Well, with threads about communism and tattoos, I figured I would contribute a little something random, my new obsession: remixing songs using stems in VirtualDJ (https://www.virtualdj.com/).
VirtualDJ lets you split instruments and voices and remix them with hardly any musical knowledge. To me, this is absolutely amazing. I feel like a fucking wizard.
Have you ever listened to a song and thought "god damn this kick ass baseline is wasted on this trash song" or "fuck me I love this beat but the vocals are so cringe"?
Or have you ever just heard two songs and thought they really sound like they could have a baby?
You can resolve these issues with VirtualDJ! So, what is this thread about?
I want other anons to play with this software and share their remixes, collab on techniques, etc.
To start off, here a remix I've made. Keep in mind I have no musical talent whatsoever and merely find this software incredibly amusing.
If there's any interest, I can make a little guide about getting started with this software, as it may be a little intimidating to someone who has never played with FruityLoops etc.
Fatlip - Cook (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j1AlFXLMGM) x Azure - Lemons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJWINFeShmM)
Now, this probably isn't the best example because, well I'm a little ashamed to admit it but, I kind of unironically dig brag rap. I don't know what it is about it, but for some reason even though it's all bravado and stupid chest pounding it still tickles my brain. Sorry if the lyrics are super cringe to some. Skip to 52 seconds or so if you just want to hear what putting two songs together without lyrics sounds like.

The instrumental and bass are pulled from Cook (distorted and downshifted) and the Vocals, kick, and high hats are pulled from Lemons. I'm genuinely curious what people think of this. I'm probably just smelling my own farts but to me this kind of bops.

Alternatively, you can use this thread to just talk to me, 'ol LtBarclay. Yes, I'm still here, yes I'm still paying for the site. Want to check on me? Want to know what the fuck I'm doing? You can check with me here. I lost a brother last year and haven't really been doing more than the bare minimum but I'm here.

Lieutenant, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. My father is dying and I totally get just putting in the minimum to be here.

You have an army of coomers that salute you for the work you've done and we're forever thankful.

>>15268
Thanks anon. It's pretty surreal, I never once thought my little brother wouldn't be at my funeral, and now he's scattered in the wind before his time. It really brings everything into focus when someone close to you suddenly disappears.

>>15267 (OP)
my condolences, man. I can't fathom what pain you had to go through after losing your little bro, but I hope you're doing much better now. 2021 was such a dogshit year.
All of us at bbw-chan really appreciate you and your efforts at keeping this great site running for all these years and we're definitely all open ears if you want to talk/vent/rant to us more on /gen/. I personally enjoy your criticism of the bbw and ssbbw subs over at reddit since they go against the whole simp and circlejerk culture over there. Anyway, thanks again for this kickass site.

>>15290
Oooh, links? I wanna read some Barclay rantings.

Memory Eternal to your bro, I'll say a prayer for him and your family. Thank you for sharing this site Lieutenant; feel free to write that guide I'll definitely read it as it's relevant to stuff I want to learn and do.

It's also amusing (if you're not using a VPN or something) to see a Dutchman love such a distinctly North-American musical subgenre. I know you guys are like colonies of USA until we break apart one day, but it's still always a bit humorous to see, because some part of New Worlders always expect the Old World to act in the old ways, or at least in entirely unrelated things.

>>15290
I'll try and keep a more open dialog. You're very welcome.
>>15291
I do believe that thread got purged in the great wipe, but it sure would be fun to start again. I see a bunch of small-fats invading /ssbbw/ again.
>>15306
since someone asked, here we go:
Barclay's Beginner's Guide to VirtualDJ and stems

So you want to play with music? First some general tips about mixing:

