Remix Planning - Sapphire

For my production of the remix Sapphire by Mike Blue, I undertook it with the aim to bring the dazed and wispy neon tendrils of nightlife and the atmosphere of busy and detached moods to this track, which itself brings into proximity with it’s mellow jam of jazzy drums, smooth bass and expressive saxophone, along with lyrical context.

My original notes on first impressions on what to reach for with the remix was an aesthetic that coneys in the mix a detached and distant sound (early house influenced) with the beat taking the foreground as adage to this lucidity. I wanted to capture in the bustle, being in the beat, and with the live backing representing that bustling near yet far activity found around that area of town near The Jacaranda at midnight. For the production I had first laid a bed of backing existing stems including the bass focused centred, this was chopped and looped into the bassline which would make the backbone of the track, I then brought in the sax and vocal samples into place and finished with adding in a programmed kit to bring the rhythms and grooves of chilled but driven backbeat inspired from classic Hip-Hop and EDM notably Groove Armada. The track at this point then mainly consisted of original stems which had washes of reverbs and tape delay effects to bring them up and spaced out properly in the stereo field. This had a great sound but was still lacking in EDM elements and context to bring it up.

I discussed in class with lectures Cormac and Paul after a listening session. I agreed with them that there were still areas to work on and add additional sounds and texture to the existing arrangement. I went back to work on the remix, and layered in on top of the mid-range and bass focused backing with neon synthesis and popping bottle topper percussion and lead synth to emphasise melodic movements emanating from the existing keys and bass. I also utilised tape delays with feedbacks at an exaggerated stutter length and feedback similarly to dub remixes which echo out distantly from the source to add movement and flow to the track, feeding into these many elements of the synths, percussive and backing elements filtered in to stretch the sound and add layers of depth.

I also went in and layered some of these sounds into the outro, added in some emphasis to the kits backbeat and crunched up another layer with smashed reverb and envelope filtering for control, to smash the kit behind the topper for that cassette sample sound found in the chilled heavy hip-top of Cypress Hill, with the topper bringing the Groove Armada rhythm.

Going into the remix production, I had a number of aims which I would keep in mind during the project to ensure the original track and stems were into a new area of sound, style and genre. Those aims were -

-  Re-arrangement

-  Overdubs

-  Varied additional effects

-  Rebalancing

-  Redone drums + percussion

Along with wider aims beyond the track which were:

-  To reach different audiences

-  For radio / club plays

-  Building a marketing asset

-  For collaboration

I worked through these areas of focus within the project at each relevant stage to ensure that the final production included all these aspects. For the re-arrangement in the track I took the driving bass loop picked out from the stems to create a more repetitive and club genre orientated track, as well as with the use of the rearranged and repeated vocal samples, then on top the new drum machine programmed beat of the track using the Logic plugin Ultrabeat with midi sequencing. Overdubs were also brought in through the neon synthesiser padding and layering which helped to push the track aesthetically into the direction I was aiming for, adding to the distant atmosphere whilst shining through the wispy reverberated distant cymbals.

Sculpting the sound with modulation effects such as chorus to push elements in the mix wide with additional harmonic quality. Ringshifter was added to the bass during a breakdown section in the track which emphasised the bubbling up through the lower bass frequency spectrum. With heavy use of tape delay effects to add movement as-well as reinforcement of extra groove in the percussion and kit layers of the track.

Rebalancing spanned the entire mix, with the original stems rebalanced after the initial dropped tracks were muted, then continuing through the remix process as new layers were recorded and mixed in, here I aimed for a dynamic mix with distance and depth throughout the stereo field, to achieve this I had to ensure that tracks sat together with a focus on using the lower levels to achieve this distance for space which could then be filled with the present elements of percussion. The final track is a sound inspired by the original moods and themes of the noir and jazzy track, embellishing that smooth late dawn sound with neon and bounce as fitting with the local area of the recording. This new sound to the track would push the track into the consideration of wider listeners of varied genres of EDM and pop music, away from the original but still paying homage to it’s sound to draw in listeners to the original studio release which they may not otherwise interact with, potentially offering a new audience stream for the artist and subsequent record label if taken and pushed over radio stations who’s playlists may be open to the remixed sound.