Image Pop: Sean McKeever on Remixing
By Brad Collins.

With high-profile artists the likes of Norman Cook (AKA Fatboy Slim) reworking everyone from The Beastie Boys to Josh Abrahams, its no wonder that remixing has really come under the spotlight.

Remixing, for those who're unaware, is when you take an existing song, deconstruct it, and reconstruct it with your distinct sound, whilst still keeping the integrity of the original. It's an art form, and with technologies being what they are, it's not difficult to work at it from your bedroom. THE WAITING PLACE's Sean McKeever is one person who makes a pastime out of this. PopImage caught up with Sean recently, and he told us how he got involved.

"I guess it's something I'd wanted to do since high school. Back in the late '80s, I'd really gotten into the rap scene -- RUN DMC, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee and all that stuff. I was also really into the emerging dance-music scene, with Information Society, Pet Shop Boys and the like, and the R&B stuff, the fluff, like Bobby Brown and Soul II Soul. I had an interest in creating that kind of music, so I got a Casio keyboard when I was 15. I took, I think, one official lesson. Never learned to use it. So, instead, I thought it'd be cool as hell to be a deejay. I bought a cheap-ass mixing board from Radio Shack and, instead of honing my DJ skills, mostly made flowing mix tapes for my car stereo. My life is one of laziness compensated for by moments of workaholism.

"I actually did some DJing post high-school and college, in the early/mid nineties. I DJed a couple post prom parties for the local high school, and worked one day at a local bar. Being in a small town, I realized my particular musical tastes were not shared by many. But, through all this, my interest in mixing and creating music remained. Fast forward to 1999. I finally put down $70 to buy some remixing software. I'm toying around with it, trying to come up with some original music, when I come across this Web page filled with "independent remixes" of Garbage songs."

What's an independent remix?

"Essentially, they're remixes by people who aren't asked/authorized to do so by the band/label. Professional remixes are done using whatever bits of the tracks the remixer wants to use, but independent remixes are made without the benefit of individual tracks of the vocals, drums, bass, etc. The trick for an indy remixer is to use the existing song and reshape it sonically -- or even take it apart -- and then build around that. By taking it apart, I mean not conforming to the song's structure and only using elements of the song to make what is almost a new song.

"So, there's this community of indy remixers on the 'net who do this sort of thing. Some are professional remixers/DJs, some are trying to build a name for themselves as an original musician... and then there's those like me, who do it for fun or as a hobby."

The process of remixing is an involved, though reasonably straightforward one.

"Well, first of all, I have to pull the track from my CD, then I put it into a sound editor called Sound Forge. At this point, I try to break up the important/interesting sections of a song into manageable sections (4-12 seconds worth) that I can make into a loop. I also cut up the sections with vocals this way. The purpose of cutting it up into smaller pieces is not only to grab those parts you want to use, but to be able to expand/contract the time on each individual piece so that you can more easily match the song's BPM (beats per minute) with your remix's BPM."

"I use products from a company called Sonic Foundry -- namely Acid Pro and Sound Forge. Sound Forge is an actual sound editor. It's made for splicing, cutting and manipulating sound. That's where I do any equalizer work. Essentially, the closest an indy remixer can have to a vocal track is an isolated vocal track, where an equalizer is used to push away the spectrum of sound that doesn't contain the vocals. The trick is to do this while doing your best to maintain the integrity of the vocals. And you'll always have the rest of the song in the background, but your own beats and sounds will drown that out. In some instances -- like with my Garbage remix -- using the song as is can be the preferred method, and the song's bassline, guitar, beat, etc. is untouched.

"The beat is the toughest thing to remove from a song, in my opinion. I usually just try to pull the bass down as far as possible and work my original beats so that they mask the old. Sometimes they work to compliment one another, too. So, once I've cut the songs up and equalized them or whatever in Sound Forge, then I go to Acid Pro. Acid Pro works like that MTV song maker for Playstation: essentially, I load in sounds, and each sound is a row on a graph. Then I just map out the loops and one-shots on the graph where I want them to go.

"Really, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, but I haven't a clue of all the technical stuff. I just learn it as I go, which is why my remixing nom de plume is ignorantLOSER. It's an evaluation of my talent level.

"I have a Pentium II 350/9.6 Gig hard drive (important)/96MB RAM (very important) and a Sound Blaster Pro sound card, though I think I'm gonna get a better one. The hard drive space is important because a 5-minute song converted to WAV format to be saved on CD-R is about a 50 MB file. It's also important to have lots of space on your disk for your swap file, so that your program can operate when you're making a full-length song. And as far as RAM, it gets used to store the sounds that you're using in the song. I've had songs that took up 40+ MB of my 96! And a better sound card is important if you're going to work with your own synths/vocals."

How does Sean go about starting a remix?

"It's like writing, really. It can happen in many ways. Mostly, though, I hear a song and think, "hmm, I'd like to try to remix that one." I pull the song from the CD and chop it up in Sound Forge, then I lay maybe the refrain or a guitar riff section in Acid, and try putting it together with different beats and effects and loops. I also play with the speed of the remix at that point, to see what speed I'd like the song to be. Sometimes, I make remixes that take very tiny pieces (like eighth notes) and rearrange them to make something kind of new. In those cases, I cut up the tiny bits in SF and load them all into Acid, trying out different patterns until I find an opening I like. From there it's pretty organic in terms of what structure I'm going to use (verse/refrain/verse/refrain/bridge/verse or whatever). I have virtually no idea what I'm going to do exactly when I start a remix, though sometimes I do conceive an overall theme in my head, like my Ancient Chinese Secret remix of NIN's THE DAY THE WORLD WENT AWAY, where I gave it an oriental sound.

"I know that, if you look at www.seanmckeever.com, it lists mostly Nine Inch Nails remixes. That's because there's an active community for NIN indy remixes on the 'Net. Frankly, as much as I like NIN (gonna see 'em April 15!), I'm tired of remixing them. If I had the storage space, I'd probably do 1 new remix a month from a different band. I'd probably even take requests!"

Sean McKeever is the creator/writer of THE WAITING PLACE from Slave Labor Graphics, which is currently in its second volume. You can visit Sean on the web, and see a sample of both comics and remixing, at http://www.seanmckeever.com.

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