1. Separation. Try to work with songs that have separation between instruments. What's that mean? For the most high quality stems, you want to use songs which do not overlap all their instrumentals all at once. If the song you want to mix is literally always playing every instrument, it will produce stems which have 'bleed'. Bleed is defined as the amount one stem will be represented in another. While you can modify bleed a bit in-program, your best bet is to start with stems that have minimal bleed to begin with. For instance, a recording of a full orchestra all playing at once would make for very 'bleedy' stems.
2. Stay organized. Keep your raw songs, samples recorded from them, and the fully mixed recordings in separate folders for your own sanity.
3. Use the highest quality recordings you can. Since there is inherent quality loss when separating stems, start with the best you can. Ideally, you would use high quality output from spotify or other software recorded directly from the sound card to a lossless format like wav. Starting with low bitrate mp3's will produce a 'grungy' or 'dirty' end result.
4. As amazing as VirtualDJ is, it has NO save project feature. To have many projects "in-play" or to be able to go back to an exact mix you made previously and tinker with it, you would need to set up a VM and make save states. This is a big bummer and a ton of work, but, if you value being able to "save your place", this may be a must if you actually end up using this software.
5. If you use effects like the Flanger, Echo, Distortion, etc, be aware that it's best to apply it to all stems on a deck. If you press the "stems FX" button and switch effects to a specific stem, yes, it will only apply the effects to that stem but then even stems which have been disabled will be able to be heard to varying degrees. It's almost never worth it to toggle this setting from the default (apply all effects to all stems on a deck).
6. By default there is no way to start both decks at once. Settings - Mapping - Choose a key (I entered 3). Then use this action: deck 1 play_pause & deck 2 play_pause
Now hitting '3' will start both decks at the same time.
7. Try to only use pre-defined length loops. It may be tempting to manually adjust a loop's length, but it's typically not recommended. Without the same exact loop length on both decks, the mix will slow de-sync after each loop is completed. The sync button can be used in that instance to 'shore-up' a mix, but will need to be pressed each and every loop. To avoid having to manually sync your decks, just make sure the loop is the same length on both decks (or divisible. I.e. a 64 beat loop against an 8 beat loop).


Practical Lesson:

Let's take the two songs I remixed in OP but do the exact opposite.
Goal: Use the vocals and drums from Fatlip - Cook with the instrumentals and bass from Azure - Lemons.
(You can follow along, both clips uploaded to https://we.tl/t-uQnFm0ERtC)

Step 1. Drag both clips into their respective decks. (Mine are under 'recordings' but you may need to expand 'Local Music'.)
Step 2. Enable only the vocals, kicks, and high hats for cook and only the instrumentals and bass for lemons.
Step 3. Under 'Loop', use the arrow to select a 64 beat loop then click '64' to select a loop of that link on each deck.
Step 4. Since we downshifted in OP, let's pitch up a bit. By default, both decks have synced pitch.
Step 5. Let's use a very minimal distortion effect on Lemons for a lo-fi feel. You may need to select distortion from the drop down menu. You can then hit the '+' icon to get more fine-grained control of the distortion effect.
Step 6. Looks like the drums on Cook are a little overbearing. Let's EQ them down a bit.
Step 7. If you followed the guide this far and set up a hotkey to play both decks at once, press it now and observe the mix.
Step 8. Experiment with turning on an off different stems at musically-opportune times. Practice timing for example the kicks to come in and out.
Step 9. Experiment with beat grids. Slot 3/8 is good for most remixes. You can hold right click on the beat grid effect to temporarily turn it on, then off when you release. Practice turning on and off the beat grid at musically-opportune times, on stems which take to remixing well.

I'll try to post one of these every day. Here's my remix of 7l & Esoteric - Chain Reaction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akBmxoEc8KI) and Floozies - Love Sex and fancy things (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPoNPAZGWuc).

>>15327
And again, with the vocals slightly adjusted and using the beat grid against the instrumental / kicks to show how different a background loop can sound when the beat grid is applied..

Sorry for missing a few days, here's a remix of 7L - This way (vocals) and South Sac Get the Money by JR (instrumentals bass and drums). Can't tell you how much fun I had with this one.

2 random questions:

1. Mechanical or Membrane keyboard

2. If mechanical; red, blue, or brown switches?

>>15472
mech cherry red for lyfe

>>15474

Interesting. I actually work in a shipping department for a small company and swapped out the old keyboard they provided for me with a blue switch mechanical one. I'm kinda mixed on it. While the sound can be a bit loud, I really enjoy the tactile feedback I recieve after every type. I have a Punkston red switch keyboard at home that while it's a lot quieter, I find myself having more grammical errors as the keys feel hallow.

Idk if it's the brand of the keyboard or I'm just use to the tactile feedback.

today's remix:
7L - boston to chitown x Slum village -faster
Starting with faster's instrumental made this really easy to mix.

Someone post their own mix or challenge me to mix two songs of their choice!

