Slow Down, Mix it Up

With all of the upbeat, pumping music in our life, sometimes we just need to take a break. I don’t mean take a break from music; I mean to allow the beats to relax and soothe your ears for once. Our brains are like muscles. Imagine going to the gym for 10 hours a day, every day, for an entire year. Is it possible to even get past the first week? No, it’s not, but trust me, this is going somewhere. If you constantly blast your mind with upbeat music your mind will cramp up. That’s why muscles need massages and minds need slow music.

Everyone has their own interpretation of what “slow music” really is. Some consider it as anything in the “classical” genre. Others might consider it as a song with literally a slow tempo. Others might even wrongly think of slow music as music that is boring and doesn’t go anywhere. Note: This is NOT slow music! It’s what we like to refer to as “bad” music.

In my own opinion, slow music doesn’t fall under any of these categories. Slow music is music that induces relaxation and (almost literally) gives the brain a nice, well deserved massage. When listening to exceptionally good slow music, I find myself closing my eyes and falling into a trance. I let the music do all the work, rather than trying to listen in on everything.

I would not ever consider myself a “pianist” (though often I do play), yet the most common form of music that really induces this relaxation to me is piano music. I sometimes even find my fingers patting along my side as if I actually am able to play the chart I’m listening to. (ha)

Misty is a very well known jazz piece. It has to be one of the most recurring cover songs, or original songs changed and performed by other artists, that I have ever heard. This specific rendition is a piano (with bass accompaniment) by Will Foraker and “Da Bologne” in a cover band called “B4”.

There’s just something about hearing a familiar tune arranged for piano, or as any slow jazz tune. I’m pretty sure you could take any song at all, from pop to death metal, and turn it into one of the most beautiful arrangements you’ve ever heard.

Surprising?

Unbelievable?

I have PROOF!

I know that most of you have never heard of “Misty” before, so I’ll demonstrate my point with more familiar tunes. I’m sure you all know of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music”. John Coltrane took the melody and created his own rendition of what he believed it should sound like.

An online blogger named Arksino took did the same thing to a very popular song by “Tool”. If any of you know of Tool, you know that you wouldn’t associate them with relaxing massages… He took the melody and, all by ear, transposed it and covered it on the piano. Listen to the first link and then listen to what Arksino was able to do with the hardcore melody here.

This example itself ties my whole mess of a blog together. Slow music provides relaxation. You might love Tool with all your heart, but how did you feel after hearing Tool on piano? It was pretty dang cool right? Of course, I’m assuming that you took the experience the same way that I did. Slow music really does provide an emotional output unlike any other music. For me, this is induced through simple piano renditions or smooth jazz charts. For others, this might come from hearing soft words spoken by a beautiful singer. Give me feedback on what you felt after hearing the melodic renditions, and I might even be surprised at the range of emotion given by this slow music.

Trance Energy 2007

In a performance with lasers, flames, and pumped up people... it is easy to be hyped up too without the aid of certain drugs. The sound systems at trance performances enhance the music several folds. Even though it is repetitive, the simplicity of the melody makes it catchy and easy to dance to.

One DJ Better Than Two

Here is a song that is remixed by 2 DJs playing at the same time. Song is here. In this setup, there are more than 1 turn table and more than 1 mixer involved. Both DJs will layer sounds over each other on their respective turntables and create different arrangement of melodies, beats, and ambient sounds.

In this song, which on my scale is around a 5 because it is not bad in that the melodies are catchy and delightful. Overall the song is upbeat, but due to two different DJs layering sounds, there are just too many things going on at once for this song to be a chill song. Also, the melody echoes after every note for about 1 to 2 seconds. This effect along with a lot of different ambients cause even more headache. In addition, the quality of the vocal in this song is not the best since it is drowned out by the ambient sounds and melody most of the time.

The length of this song is slightly longer than other remixes by other artists. This might be due to two artists trying to finish their beats and matching each other. As the vocal repeats along with the melody over and over again, the song gets pretty boring after a while. The song tries to climax by repeating the vocal and melody again, but increasing volume. However, at this point the climax is not noticeable because you have probably heard the loops a few times already and have gotten bored of the song.



In this song, which is an 8 on my scale, the DJ demonstrates a good balance of the ambient sound, melody, and vocals. When the vocal starts and followed by the melody, you can hear both clearly and neither drowns the other out. The track is clear and fluid. The beat, ambient , and melody compliment and match each other. For example, the melody and drum beats will start and end on a down beat.

This song has an echoing melody fits the song perfectly. The echoes allow certain sounds to fade in and out. This DJ uses the echoes as a cover to fade in vocals and ambient beats and to fade out the melody and drum beats. A technique that makes the song very pleasing and en-trances the audience.

The track being at around 3 minutes will spell bind the audience to the artist's style because 3 minutes is just the right time to demonstrate style in one song before moving to another song. The song also does not get tiring to listen to from all the repeats. Even one extra repeating loop of bars is enough to ruin the track.

Conclusion
One DJ: The song tends to be more clean and easy flowing where one DJ's style is clearly emphasized.

