Because this is the December issue, I thought I would share with you one of my favourite end-of-term projects. I normally do this project with sixth form students, but a simplified version could easily be used further down the school. A lot of my colleagues who teach A-level music have been asking about the ‘Remix’ task in the specification, and this project works well both as a trial version for this, and as a practice task for the AS Music Technology composition task.
Christmas remix
I start by playing the students some examples of different remixes of famous songs. The idea of a remix can either be to put song into a new style – such as creating a version suitable for a club to reach a potential new audience – or to give a song a new lease of life.
Students are often unaware of the wide variety of remixes that have been created in different styles. I play them remixes of jazz pieces and rock pieces to show that it can be applied across lots of genres, not just dance and hiphop. There are great examples of Gregory Porter tracks that have been remixed that really surprise the students when they hear them.
The process
I invested in a cheap Christmas compilation that features all of the big hits for the students to choose as their raw material. That way, I have an enormous number of jumping off points – and there is likely to be something that inspires everyone. Interestingly, the vocals on the Frank Sinatra Christmas album that I use are very loud, which means the accompaniment is virtually inaudible when placed in a mix with new sounds – easy to use for remixing!
I demonstrate how to drag the audio file into my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and listen through to find clips of sounds that I think might work effectively in the new version. I then cut these from the original and delete the left-over audio. I work out what the tempo of the original recording was so that I have a starting point for creating new music.
I can then either copy and paste them into different places into my project or I can load them into a software sampler for further manipulation. I begin to add new accompaniment parts to fit with the samples. At this point, the simplest task is to create a stylistic piece of music that fulfils all of the normal examination criteria regarding form, structure and so on.
Once the students have created a two-minute track, I get them to upload them to a private playlist so they can all share their work. We listen to them as a group and eat mince pies, while offering feedback on the stylistic and technical aspects of each person's remix.
Hints and tips
When the samples have been cut, it might be worth using some of the advanced features of your DAW (if you can) before further editing. There will be some tools that will analyse the tempo of the recording, place markers at peaks in the volume (transients) and allow these to be moved. This process has different names depending on the software (Flex in Logic, VariAudio in Cubase) but because it allows the speed of the sample to be recorded it will allow the sample to be quantised to the tempo of the piece or drastically altered to fit the tempo of a different style.
It might be possible to find a cappella versions of particular songs to remix – obviously this will make it significantly easier to use for writing new music but the quality of these can be variable and not everything is available in this format.
Be very careful about copyright – many companies produce royalty-free emulations of songs that don't require any additional copyright payments, but if you only have access to the original you need to be very careful about using it. You can't legally copy and share recording of the artist's work without paying for it, and you obviously can't upload it to a public platform to be shared more widely.
Summary
One of the great things about this project is that it teaches genuine musical and technical skills that are required by both of the A-level specifications, while maintaining engagement and a sense of fun. The project can be differentiated and simplified for lower years by providing pre-made samples and the use of included loops alongside recordings. Although I've framed this as a Christmas project, it would work perfectly well with any samples and at any time of year. The key outcome should be remixing skills and understanding how tracks are structured musically and creative use of the samples throughout. Happy remixing!
