Do you notice how only the first two chords work together? I had to find the parts of “Brokenhearted” that played the bass notes without too many other sounds, copy that sound to all the down beats of the instrumental of “We Are Young,” and then use a professional tuning software called “Melodyne” to change the individual notes of the bass to match the chord progression of “We Are Young.” After putting them in the same tempo and key, “We Are Young” has the chord progression F, Dm7, Gm7, A#, C while “Brokenhearted” has the chord progression F, Dm, A#, C, F. I mixed together the music of “We Are Young” and “Brokenhearted” between 2:29 and 3:00. Mixing pop music the way I do is not all that simple either. But even those can be mixed after changing the pitch of some of the notes using tuning software. So mixing western music with something like classical Arabic music or Gregorian chant would be challenging. The biggest challenge I can think of would be mixing songs that are using completely different scales. Quantizing can easily fix this obstacle (I use “flex view” in “Logic Pro” and manually compress and stretch the audio for classical music). Mixing live classical music can be a little bit more challenging only because of its inconsistent tempo (those inconsistent conductors!).
All you have to do is find another song that is in the same time signature. Different time signature does not make a song less easy to mix. I can just as easily mix the Beatles and other “more complex” music. Q: Is it easier to make a mash-up of pop music because it all sounds the same?Ī: No. Hope you enjoy it! It was a lot of work! For an entire month, I went to sleep every night with ringing in my ears :p This is the part when I listen to Rihanna sing the line “Shine bright like a diamond” on loop, over and over again, as I make my changes. I get very OCPD about mixing because everything just sounds so imperfect and messy to me. I must adjust the volume and EQ of about 150 individual audio parts. The part that feels like work, however, is the very technical part of mixing. In the third month, I finally get to work on my favourite part of the mash-up making process, arrangement! This is the part when I get to have fun putting my puzzle pieces together. In the end, I decided to use four different keys and three tempo changes. Looking at this chart, I can tell that C minor is a great key to work with and F# minor is a terrible key to work with. In order to find the perfect key to work with, I make a key chart. The tempo of instrumentals cannot be changed too much either. If vocal parts are pitched more than one semi-tone from its original key, the vocalists no longer sound human (they either sound like chipmunks or like king Xerxes from “300”). But it is not as simple as digitally manipulating all the tracks to one key and tempo (though many other mash-up artists do this). Audio parts must be in the same key AND in the same tempo in order to fit together. Once I have all my audio parts, I then start planning out a way to fit them together. This is what my list looks like from A to C I then start compiling an organized list of the best puzzle pieces. If good quality audio parts are not available on the internet, I will then make my own audio parts (using audio engineering techniques like phase cancellation) as a last resort. I search all over the internet and use my sensitivity to compare all the different versions of the same puzzle pieces. Like Jiro, the master sushi chef I wrote about in my last blog post, I sacrifice my efficiency to get the best ingredients. All I do for one month is gather my ingredients (vocal parts, instrumental parts, video clips, etc.). This is my least favourite part of the process because it feels so unproductive. The whole process takes me about three whole months. Fortunately, my brain was made for these kinds of puzzles. Making a mash-up is like completing a huge puzzle (not every piece goes together). This is not a quick and easy thing to do. Once a year, I try to make a seamless musical mix (“mash-up”) of the year’s top pop songs.
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