Listen to the song / the remix
Pre-History
A little while ago my friend Sal approached me to ask if I would be interested in doing a remix of one of the tracks he had created with the help of generative music AI. I was a little bit sceptical first, but I listened to the song and immediately knew that I could do something with the basic idea; but I more or less threw away everything but the vocals and built a completely new set of backing tracks around them.
Although that remix still remains unissued as of now (it will probably be available sometime early next year), Sal seemed to like what I did, because some time later he sent another track, asking me if I could master that track for him and, if I had time and would be so inclined, if I would like to do another remix for him of “My Truth is not your Truth”. You can read more about the genesis of the track from Sal’s side on the Bandcamp page for the release.
In the beginning
I actually quite liked the AI generated music for “My Truth is not your Truth”. Nevertheless, I saw some potential for improvement.
Sal sent two versions, a “single mix” and an extended version, including auto-separated stems (that is four sonically separated audio files for vocals, bass, percussion/drums and other sounds that together give the complete song). I decided I wanted to remix the extended version and just do a master of the “Single Version”.
There are more or less three areas where a remix can change the original piece: structure, sound/mix and instrumentation. In the following, I’ll talk about what I did in each of theses areas to change the song to make it “better” (i.e. make it sound more to my taste).
Structure
As I said above, I quite liked the original. The structure of the extended version is a bit convoluted, but this is rather fitting for a song about conspiracy theories and denial of facts. So I didn’t see the need to alter the flow of the song.
There is just one vocal section starting at about 4:45 that I found to be rather pretty, and I decided to repeat those four bars with a build-up in instrumentation.
Sal also suggested to use some samples from the infamous interview with Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway where she used the phrase “alternative facts” to mask blatant lies.
When Sal sent the audio file from this part of the interview, it was quite obvious to me how two snippets would be perfectly fitting to the song at the start and the end, bracketing the music nicely.
Other then those two changes, the rest of the flow of the song is as originally created by Sal prompting udio.com.
Sound/Mix
Apart from the instrumental additions we’ll be talking about in the next section, I also did some massaging to the mix based on the provided stems. From my experience with AI generated music, there are (at least) three recurring problems with the sound.
Firstly, there still is a slight “fuzzyness” to the sound; the contours of the instruments are often not very clear.
For the prominent electronic drum parts I mainly fixed this by just replacing them (see below), but on the remaining percussion parts, which are musically actually interesting, I added a little bit of reverb to make them sound more organic and to mask the fuzzyness.
I also separated the vocals into two tracks instead of the one stem. There are vocals parts that are very wet, meaning they already have a copious amount of cavernous reverb on them, and some that were very dry. I added a bit of reverb to the dry vocal parts to make them sound more natural, more anchored in a space.
Secondly: The stereo image of the AI-generated mix is wonky sometimes, it can be not well balanced and/or randomly all over the place. Here, it wasn’t really bad, but I still did some adjustments to the stereo image and equalisation of the stems to add a little bit more clarity, balance and width.
Thirdly: Quite some AI generated tracks either lack bottom end completely or, if it is there, it lacks “oomph”.
The first of these problems can be solved by just adding additional bass instruments (see below). For the second: In the bass parts that were there and which I wanted to keep I adjusted volume and EQ to make them less thin-sounding than in the original mix.
Instrumentation
Now for the – for me – most interesting part of the remix process: How can I musically enhance the song? There were two immediate areas I noticed:
I’m a fan of bass sounds of all kinds, and in my mind a lot of the parts of the song needed the addition of a bass line, to anchor the sound as well as to provide more harmonic variety.
As the original track gave me a slight 80s King Crimson vibe (albeit in an electro disguise), I very quickly had the idea to use the sound of a Chapman Stick (as played by Tony Levin in the 80s Crimson line-up). I also tried to somewhat emulate Levin’s playing style, i.e. a sparse and percussive approach, but still giving lots of low-end.
For the gearheads: I used the Stick sounds provided by the virtual instrument Trillian by Spectrasonics. The libraries by Spectrasonics are maybe not the most flexible and deeply sampled libraries out there, but they just work and sound great in a mix.
As I was already in a 80s King Crimson mood, I also added a bit more percussion in the form of Octoban hits and rolls, as King Crimson’s Bill Bruford used to play the Dragon Drums Boo Bams in the Eighties, which are a kind of precursor/version of Octobans.
Those percussion hits were just meant to add a bit more detail and depths to the already present percussion bed, to give the ears of the listener a few more details to listen for.
Last but not least: I did not care for the actual sounds of the electronic drums generated by Udio. They sounded thin and fuzzy. So I quickly decided to replace them with something more defined and edgy.
I also added some drum parts where I thought they would help propel the tune along and add some color. Thankfully, the aptly named library “Electro” by Teletone Audio provides exactly the drum machine sounds that fit with the general electronic feel of the piece, pushing some parts even into a light techno territory.
As you can see, I put a bit of work into the remix, and I only did it because I had fun doing it. So, thank you Sal for letting me to do this.
Phaneronaut 