This post is a bit of a retrospective on small personal project I worked on a few years ago and what I hoped at the time to be something unique. While the name came a few months after its inception, it is very apropos for my intention and execution of each project. Each track was spliced into samples, and re-constructed into a final product is similar yet unique to that of its original self. You may think that this sounds similar to how most remixes are produced, and you would be right. Similar techniques are used by music producers to create VIP (variance in production) mixes of their own songs. What makes SnS remixes unique are the restrictions placed on the creation process from the onset of the project.
Before I list out what those restrictions were (spoilers: there were only two), I want to speak a little on the inspiration for this project. During my time in studies in audio engineering and acoustics at Belmont University, we learned a lot about what is now a largely antiquated medium, magnetic tape. After an album is recorded, mixed, and mastered it is all condensed down to a single 2-track stereo recording. This 2-track is what is used by most music producers to remix a song. Back then, what that translates to is producers cutting up their magnetic tape recordings with razor blades in order to isolate certain samples, and taping them back together in succession to create the effect they wanted. As you can imagine, this was messy, imprecise, and not easily reproducible.
Luckily, technology has given us a better method, one that is significantly more precise and less likely to cut your fingers. The advent of digital audio workstations, making those sorts of “cuts” to a 2-track are effortless. But it the spirit of the old ways, I wished to take inspiration from those bygone times and restrict myself to the aforementioned rule set. The intention was to simulate the workflow of a producer that only had access to a tape deck, a razor blade, and a whole heck of a lot of free time. That 2-rule set looks like this:
An argument could be made that tape delay would be an acceptable plugin. however, this would require a second tape machine to work in my imaginary scenario, so it was omitted.
The result was unexpected and entertaining and a bit exhausting to listen to truth be told. The method leads the producer to create hyperactive and ever-moving melodies to avoid lengthy periods of raw, unedited audio. This characteristic of the pseudo-genre is what eventually lead me to stop working on this type of music. But all-in-all the process lead me to make some rather inspired discoveries under the constraints. I can say with 100% honesty that I am a better producer for the time I spent on this and something I will likely come back to in the future.
You can listen to 4 of the Sever and Stitch remixes here.
Before I list out what those restrictions were (spoilers: there were only two), I want to speak a little on the inspiration for this project. During my time in studies in audio engineering and acoustics at Belmont University, we learned a lot about what is now a largely antiquated medium, magnetic tape. After an album is recorded, mixed, and mastered it is all condensed down to a single 2-track stereo recording. This 2-track is what is used by most music producers to remix a song. Back then, what that translates to is producers cutting up their magnetic tape recordings with razor blades in order to isolate certain samples, and taping them back together in succession to create the effect they wanted. As you can imagine, this was messy, imprecise, and not easily reproducible.
Luckily, technology has given us a better method, one that is significantly more precise and less likely to cut your fingers. The advent of digital audio workstations, making those sorts of “cuts” to a 2-track are effortless. But it the spirit of the old ways, I wished to take inspiration from those bygone times and restrict myself to the aforementioned rule set. The intention was to simulate the workflow of a producer that only had access to a tape deck, a razor blade, and a whole heck of a lot of free time. That 2-rule set looks like this:
- Only samples from the source material can be used, not outside instruments allowed.
- Inboard/outboard plugins are restricted to speeding/slowing the 2-track
An argument could be made that tape delay would be an acceptable plugin. however, this would require a second tape machine to work in my imaginary scenario, so it was omitted.
The result was unexpected and entertaining and a bit exhausting to listen to truth be told. The method leads the producer to create hyperactive and ever-moving melodies to avoid lengthy periods of raw, unedited audio. This characteristic of the pseudo-genre is what eventually lead me to stop working on this type of music. But all-in-all the process lead me to make some rather inspired discoveries under the constraints. I can say with 100% honesty that I am a better producer for the time I spent on this and something I will likely come back to in the future.
You can listen to 4 of the Sever and Stitch remixes here.
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