Week 30: DJ Ramsay Creates Her Very Own Remixes

When I was younger and partied often, I used to love to play DJ as we'd all be getting ready to go out to a club.  Since I'm not a hundred, I still go out sometimes and still play DJ just like ol' times.  I was lucky enough to get a couple of iTunes gift cards for Christmas.  I found a cool App called djay that is great for both professionals and newbies alike.  It allows you to mix songs in your iTunes library and even create and record remixes as well.  I quickly realized how difficult it is to create a decent remix.  The App can assist you by syncing the BPMs and pitch, but there's so much more involved than that.  Most songs I played around with sounded pretty horrible together.  What I learned is that it takes great skill to create a good remix and it is in fact an art.  I made two of my own remixes and you'll see, or hear, that they are pretty bad.  Not just anyone can properly remix music.

My first remix combined the song "Scream and Shout" by will.i.am (feat. Britney Spears) with the song "Sweet Nothing" by Calvin Harris (feat. Florence Welch).  Since it was my first remix recording using my new djay App, I kinda went a little overboard with the many FX (effects) tools the program offers.  So please try not to be overly shocked or puzzled by the fog horn, shot gun, siren, drum, robotic DJ voice, galactic sweep, plus other tidbits I decided to add to the song.  You can say I was being artistically free.  Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to attach the songs to my blog so I decided to create brief movies in Photo Booth to showcase my remixes.  The videos are terrible, I know.  Also, another problem is that I could not play the entire song because Blogger will not allow me to upload movies over a minute in length.  Enough excuses; here's as much as I can share with you.

My second remix combined two songs by the group 2 Unlimited, "No Limit" and "Let The Beat Control Your Body".  I thought the two songs sounded similar and might remix nicely together.  I admit that this second remix is a bit better than my first one, but you'll notice that it's quite bad at the beginning and is still not the greatest.  I'm learning though.

Overall, it was a neat experience and I'm definitely not giving up on it.  I'm glad I bought the djay App. It's fairly easy to use and has many options to play around with.  Stay tuned on MuchMusic for my grand debut in the near future.  Watch out, David Guetta!