Arts & Entertainment, Science & Tech, Music

Remixes

Lesson time 11:34 min

Learn how deadmau5 works when he's remixing other artists, and what he likes to hear when other artists remix him.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Don’t Remix, Rework • Choosing Remix Material • What Starts as a Remix...Can End as Your Own Track • Guide to Remixing deadmau5 • Starting Your Own deadmau5 Remix

Preview

Remixing is cool. It's good exercise, because it cuts out a lot of work that you might be stumped on or something like that. And there's plenty of online collaborative websites, that kind of thing, where an artist will release stems and stuff like that, to other artists to use as tools to remix their work. And whether it's for a contest or for fun, or whatever, but ultimately it's just a good thing to look at other people's work sometimes and say oh, well that's an interesting way of making a drum sound that way or a certain effect being applied that way. And it can be fun at a time, if you can really take what the true meaning of a derivative work is, out of what they've done, as opposed to taking what they've already done and then changing just a few things and passing it off as a remix. So my remixes, I like to call them reworks, because I only take one element-- The way I do it is, I only take one element out of a song and usually for a remix, it's a vocal, or a certain phrase, and that's it. And I will rework a whole new body of work around it. I would reinvent the track completely. Saying, if this singer came in and just sang blindly into a microphone, what would you right around it? So I tend to ignore what they've already done musically, rhythmically, or whatever, and then just throw that all out, and then just use the vocal, put a clock behind it and start writing around the vocal. That to me, is a remix, even though by definition, a remix could very well be the same song, but just mixed differently in terms of process. That is what technically, a remix is. I don't know how it got kind of mixed up in the terminology that, this is a remix of this. And I'm like, well remixes-- It wasn't mixed right the first time and now they've taken all that same track information and just mixed it properly. It's like no, it's an entirely different song. It's a remake. It's a recreation. It's not a remix. There are some tracks that, in my mind are just so good that I don't think that changing it in any other way-- But sometimes you're surprised that someone was able to actually take something good and make it better. But it's kind of rare, because sometimes they take something good and then they just kind of do a mediocre version of it, or something lesser than what it was and stuff like that. So when you hear a beautiful piece of work, I don't immediately think, oh I wish someone would make this better, or I wish someone would rework this in the way that I like it better. Because then, that would mean that the music wasn't up to my par, if I hear shitty track I say it all the time. God, I wish someone would remix this or did this differently. Because I've heard a lot of really brilliant ideas being poorly executed. But since they're like big artists, nobody can take that and do something with it, because it's their intellectual property. No pun intended, ...

About the Instructor

Before he was deadmau5, all Joel Zimmerman wanted for Christmas was old toasters to take apart. Now, you can watch him take his music apart. In his first-ever online class, Joel teaches you how he approaches melodies, mixing and mastering to make unique sounds you can't find in a cookie cutter sample pack. You'll not only get his lessons, you'll learn how to create your own music without spending money on million dollar gear.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

deadmau5

6 hours of instructions, 23 video lessons, and a downloadable course workbook.

Explore the Class

Claim Offer