Making a remix from an acapella track?

novicemixer · Post by **novicemixer** » Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:10 pm

I want to make some remixes of some songs. I have acapella vocal tracks for the songs and I would like to use Audacity to add custom music/beats to them. Can anyone give me some pointers on making this happen? I would really rather not drop the big money on Acid Pro, FL Studio 10, etc. right now.

Post by **DVDdoug** » Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:55 pm

If you are creating your own beats without actually recording real drums & instruments, that really calls for MIDI, which Audacity does not support.

I don't know if there's anything useful and free... REAPER ($60 USD for home & small business use) is a full DAW (digital audio workstation) that supports audio & MIDI. But, I don't know how REAPER compares to Acid or FL Studio.

jimijack100 · Post by **jimijack100** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:35 am

It is difficult to do pella mixes in Audacity, but it can be done. Beat matching is a problem i have found. MixMeister's BPM Analyzer does an ok job of finding the bpm of a particular track, although acapellas have no audible beat. You might be able to find the bpm from the original track or record yourself clapping in time to the acapella then analyse its bpm.

There is lots of free software for creating your own music and drum tracks. Old ones from the 90s are good if you can get them to work on newer windows versions. Most of the new ones are trials only. Chordpulse is ok. Although the sounds need to beefed up a bit. It only exports as midi, so i just record it while it runs in the background. I use lots of free software and record or export it to Audacity.

Dont be disheartened(like me) if you are not able to make your acapella mixes with Audacity. While Audacity is excellent for recording and mixing, paid software is brilliant at audio manipulation. What takes an hour using free software can take seconds with the high end software. They seem to be able to beat match, pitch match and time stretch with minimal disruption to the original audio. Search 'how to' 'acapella mashup' on youtube to see what software they are using. Maybe somebody uses Audacity.

Now would probably be a good time to say that i have never actually completed an acapella track.

All my music is created using Audacity. http://soundcloud.com/jimijack100

Post by **steve** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:44 pm

jimijack100 wrote:Beat matching is a problem i have found. MixMeister's BPM Analyzer does an ok job of finding the bpm of a particular track, although acapellas have no audible beat. You might be able to find the bpm from the original track or record yourself clapping in time to the acapella then analyse its bpm.

That is assuming that the a capella vocal tracks have been performed with strict tempo.
For live a cappella vocals it is very common for the tempo to vary continuously, which blows a big hole through those "high end applications" that offer to do it all for you.

jimijack100 · Post by **jimijack100** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 1:20 pm

Almost finished my first Accapella remix.
http://soundcloud.com/jimijack100/remix-work-it-out

Post by **steve** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 8:14 pm

jimijack100 wrote:Almost finished my first Accapella remix.
http://soundcloud.com/jimijack100/remix-work-it-out

That's sounding really good

jimijack100 · Post by **jimijack100** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:22 am

Had alot of trouble with the bass after uploading to youtube. Used Limiter to get a bit more loudness but it amplified the bass alot. Rolled the lower freqs off and got this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cskG-_K-OzY

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Making a remix from an acapella track?

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