Massively overslept this morning but when it's dreary weather outside on the weekend, it throws off the body clock!
In any case, the rain outside has inspired the share of today's work in progress/nearly finished remix. All that I need to do is save up some fiat to pay the mastering studio and it's good to go!
Mixdowns & Mastering
I'd be lying if I said I knew the full ins and outs of what mastering does. I'm more of a "songwriter" or "tunewriter" so I try to construct the soundscapes as best I can to tell a story.
When I've got the full structure down, I then do my best to make sure the individual elements of the tune are nicely balanced in terms of sound so the higher frequencies aren't drowning out the lower frequencies and vice versa.
This is called the "mixdown" and can take the longest time depending on the complexity of the track, how many elements etc.
Once I'm happy enough with the mixdown, it can be quieter as if certain sounds go above a certain volume threshold, then you get distortion of the sound and it sounds bad (unless that's what you're going for).
So in order to get the sounds to their fullest, that's where you master the tunes so that the volume is maximised, whilst complementing the mixdown.
As mentioned above, I'm not sure how this is done as I'm not an audio engineer. However, I seem to remember seeing a post by @blocktunes that goes into more detail (although I can't seem to find it on his profile so it might have been someone else).
What I do know is that mastering is even more beneficial if you have an EP that you're releasing to make sure the volumes are the same across all tracks so your listeners don't have to keep changing the volumes (that can be annoying - I've had feedback from other non-musical folks who have noticed this, even with the bigger artists!)
Rain Down Beats
Anyway, back to the share today...
Rain Down Love by Freemasons was one of my favourite club tunes in late 2000s, with powerful vocal drive from Siedah Garrett and a bassline that lifts you up.
However, there was no drum & bass remix that I could find which complimented the original that I was happy with so why not create my own!
I managed to find an acapella of the vocals from the original, although they seemed to be in a totally different key to what was released in the charts so I ended up making my own chords, melodies and sequences to make sure there were no horrible clashes!
I am looking forward to getting this mastered and finished off, ready for another mix - here's a demo version of it in the meantime :)
https://soundcloud.com/nickyhavey/freemasons-ft-siedah-garrett-rain-down-love-nicky-havey-remix-demo