to work with a wide range of other artists. This approach for me keeps things fresh and exciting as I’m always learning about new music, new techniques and creating some long term relationships with talented artists. I also prefer to work on remix projects and e.p’s rather than longer album based projects. I guess at the moment I’m really too schizophrenic musically to write and finish 10 tracks all in a similar style.

I’m currently working with several exciting new artists on remix’s and a new “Bluevibe studio presents…” e.p.

These artists include:

• Lesley Paton – wicked vocalist who co wrote the track “Holdin on” which will be available soon through Baby Steps recordings.
• Lisa Preston – LP will be doing the guest vocals on the new “Bluevibe studio presents…” e.p which will be out in early 2008 also through Baby Steps recordings.
• Tech – long time production partner will be dropping a dubstep remix for the “Bluevibe studio presents…” e.p.
• magOwl – wicked beat merchant from Sweden who I’m doing a remix swap with. There’s gonna be an amazing hard funk remix of “Holdin on” coming out in the new year again on the “Bluevibe studio presents…” e.p.
• Soliloquy – another swedish producer who I’m doing a remix swap with for the “Bluevibe studio presents…” e.p. This guys got some mad skills and is working with some great vocalists, check out his myspace page for the tracks with Kissey Asplund, one to watch people.
• Skahlah – did a remix for one of Skahlah’s tracks and will be getting this smooth mc to grace one of the Bluevibe tracks real soon. Go check out his myspace page for some fresh Skahlah vibes.

I’ll be writing some blog posts about the different artists I’m working with in the future so check back for more info.

If you like what you here on the site and want to get involved either with a collaboration or a remix project then just get in touch. I only really work with artists who’s music I’m in to but that covers a huge range of genres and styles so hit me up. At the moment I get paid in in one of two ways for my skills:

1. cash!!
2. whatever form of “personal currency” you have which we can exchange

I do quite a few remix swaps which are always exciting, I do a remix for you, you do one for me, we both get a great new interpretation of our work out of it, all good.

I also do a few talent swaps were I maybe do a remix in return for an amazin vocal on one of my beats, this is what I’m doing with Skahlah and is worth much more to me than any cash he could give me.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you want to pay me for my services then I’ll happily do that but if our exchange of “personal currency” is going to build a new creative network then that’s gonna be more important to me.

Skahlah – Ambitions end – Bluevibe remix

I’ve just completed a new remix for a wicked mc out of Tokyo called Skahlah, very talented fella I met through myspace. Now 1 of my reasons for bouncing round in space is to meet new producers and artists and get some collabs on the go. For me as a producer and musician its such a great source of wicked new music to checkout. A lot of people really pushing the edge of genre’s and styles, if you can wade through the masses I think there’s still some huge talent to be found.
I’m really into the technical aspects of production and love the gear and software probably a bit too much so I thought I’d go through what I did to put this together for those interested, if your not into that shit then don’t read on and go checkout Skahlah’s page. If you got any questions on all this then just comment and I’ll get back to ya. It’s just me on this remix too cos, well, I thought I’d see what I could do on this 1.

Skahlah sent me the original track and the vocal through and I got to work on it, now I havn’t done much work with mc’s, I mostly work with vocalists who have a soul edge to what they’re doin.

My beats are usually pretty heavily programmed and complex so I started this 1 in the same direction. Got some wicked beats goin, a great Rhodes melody and bass to fit, took about 3 weeks on and off to realise that it just wasn’t workin with the vocal. Too busy which really distracted from his flow. I’d also sped it up about 6bpm which again didn’t help skahlah’s vocal to work in the track.

Now I was reading the other day about Amy Winehouse who when workin on a track can pretty much figure out within an hour whether its gonna work or not!! Its def one of the things I’m strivin for. The tune worked but not with this vocal, gonna get some sweet soul action on it instead. This final remix took about 5 days on and off from start to finish.

So I started again and really focused on the flow of the vocal, actually worked some loose bass around it first then built the jagged beat around that.

I’d been workin with a sample for time on another track but decided to mash it up and use it on this 1.

For the technical stuff I use cubase with kontakt for all the sounds on the track except albino for the synth. The vocal needed some 1176 compression to make it stand out along with a touch of Uad Neve 88rs eq to make it sit properly. There’s some heavy filters, delays and panning on the individual channels of the stereo sample which I used to give it some width and weird it out nicely.

I’ve got a real nice Rhodes in the studio at the moment so wanted to just add a touch of that on the end of the track, simple but sits nice although I did smath it with the new neve plugin on my UAD card. As you can probly tell I went with a real dirty kinda edge on this track.

I’m currently running individual tracks out through a simple hardware chain to really give em an edge. The chain is RME convertor – HHB EQ1 (valve eq) – Revox c270 tape machine.Its simple but does stuff that I just can’t quite get in the box, plus I love playin with the valves and tape levels to get the right kind of harmonics for each track. Now my big issue like most semi-pro home producers is the final master, I did a rough master in wavelab just for some level. If we decide to put the track out then we’ll go into a mastering house and get it done properly, I don’t have the ears for mastering or the kit, not saying that some people cant do it at home but I firmly believe that mastering is an art in itself and requires the right kit, room and person to do it.

So hope you like the track even if you didn’t make it through all this technical bullshit, we’ve had some wicked feedback already and it looks like it’ll be available as a future Skahlah release. Go checkout his myspace page and download the free ‘midskool disciple vol 1.’ Album, its well worth checkin out.

http://www.myspace.com/skahlah

Let me know what ya think people, as Skahlah says, “build and grow”.