As long as I can remember, I have made my own mix and remix of the music that I love. It all started with two cassette decks back in the 80’s, all inspired by my classmate Lars and his cut-mix of Renegades of Funk by Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force, that he did on his parents brand new Philips D8644 Ghettoblaster – The one with the wooden speakers.
My first cut-mix was a track from the Street Sounds Electro 1 record – or something like that – but I don’t remember the title of the track anymore. Later, I did cut-mix of Paul Hardcastle – 19, Freeez – I.O.U, Baltimora – Tarzan Boy, Captain Rock – Cosmic Blast and a lot of other artists, all songs I loved back then. In essence I used the parts that I liked – extended them and switched the playing order – and left out parts that I didn’t like. Everything was played of one cassette deck and was recorded onto the other. All the cut-mix was one artist only.
Later my good old friend Peter A and I, made a few mix using two home stereo turntables and a lousy 4 channel mixer – that worked – most of the times. We only did one successful live mix on the turntables and the only one that were recorded onto audio cassette. It was a Hip Hop mix that included artists like Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Mantronix, LL Cool J, Doug E Fresh and more.
Mixing/Remixing
Most of the old mix/remix I’ve posted, was created with Sonic Foundry Acid Pro. Before using Acid Pro, we used SAW (Software Audio Workshop), possible SAWStudio but I’m not sure. SAW is much like Acid Pro, in the way you arrange your samples. SAW is designed and developed by Bob Lentini, RML Labs, and is still available for purchase on the webside.
Acid Pro was originally created by Sonic Foundry hence the name “Sonic Foundry Acid Pro”, but was later assimilated by Sony Creative Software. The cool thing thou, is that Sony let’s you download a full, 30 day trail copy of Acid Pro. So if you ever are thinking of making a mix/remix, yourself, Acid Pro is the software for you. It’s almost as easy as ‘painting by numbers’.
Today I use Acid Music Studio version 10, and it works perfect, but it is still possible to get Acid Pro.
Samples
All samples used, were sliced into smaller bits with Cool Edit Pro. The only other decent sample edit software tool, at that time, was Steinberg WaveLab, but I remember this software was quite impossible to use – I gave up trying to understand it, I think.
Cool Edit Pro was originally created by Syntrillium Software, but at some point, was sold off to Adobe, and is now a Digital Audio Workstation product in the Adobe Systems portfolio. Cool Edit Pro is now Adobe Audiotion.
