A remix, also sometimes called reorchestration or rework, is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, poem, or photograph can be remixes. The only necessary characteristic of a remix is that it appropriates and changes other materials to create something new.
Most commonly, remixes are a subset of audio mixing in music and song recordings. Songs may be remixed for a variety of reasons: to adapt or revise a song for radio or nightclub play to create a stereo or surround sound version of a song where none was previously available to improve the fidelity of an older song for which the original master has been lost or degraded to alter a song to suit a specific music genre or radio format to use some of the original song's materials in a new context, allowing the original song to reach a different audience to alter a song for artistic purposes to provide additional versions of a song for use as bonus tracks or for a B-side, for example, in times when a CD single might carry a total of 4 tracks to create a connection between a smaller artist and a more successful one, as was the case with Fatboy Slim's remix of "Brimful of Asha" by Cornershop to improve the first or demo mix of the song, generally to ensure a professional product to improve a song from its original state Remixes should not be confused with edits, which usually involve shortening a final stereo master for marketing or broadcasting purposes. Another distinction should be made between a remix, which recombines audio pieces from a recording to create an altered version of a song, and a cover: a re-recording of someone else's song.
While audio mixing is one of the most popular and recognized forms of remixing, this is not the only media form which is remixed in numerous examples. Literature, film, technology, and social systems can all be argued as a form of remix.Everything is a Remix: http://www.everythingisaremix.info/
Origins Modern remixing had its roots in the dance-hall culture of late-1960s and early-1970s Jamaica. The fluid evolution of music that encompassed ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub was embraced by local music mixers who deconstructed and rebuilt tracks to suit the tastes of their audience. Producers and engineers like Ruddy Redwood, King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry popularized stripped-down instrumental mixes (which they called "versions") of reggae tunes. At first, they simply dropped the vocal tracks, but soon more sophisticated effects were created, dropping separate instrumental tracks in and out of the mix, isolating and repeating hooks, and adding various effects like echo, reverberation and delay. The German krautrock band Neu! also used other effects on side two of their album Neu! 2 by manipulating their previously released single Super/Neuschnee multiple ways, utilizing playback at different turntable speeds or mangling by using a cassette recorder.
From the mid-1970s, DJs in early discothèques were performing similar tricks with disco songs (using loops and tape edits) to get dancers on the floor and keep them there. One noteworthy figure was Tom Moulton, who invented the dance remix as we now know it. Though not a DJ (a popular misconception), Moulton had begun his career by making a homemade mix tape for a Fire Island dance club in the late 1960s. His tapes eventually became popular and he came to the attention of the music industry in New York City. At first, Moulton was simply called upon to improve the aesthetics of dance-oriented recordings before release ("I didn't do the remix, I did the mix"—Tom Moulton). Eventually, he moved from being a "fix it" man on pop records to specializing in remixes for the dance floor. Along the way, he invented the breakdown section and the 12-inch single vinyl format. Walter Gibbons provided the dance version of the first commercial 12-inch single ("Ten Percent", by Double Exposure). Contrary to popular belief, Gibbons did not mix the record. In fact his version was a re-edit of the original mix. Moulton, Gibbons and their contemporaries (Jim Burgess, Tee Scott, and later Larry Levan and Shep Pettibone) at Salsoul Records proved to be the most influential group of remixers for the disco era. The Salsoul catalog is seen (especially in the UK and Europe) as being the "canon" for the disco mixer's art form. Pettibone is among a very small number of remixers whose work successfully transitioned from the disco to the House era. (He is certainly the most high-profile remixer to do so.) His contemporaries included Arthur Baker and François Kevorkian.
Contemporaneously to disco in the mid-1970s, the dub and disco remix cultures met through Jamaican immigrants to the Bronx, energizing both and helping to create hip-hop music. Key figures included, DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. Cutting (alternating between duplicate copies of the same record) and scratching (manually moving the vinyl record beneath the turntable needle) became part of the culture, creating what Slate magazine called "real-time, live-action collage." One of the first mainstream successes of this style of remix was the 1983 track Rockit by Herbie Hancock, as remixed by Grand Mixer D.ST. Malcolm McLaren and the creative team behind ZTT Records would feature the "cut up" style of hip hop on such records as "Duck Rock". English duo Coldcut's remix of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid in Full" Released in October 1987 is said to have "laid the groundwork for hip hop's entry into the UK mainstream". Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian named it a "benchmark remix" and placed it in his top ten list of remixes.
In popular music
1980's
Electronic band Depeche Mode began producing remixes of their singles in the early 1980's. Vince Clarke, founding member of the band, recalled that for their early tracks,
Alan Wilder said that 1982 was "the beginning of when everybody realized you had to make a 12-inch mix to help sell your single". For early remixes, Wilder remembered "chopping up the tape. Just literally running off parses from the track. From the mixing board, on the tape, then chopping the tape up. I remember spending hours and hours chopping up tapes to put them together." Wilder elaborated that "to make a 12" [remix] involved running off differently mixed sections [of a song] onto two-track tape until we had enough pieces to edit the new version together." In the beginning, for bands like Depeche Mode, remixes were made in-house, but by 1984 remixes were being made and officially released by professional DJs such as Adrian Sherwood.