>>15472
1. Mechanical illuminated by Das Keyboard
2. Cherry red.

today's remix: mountain brothers -days of being dumb x toejam and earl - rocketrap

the vocals were extracted via demuc's mdx_extra algorithm, yielding a superior result to Virtual Dj's older 5 stem algo.

I would love to try my but computer is too old for this, lol.

I challege you to use to vocals of this track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mjcAY2vE4k
with the instrumental/chorus parts of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stcGDwrp07g

same thing for the following tracks, vocals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7WLZ-OCIlU
instrumental/chorus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d59gt_YlnA8

it might sound shit tho, idk.

And if you want some good rock instrumentals you must check out Battles & Don Caballero.

>>15549
so this challenge presented multiple problems.

Vybz Kartel - Drink Up has these issues:
1. The entire song is wrapped in excessive echo and reverb (as many artists of this time period tend to do to add fake depth to otherwise bland lyrics) making the stems noisy. The main problem is the main synthetic instrument used as the background rhythm takes up a lot of the mid range where the voice also lives.
2. It does not appear that the Jamaican accent was trained much in the MDX demux challenge, making the extraction of vocals imprecise.
3. The overall volume of the version on spotify is actually quite low, lowering the quality of the final result.
4. The guy's flow is fine, but it's wrapped up in a pretty cringe AF chorus. "we're gonna die so lets not do that and do other things instead". Yeah, I can see why you'd want to replace it.
Since it's so bad and I don't want to time turning off the vocals in VirtualDJ when mixing, I opted to pre-silence the vast majority of the chorus whenever it appeared in audacity with Ctrl-L first.
5. He has only 3 verses of 20 seconds each, making it a challenge to fill the voids.

SFB - Shutdown
No complaints here, very easy to work with.

The real issue is combining them. Drink Up's vocals are around a typically "rave" soundtrack while Shutdown's instrumentals are laid back. I tried to incorporate Shutdown's chorus into the gaps I made from slicing out Drink Up's cringe chorus, but no matter what I tried nothing sounded better than just leaving blank instrumentals with no vocals at all. Overall tough challenge, did my best, result is poor but the two tracks just really weren't meant for each other.

Playboycarti - Jumpoutthehouse:
1. Jesus Christ my ears. This is some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard, bar none. It's so offensive to my ears that it was hard to work with.

Jacin Trill:
1. OMG what a what waste to use this track for these lyrics...oh god the shame.

we should delete all evidence of that playboi carti/nikes mash up, i'm sorry I mosly listen to rock these days and picked these tracks from memory, I was just about to post that it wouldn't work out.

the drink up mash-up sounds passable but indeed the flow doesn't fit with the vibe of the instrumental..

>>15565
I'm going to leave it up as a teaching moment of when two tracks just..should not be combined. Even if it sounds good in your head.

today's remix: mountain brothers - microphone phenomenal x toe jam and ear - big e on da bass

today's remix: cunninglynguists - since when x pyramid - the phoenix

>>15267 (OP)

Lt. Barclay - have you heard of Bearbot? She is/was a music producer that did a lot of hip-hop mashups and crossovers very much like what you're posting here. May be some inspiration for you.

Ex: Lil Wayne - Stuntin' Like My Daddy // El Ten Eleven - My Only Swerving

https://youtu.be/GMiKlbxwgS3E

>>15938

Corrected link:
https://youtu.be/GMiKbxwgS3E

>>15267 (OP)
Also this one:

Lil Wayne - Motherfucker I'm Ill //
Ini Kamoze - World a Reggae

https://youtu.be/UIjCCbYgG8o

>Fatlip
>Cunninlynguists
>fuckin' Mountain Brothers

Damn, never would have figured you were an underground hip-hop head, LtB. Good taste.

I'm sorry to hear about your brother. My one sibling is a younger brother and we're very close. I can't even imagine losing him.

Thank you as always for all your hard work keeping this site running. I say this whenever you pop in here, but even above and beyond the free porn, /gen/ really means a lot to me as a community. It's the only place on the internet where guys like us can talk uncensored about the realities of living with this weird kink, and we all appreciate it.

today's remix: 7L - rise of the rebel x dirtwire - no more

today's remix - cunninglynguists - 616 rewind x memo - radio friendly