Remix Showcase
Hi! Welcome to the page dedicated to my remix! Below you'll see and hear the steps I took to transform Aron Jaeger's "Fly High" into my own unique sound. Utilizing re-grooving, pedal points, parallel keys, and more, I took a high energy dubstep banger and made it into a chill future bass story piece. It was a blast to work on, and I hope you have as much fun listening to this piece as I had making it!
Original and Groove
So here can you listen to the original mix. The song caught my attention immediately with its quick intro, upbeat energy, and great sound design. It was fun and energetic, and I knew I wanted to make an EDM style remix as soon as I heard it. The lead was catchy and the basses were well made, so I loaded the stems into Logic Pro and created a mix to sample from. You can hear the mix and well as the first stem I decided to pull from it. When I first made the stems, my thought was that I was going to keep the same vibe as the original. As you can hear from my first variation, I focused on groove and double time drums. I thought I'd make a DnB remix to keep up the high energy and tempo, and I did enjoy the idea initially, but as you will see shortly, I quickly changed gears.
Lead and Live Recording
After a while of listening to the remixed groove, I began to lose inspiration for the piece. I wasn't nearly as passionate about the double as I was originally, and I think a lot of that came down to the fact that the remix sounded too similar to the original. Obviously the drums were unique, and there was some chopping done to the original stem, but I wanted to really pull out an entirely different feel from the stems to inspire me.
The lead always caught my attention and felt like the heart of the original Fly High. Its what the ears tends to follow, so I decided to isolate that bit and make it half time for a slower and more relaxed feel. It felt empty at this point, however, so in order to compensate, I brought in my electric guitar, found a reverb heavy amp setting, and recorded a counter melody to pair with the stem. It had the makings for a good intro, so after a few vet instruments, I had a solid start and was feeling motivated again.
Chords and Sound Design
I knew that I would have to reintroduce some energy into the new track at some point. I wanted to remain faithful still to some extent and was looking to switch away from the chord progression I made in the previous variation. I decided to take the original chords and sample them out into a more lo-fi style sound with some effects and EQ. After this I knew I wanted to add some of my own content to the mix, and so I grabbed my Serum plugin and began designing new sounds for the song. I ended up created a square lead, a buzzy sub bass, and some saw chords that I would end up layering to create the core elements of the chorus/drop. I used auto pan to automate the volume, giving the choppy feeling to the chords and lead, and I added a lot of reverb and delay to make everything sound like it was in the same space. After some tweaking and drum work, I knew I had my piece nearly ready to go!
Final Product
Finally, you can hear the full piece the left. I ended up changing out a few things like the kick sample I used, some of the effects, and the compression, but after I mixed the new elements in, I really came to enjoy what I had. I used EQ with every track, added compression to the drums and bass, and then applied a small master chain to the whole piece which helped give the song some more energy and volume without too large of a sacrifice in dynamics. I really like how it all turned out, and while the structure is not that of a verse-chorus-verse, I felt the music told the story it needed to and ends comfortably where it does. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy Aron Jaeger - "Fly High" 80HighDef Remix