First Remix, Help?

[Basic A]

So, I got a deal with an old friend who raps now to do a remix on one of his more popular tunes, Im kinda up on the oppurtunity as much as its gonnabe a step outside of my traditional distorted hugestep and chill stuff, Ive always been one end of the spectrum or other, remixing a crunkish tune thoughs gonna put me straight in the middle from the get go, so, creative inspiration + the original is one of the few tunes he has that gets big radio plays and shit... so hopefully itll bring some more attention over too...

Now, problem is, hes about as dumb as they come, and hes only ever been told too spit in the mic n then hes let his producers handle it. We talked to his A.M. , n although he has full rights to let me remix the song, neither he or the manager have access to the stems or pellas, that all got left at the studio cause they were satisfied leaving with a complete track, n it never crossed thier thick skulls.

So, can someone point me in the direction of some good reading on accapella isolation or like, thoroughyl advanced EQing? I tried a bunch of google strings, n I searched on here, couldnt find much though... Just some shit paid VSTs that claim to do it for you with some of the most hollow sounding results EVER... I can do better myself, n I know it.

And while were on the subject, does anyone know ROUGHLY what frequency range to expect a human voice to sit in? My initial thought were top 2/3s of the mid, but Im starting to question that the more I fiddle with filters... As soon as I get the top end out I feel like something is missing, would a voice really get into hi-hat frequencies, or is this in my head?

Sorry if Accpella iso is a rinsed thread, least Im not on about wobbles.

[qlus]

And while were on the subject, does anyone know ROUGHLY what frequency range to expect a human voice to sit in? My initial thought were top 2/3s of the mid, but Im starting to question that the more I fiddle with filters... As soon as I get the top end out I feel like something is missing, would a voice really get into hi-hat frequencies, or is this in my head?

it depends on the voice, but main harmonics are somewhere in 500-3000 Hz range. try eq'ing, gating and multiband compression, you can get some good results in most cases. and yes, vox range may extend all the way up to 10 kHz, but it does not necessarily mean that you should not lowpass your vox. high frequencies add presence/proximity effect and if you take them out the voice may sound weak.

the best option imho is to re-record the vox, given that the vocalist still is still able to sing and wants to collaborate

[Wrigzilla]

DIY acapellas:

You need the vocal mix and an instrumental mix. Load them into separate audio tracks and invert the phase of one of them - playing a signal and a phase inverted version at the same time will cause both waves to cancel each other out. So in theory if you invert the instrumental mix it will cancel out the instruments in the normal mix leaving only the vocals. Now this won't always be the case due to differences in mastering/mixing etc, ask yourself is one track louder than the other, is one more bass heavy than the other? Then try and compensate.

[drokkr]

DIY acapellas:

You need the vocal mix and an instrumental mix. Load them into separate audio tracks and invert the phase of one of them - playing a signal and a phase inverted version at the same time will cause both waves to cancel each other out. So in theory if you invert the instrumental mix it will cancel out the instruments in the normal mix leaving only the vocals. Now this won't always be the case due to differences in mastering/mixing etc, ask yourself is one track louder than the other, is one more bass heavy than the other? Then try and compensate.

Spot on.

[jaydot]

Remixing scare me.

[Basic A]

it depends on the voice, but main harmonics are somewhere in 500-3000 Hz range. try eq'ing, gating and multiband compression, you can get some good results in most cases. and yes, vox range may extend all the way up to 10 kHz, but it does not necessarily mean that you should not lowpass your vox. high frequencies add presence/proximity effect and if you take them out the voice may sound weak.

the best option imho is to re-record the vox, given that the vocalist still is still able to sing and wants to collaborate

Wow... hey... thats fuckin tight dude, makes perfect, perfect sense... I shoulda figured that out myself actually ... This is really nice too, because I got the instrumental from him, but he cant turn over an accapella for some bizarre reason Ill never understand...

Youd really figure studios wouldnt want you too leave without the whole project folder on USB... Then again, I guess pay-by-the-session recording studios dont have the same logic as some of us...

[tripaddict]

just like noise canceling headphones

[narcissus]

hmm.. in this case my advice would be, since you ain't got acapellas, to use snippits of the original track w/ instrumental and all, do some filtering so it doesn't collide too much w/ your instruments, and make the existing beat work the best you can with YOUR beat. some creative slicing wouldn't hurt. don't know why the f he would ask for a remix and not give acapellas.. but basically i would use the instrumental in his track along with yours and make them fit. dunno if that's possible in this case tho.

[Basic A]

Ive been using isolation equing to get like.. range frequencies I want gone isolated, then doing the waveform cancellation suggested up thier to null them out... then I bounce n do it again... its kinda slow going, but, stripping it down bit by bits gettin me alot further then trying to eq stragiht out was...

don't know why the f he would ask for a remix and not give acapellas..

Cause hes a thick hip-hop artist who didnt know what an accapella was until I explained it, and wants a remix for the status symbol of it? IDC, its somethin new to break the mould.