In 1988, Sinéad O'Connor's art-rock song "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" was remixed to emphasize the urban appeal of the composition (the original contains a tight, grinding bassline and a rhythm guitar not entirely unlike Chic's work). In 1989, the Cure's "Pictures of You" was remixed turning "the music on its head, twisted the beat completely, but at the same time left the essential heart of the song intact."
1990's
In the early 1990s, Mariah Carey became one of the first mainstream artists who re-recorded vocals for a dancefloor version, and by 1993 most of her major dance and urban-targeted versions had been re-sung, e.g. "Dreamlover". Some artists would contribute new or additional vocals for the different versions of their songs. These versions were not technically remixes, as entirely new productions of the material were undertaken (the songs were "re-cut", usually from the ground up). Carey worked with record producer Sean Combs to create the official Bad Boy remix of "Fantasy". The Bad Boy remix features background vocals by Puff Daddy and rapping by Ol' Dirty Bastard, the latter being of concern to Columbia, who feared the sudden change in style would affect sales negatively. Some of the song's R&B elements were removed for the remix, while the bassline and "Genius of Love" sample were emphasized and the bridge from the original version was used as the chorus. There is a version omitting Ol' Dirty Bastard's verses. The "Bad Boy Fantasy Remix" combines the chorus from the original version and the chorus of the Bad Boy Remix, removing Ol' Dirty Bastard's vocals from his second verse. Carey re-recorded vocals for club remixes of the song by David Morales, titled "Daydream Interlude (Fantasy Sweet Dub Mix)".
The Bad Boy remix garnered positive reviews from music critics. "Fantasy" exemplified how a music sample could be transformed "into a fully realized pop masterpiece". The song and its remix arguably remains one of Carey's most important singles to date. Due to the song's commercial success, Carey helped popularize rapper as a featured act through her post-1995 songs. Sasha Frere-Jones, editor of The New Yorker, commented in referencing to the song's remix: "It became standard for R&B/hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott and Beyoncé, to combine melodies with rapped verses. And young white pop stars—including Britney Spears, 'N Sync, and Christina Aguilera—have spent much of the past ten years making pop music that is unmistakably R&B." Moreover, Jones concludes that "Her idea of pairing a female songbird with the leading male MCs of hip-hop changed R&B and, eventually, all of pop. Although now anyone is free to use this idea, the success of 'Mimi' [ref. to The Emancipation of Mimi, her tenth studio album, released almost a decade after "Fantasy"] suggests that it still belongs to Carey." John Norris of MTV News has stated that the remix was "responsible for, I would argue, an entire wave of music that we've seen since and that is the R&B-hip-hop collaboration. You could argue that the 'Fantasy' remix was the single most important recording that she's ever made." Norris echoed the sentiments of TLC's Lisa Lopes, who told MTV that it's because of Mariah that we have "hip-pop." Judnick Mayard, writer of TheFader, wrote that, regarding R&B and hip hop collaboration, "The champion of this movement is Mariah Carey." Mayard also expressed that "To this day ODB and Mariah may still be the best and most random hip hop collaboration of all time", citing that due to the record "Fantasy", "R&B and Hip Hop were the best of step siblings." In the 1998 film Rush Hour, Soo Yong is singing the song while it plays on the car radio, shortly before her kidnapping. In 2011, the experimental metal band Iwrestledabearonce used the song at the beginning and end of the video "You Know That Ain't Them Dogs' Real Voices". Indie artist Grimes has called "Fantasy" one of her favorite songs of all time and has said Mariah is the reason there is a Grimes. M.C. Lyte was asked to provide a "guest rap", and a new tradition was born in pop music. George Michael would feature three artistically differentiated arrangements of "I Want Your Sex" in 1987, highlighting the potential of "serial productions" of a piece to find markets and expand the tastes of listeners. In 1995, after doing "California Love", which proved to be his best-selling single ever, Tupac Shakur would do its remix with Dr. Dre again featured, who originally wanted it for his next album, but relented to let it be on the album All Eyez on Me instead. This also included the reappearance of Roger Troutman, also from the original, but he ended the remix with an ad-lib on the outro. Mariah Carey's song "Heartbreaker" was remixed, containing lyrical interpolations and an instrumental sample from "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)" by Snoop Dogg. A separate music video was filmed for the remix, shot in black and white and featuring a cameo appearance by Snoop. In 2001, Jessica Simpson released an urban remix of her song "Irresistible", featuring rappers Lil' Bow Wow and Jermaine Dupri, who also produced the track. It samples the Kool & the Gang's song "Jungle Boogie" (1973) and "Why You Treat Me So Bad" by Club Nouveau (1987).