Two or more DJs: The song will turn out to be a mess if the DJs can not synchronize the performance and perform their own part to layer the sound. From the sample above, the layering is not completely bad, but it is enough to create the all-over-the-place feeling in which you don't know what to listen to.

Remix Artists are Lazy

Remix artists or remixers nowadays are getting lazier and lazier. Most, if not all, of their songs are either a remix of a song another DJ have already remixed. Many albums out there have at least one song that have been remixed already. It would not be such a big deal if the remixes are of epic quality and can captivate the audience, but that is not the case for about... I'd say 80% of the remixes of a song out there.

Why 80%? Personally, I download one song, then a few other remixes if I like the song. Most of the time, a song in one album is also remixed in another. It's a sign that the song is popular and hip. Popular means good right? Not really... eventually when everyone has the same song in their album, the song becomes played out or not so hip anymore. Out of 5 remixes of the same song, I usually end up with one song to put into my playlist. The other remixes are either of bad quality, similar sound to other remixes, or fail to wow audiences.

Why does this happen then? There are many possibilities, but here are some reasons I came across that seems logical.

• Artists today are just too lazy to look for original material that has not been remixed yet.
• In the process of remixing songs for an album, a particular song may have been remixed already, but the artist did not know.
• Many DJs out there are not really DJs. Many will try to remix a hip song in an attempt to be hip in a community of remixers.
  
• When artists remix a song, they usually need an acapella version of the song, which is a song with no beat and ambient sound that only has the vocals. Now in a community of DJs and remixers, when a certain acapella is shared amongst this community, the result is a dozen artists getting a copy of the acapella and a dozen remixes are thrown out there.
• Copyrights. Some originals may be protected by the law and some artists like a majority of the remix industry, refuse to pay money for albums they release for free.

Let's just pretend that every single remix of a song out there is able to captivate and en-trance an audience, but even the most tolerable of us would from time to time get tired of something that is constantly repeated. Originality is important in all the businesses and industries of the world. Sometimes the remixes are so similar that it feels like a form of music plagiarism and it is basically like reading one news article on five different newspapers.

Mothers Pride

Learning To Fly

I would like to open by saying Learning To Fly, in my opinion, is the best trance song ever recorded. I found this sample on Johnny Monsoon's Live Uplifting Trance Set recorded in 3.5.2005. The track comes from a white label single that I cant find, so if you are reading this and you have any info about it please contact me. I believe this is the original recorded in 1998, but it’s hard to be sure because of the many different releases and remixes.

It’s stays simple and clean and flows like water. Not to mention the mesmerizing vocals and hooks that put you into another state of mind. The arrangement of the song is very impressive. This is the main reason to me why it stands out from other trance. It’s like it has two phases, each with a buildup and resolution. Its songs like this that make me wish I born earlier to be able to enjoy them.

When I first heard this song, I was already thinking of ways to remix it. At first, I wanted to do a simpler house mix, but after seeing all of the other house-like remixes released, I decided to take a different approach. Learning to fly (sensual mix) was born. Still, not much in comparison to the original, but its fresh. It stays simple and clean, while produced in a hip hop, or "crunk", if you will, fashion. Like the original mix, the sensual mix is a floor filler. I have tested it myself.

If you like my beat please check my myspace for some other remixes.

Ratatat

Ratatat is a small band with a great sound, just two guys who started recording on a PowerBook in 2001. Their indie rock/electro sound is unique for the way the chord choices create a musical atmosphere of whimsical fantasy, melancholic reflection, and often both.

There are a lot of reasons why anyone in particular would enjoy Ratatat. Maybe you're the sort of person who wants a little of everything in their collection. Maybe you're the type that avoids the plague of throwaway pop tracks, trying to find artists that don't receive the listenership their glorious indie sound deserves. There's even a fair chance that you'd like them just because of the whole they-sound-good thing. I'd guess they're never going to have a Timberlake-esque fanbase of girls swooning over their hotness though, as they don't really seem to be going for that in their photos:
Ratatat hasn't put out a whole lot of albums, and honestly I don't have them all so I can't say what their remix albums sound like. What I have is their album Classics, which is fairly uniform in terms of sound and quality. For some that'll be a good thing, and for some, less so. For me, it's good news because I can review an entire album with the effort it takes to tell you about a single song.

Classics
Simply put, it's a sound I like. When I listen to music, I choose the playlist based on what I want to hear. Sometimes I want to hear happy lyrics and catchy melodies, sometimes I like something that lets you forget about what's going on and just sucks you into a half-listening state of trance. When I want to get some work done and not pay too teribly much attention to what music is playing, I can put on Classics.

The effect of the uniformity of the album is that you don't notice a major change when the next song comes on. It's like listening to Dark Side of the Moon, but without such musical genius that you're sucked away from your work. Having Classics on seems to acknowledge the menial, depressing aspect of your homework, but the emotion of the music keeps you moving on because despite the melancholic overall tune, the chord progressions are full of hope and the music continues on. I like Tacobel Canon for its opening, and I just like the energy of Lex in general, so those are my favorites off Classics. Finally, here's the iTunes link. Take a look, hopefully you'll like them.