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Anyone remember David and Stephen Dewaele of 2 many DJ’s? The duo’s philosophy was to mix together two tracks to produce something that sounded different in its own right. Within the UK, the style became a big success through 2005, and brought the genre of ‘mash-ups’ to the public limelight.

Recently through the use of Ableton Live this idea of mixing together two tracks the process really has been made easier to achieve, and it’s become a typical setup for many DJ’s. As part of my foray in the subject, and a chance of expanding my own specific production skills, I decided to have a go at piecing together two tracks that I felt could work really nicely together.

Breakbot (Moshi Moshi Records)

Thibaut Berland has a style which typifies the Parisian house scene that broke in to the mainstream market in 2007. The sound could be characterised as crossing the boundaries between dance, electro and sampling. What I personally love about Breakbot is the manner in which his tunes are constructed – he maintain’s a more musical feel compared to other similar acts like Justice.

ZX Spectrum Orchestra (Warm Circuit)

ZX Spectrum Orchestra’s debut album was released under the Warm Circuit label in 2006, and their track Dollar Power was met with high praise. Their style is an acquired taste of digital bleeps and sheiks from the ZX Spectrum. The duo really do know their stuff, with good ol’ BASIC. For further details on the machines sound chip, please refer to my article on Game Music. There’s just something about the sound which I adore. Retro, gritty, yet different from mainstream sounds.

The Remix

My own craving for the early sampling methods of late 1980’s and early 90’s felt like a good place to start. Whilst many producers today will revel in the joys of sampling on computer, back then different samplers had bags of character. I always felt that the key is to a good song is a mix both contemporary and traditional techniques without bogging down in all the arguments surrounding software and hardware.

For this project, I opted to use the MPC 3000 as a drum machine and master unit due largely to its robust synchronisation. This in turn was synced up to the Atari ST 1040 with C-Lab’s Notator. Because the MPC 3000 has 2 midi outs that can both send midi clocks I decided to send the 2nd channel to the PC with Ableton Live running. So I would use Ableton Live to record my tracks, and Notator to trigger off my various samplers. Pressing play on my MPC 3000 started both machines off.

The drums were a tough one to crack. I needed to contrast the existing drums from both tunes, so a little thought back in time brought me to a realm of Amiga’s. These machines were great for 8-bit sampling, and a quick reference to some old Amiga drum sets wielded some great results. Sadly the Amiga’s DAC’s (digital audio converters) were not great for playing back audio and gave a dull sound, so the snares were quickly placed in to the Emulator SP1200 in order to get that 12-bit sparkle everyone raves on about. This was finally processed through the Eventide Orville with an AMS delay patch applied to give it a wider stereo feel.

The ZX Spectrum Orchestra was a good reference for drums, as the digital nature of the AY chip (sound chip) really pushed the sounds to the foreground. However, since I did not own a ZX Spectrum, I decided to use the Gameboy Classic, which also contains a dirty sound chip. After creating a drum line to accompany the mixes I moved on to the guitars.

I’m not a guitar player nor will attempt to pass off as one, but software-based guitar cab emulations have really wielded some great effects in this respect. Anyone who remembers Daft Punk’s Discovery album will be interested to know that they used typical synthesizers to create the fast paced riffs you hear from a few of their tracks. These gave the impression that the sound was of a guitar. In similar fashion I opted to do the same thing, and although it may appear that I’m playing the bass and distorted guitar they are in fact the same instrument, with the distorted guitar being transposed up by a couple of octaves.

Whilst it was great to get such a distorted sound, the track really needed a section that was calm and reflective. This was probably my favourite section, as it had an old-school sound about it. The bass-stabs were from the Amiga, which was panned-synced with the track. The effect complemented the bass guitar in the centre. On top of this I also used a neat little trick with the pad. The pad sound is actually from the Ensoniq ESQ-1, but whilst I own the ESQ-1 I felt I couldn’t get the tone I needed for it to sit in the mix. After some research on-line I found a site that had some software to extract the synthesizer’s wavetable. So a quick extraction process and I had the full wavetable. With the help of the Atari ST, and Steinberg Avalon I transferred the sawtooth wave (C64) in to the Akai S950. The S950 is a 12-bit sampler that not only allowed you to detune the sound, but also pan the sound depending on how many voices you played. All together the effect produced a really delicate tone thanks to its 12 dB/octave digital filter.

The mastering process was a challenge. I was initially happy with the mixdown I had produced, but I still felt it was missing an edge. I usually try various different tools to see exactly what fits. I wanted to get something that wasn’t too bass heavy, as it needed to suite the two tracks, and EQ’s such as the UAD Neve 1081 plug-in didn’t give the right sound. I went in to hardware mode at this point and did two things. Firstly I processed the sound through the Avalon 747 mastering EQ to tweak some of the finer detail, and then patched it in to the Studer A80 (reel-to-reel). The A80 is a monster of a machine that was used throughout the 1960’s and 70’s – the results of recording to the unit have always surprised me. No matter what goes in, the stuff that comes out is always better. Whilst many will claim reel-to-reel will produce a warmer sound, I found the opposite at speeds of 15 in/s (the default for professional music recording). When recording back in to the computer the bass response was left pretty much the same, however there was a slight tilt in the higher frequencies that produced a really nice harmonic distortion.