Comment by nileshtrivedi
14 years ago
What I would love to have is: independent instrument/vocals tracks along with a default recommended "mix". The default mix would be used for normal playback and independent tracks would be great for custom mix / karaoke etc.
Is this too unrealistic to expect? Has something like this been tried before?
Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails has done it several times: http://www.ninremixes.com/multitracks.php
Plenty of other artists have as well, but this is the most high profile example I can think of. I agree it would be great if it happened more often.
I'm not a huge NIN fan, but Trent is truly awesome when it comes to digital music. You can add excellent mastering and dedicated surround mixes too..(rec: Social network soundtrack). Also a former oink'er.
The beatles multi-tracks are also available (although they were only recorded 4-track so not every instrument always has it's own track), and there has been a handful of artists who have released their samples of one song for remix competitions (Daft Punk, Royksopp, Booka Shade).
There are two reasons I don't think this will happen:
1. People would use the tracks to create custom remixes which they would then distribute. What happens when a remix becomes more popular than the original track? Artists generally have to pay other artists to remix their songs (usually via royalties).
2. Creativity. When an artist creates something they want you to hear it the way it was intended. Allowing you to remix it however you like takes away a lot of the creative control from the artist.
Regarding remixing. Artists usually don't "pay" each other, but return the favor - if it's the right term to say. E.g. artist A remixes a song of artist B and artist B in turn does the same for artist A. Or if they are all on the same record label artist A does a remix for artist B and later B makes a collaboration with A. I've noticed this in electronica/edm music artists at least.
And another important remark: some artists are flattered when someone asks them to make a remix for their song. (Imagine you're an artist and your idol asks you to make a remix of his song.)
True. I still think point 2 stands though. If your idol or another artist you respect, asks to remix your song, you may be fine with that. But if every person that buys (or pirates) your song can remix it you might be less happy about it.
I write music and have considered releasing separate tracks so people can freely remix it but I prefer just having mixes that are controlled by me. Allowing another artist you know to remix your track still allows you some sort of control (you know their style so have some idea of how the remix will go). Giving up that control is a big step and, I think, an unnecessary one.
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That was predicted (and suggested) by Glenn Gould some forty years ago. At the time, anything with higher fidelity than, say, a bad telephone connection, was analogue, but we were stepping into the world of quadraphonic sound (which died soon after in the analogue kingdom), but he was a big proponent of the listener as participant (hey, it was Toronto and McLuhan was still around) and was convinced that technology was the only limiting factor at the time. (To put thing in perspective, he was also very much anti-concert--he hated what he called the "non-take-two-ness" of live performance.) Let's just say that the idea was no more popular among artists then than it is now.
I'd love that too... damn, should have put it in the article...
Closest I've found is to take the .mogg files out of the Guitar Hero games and use those to make new mixes. :-)
Many of the groups I listen to do do this -- this is certainly not that rare. Sometimes they go for a bit more money by releasing a separate CD with karaoke tracks, for example, but at least if you want it, it's available.
Of course, you can very easily get just the vocal track by subtracting the two. Sometimes the "non-vocal" track will still include backing vocals or the like in appropriate places, and just pull out the main vocal track.
Some musicians have even released every single track of their work separately; see "Desperate Religion" on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilogy_(ATB_album) , intentionally inviting remixes.
For music where the vocal tracks aren't released separately, you can often pull them out nevertheless. The best is if you can get the audio in 5.1 -- vocals are almost always center-panned, which makes extracting them quite easy.
Some songs when released as a single have Acapella and Instrumental versions of them as well. There are also compilations with only acapellas and compilations with only instrumental versions of the songs.
And when you have them, just use something in the like of Ableton Live and that will be it. I think that that's what you mean right?
It will be a great idea to have tracks released as several `layers` so that the user can choose which of them to play and which not, for example the bass/beats layer, layer with melodies, layer with the percussions, layer with the vocals of course, but that sounds like semi-studio production.