NZ is home to some amazing beat makers and producers and this week I wanted to point you over to a couple of new mixes which have just been put together by the boys over at The Jewel School on Radioactive in Wellington. The mixes were out together for NZ Music month and feature some amazing tracks by artists including Ladi 6, Fat Freddys Drop, Julien Dyne, Electric Wire Hustle, Opensouls and Adi Dick.

The boys don’t just focus on the bigger NZ artists so there’s also a whole bunch of unreleased tracks including a couple by yours truly (The Shades remix and my new moniker BVX). I’m actually really proud to by included in such great company and am excited to see just how cutting edge and deep NZ production is at the moment. You can check out the mixes online and I’ve asked if we can make them available for download, i’ll let ya know here and on my Bluevibe studio twitter page when you can grab em as a download.

Related posts/pages

• The Shades – Wait a minute (0)
• Free tracks for christmas from the studio… (0)

Just wanted to let you all know that The Shades have recently released their debut EP, it’s a deep slice of funk & soul and well worth picking up.

I did a remix for The Shades a while back and will be twistin “Liquid Situation” from the new EP as soon as I get the stems. They’re having their EP release up at Rising Sun on March 7th and will be heading down to Wellington for 2 shows on the 11th and 12th. Make sure you head along and support them, the EP’s totally self funded and it’s great to see them getting some respect for their efforts.

You can buy the EP from Conch in Auckland or jump online and get it from the Conch website or over at Amplifier.

Related posts/pages

• The Shades – Wait a minute (0)
• The Jewel School drop a new NZ beats mix (0)

Just wanted to wish all the readers and visitors to the new website a merry xmas and give you the chance to download the new EP "The Archives Vol.1 – The Ghostfaders" plus the Bluevibe studio remix of The Shades "Wait a minute". Thanks to The Shades for the colab and the chance to get it out to you for christmas. If your in NZ make sure you try and check out The Shades live plus look out for the new EP in the new year, should be a new Bluevibe studio remix from the new EP too.

Looking forward to 2008 I’ve got a list of new projects and remix’s on the go in the studio as well as a new job working with musicians on the P.A.C.E. scheme over at The Depot in Devonport. I’ll be adding regular posts to the website with info on new projects, lots more music for the mp3 blog, plus a new focus on collaborations where I’ll be posting unfinished tracks and asking you to download and add your vibe to them. I’m always on the look out for a killer synth player so if you like what you here from the studio then just hit me up.

Here’s to a fresh and exciting 2008, health, love and happiness to you and yours.

Here’s the links to the downloads, leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Related posts/pages

• The Shades – Wait a minute (0)
• The Politik remix competition – what’s in it for you and me!! (11)

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!

Related posts/pages

• Free tracks for christmas from the studio… (0)
• The Politik remix competition – what’s in it for you and me!! (11)