Sometimes it’s more about the creativity than the quality in a remix. Some of these aren’t perfect, but they show a lot of potential. And that’s another good reason for remixing, to get producers just starting out vocals actually worth making something new out of.
This is our biggest remix playlist yet. We tried hard to remove as much as we could, I mean that’s our job, but let me tell you it’s just as hard, if not harder, removing tracks from a playlist than adding them in (as we mentioned in our how to playlist music article).
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I had a good talk with a few of my coworkers yesterday about remixing and they brought up a good point. A lot of remixers just don’t add enough to the original to warrant credit.
So many of the remixes I favorite on SoundCloud turn out to be not all that different from its original. Often times this is because dj’s are adding in simple edits, something as simple as a synth, to make the music more danceable.
The point of a remix is to take something from a song, whether it be a vocal or other memorable part, and update it into a more modern sound or flip it into a completely different style, among others I’m sure.
I actually had to get rid of a few that were originally on here because of that very problem. They brought something new to the song, but it’s really the same tune, just an edit. And maybe producers should start labeling it as such.
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Remixes are more subjective than their original. What I mean is not only is the sound important, but the sound relative to the original as well. How good, how different.
So not everyone is going to like every one of these. Sometimes we’re all just too wrapped up in the original to enjoy it at a new angle and sometimes they’re just not perfectly mastered. Most of these producers haven’t hit big enough to have the resources for that, but it doesn’t mean they don’t know how to put sounds together.
In only two months we’re on our second best of remixes for 2014 (vol 1) and there are too many good ones to count (21). It’s mostly on the electro-house | disco-soul spectrums, but when is it not on here (we love our disco-soul). We also threw in some Ghetto Funk to bring it back.
One thing we’re finding with these 2014 remix lists are the mashups are lacking. I don’t know if my ear is getting uptight or what, but I still can’t find a single damn good mashup in 2014. Well, one of these are technically a mashup, but I bet you can’t spot it.
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Highlighting singles have long dominated on here. We’re coming up on our thousandth post, this will make 999, and we’re slightly shifting from singles towards playlists. We really just no longer have time or the writing prowess to cover every single track we love.
Pop remixes especially have fallen back from the spotlight, but we’ve collected quite a few over the past few months and a playlist of the best seemed like the perfect way to share. We may not have much to say about every single track, but they all have taken their original and slapped a new style (usually better than the original).
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