First of all, you will need a remix program. Acid Xpress is currently avaliable for free at www.acidplanet.com.

 

Next you will need an accapella, or in English the vocals of a track without the background music. This can be found by searching for it on a P2P search engine like emule, Kazaa, Morpheus etc. Loads of these will then appear and you will be able to take your pick on which ones you want. Remember search for:

 

accapella

 

You will also need a song instrumental. Once again type the word instrumental into a P2P engin and bobs your uncle.You can also often find instrumentals on around track 3 on music singles. These also may be better quality and the music would be newer Remember, search for:

 

instrumental

 

It may be usefull to create a file inside you equivalent to "My Shared folder" (where all your P2P downloads go) named accapellas/instrumentals so it is easy to select your equiptment.

 

This means an accapella of one song ontop of the instrumental of another song. Easy

 

Now open Acid Express (after installing it of cause). and try to ignor the pop up thing saying buy the proper one.

 

Doesn't this look posh! - don't worry its as easy as pie.

 

Ok now in the bottom left is your explorer, track properties and a thing that says Acid FX. The explorer is just so you can get the files, that you need, ie your accapellas and instrumentals. The track properties is what you'll need to do your mixing. And finaly ignor the Acid FX thing, your not allowed to use it in Xpress, as that area is for the big boys.

 

Now, double click an instrumental and just one accapella for now (the annoying box will appear so just ignor it). The name of the tracks will appear on the left - instrumental should be at the top. (I have chosen Where is the love by the Black Eyed Peas for my instrumental and Milkshake by Kelis for my accapella)

 

Select the instrumental and then select track properties. Now click track type and change it to "One-shot" This just means the instrumental is the origional tune all the way through and will not be automaticaly changed. In other words this track will not be changed at all.

 

Now do the same with your accapella but this time change it to "Beatmapped". Then click right mouse on your instrumental and click "Use Origianal Tempo" - this changes what ever stupid automatic speed the program has changed it to. 

 

Next click the tool that looks like a pencil (Ctrl+D). This is the draw tool. Now simply "draw" the whole track in the space to the right of the track names.- Now were getting somewhere!

 

Notice that if you now play these tracks, they will just sound odd and like different songs. This is because the bars are different

 

Bars - The speed at which you count "1, 2, 3, 4"

 

First of all, you will need to allow for the introduction to the song, in other words the bit before they sing. (in Where is the love its a nice quite thing then going into a loud full out of the song. - The introduction is also a good way of making your own instrumentals, but we'll get onto that later.

 

Now, press the "!" icon on the accapella which cancells out all other sound other that the one you have selected. - Next, find the start of your accapella (this is often the very start of the accapella, but sometimes, there is talking where the introduction would be).

 

Where this is, select it with right mouse and select split at cursor.

 

Next join up the begining of the song to the end of the introduction of the instrumental by dragging the accapella.

(you may want to play around with the two tunes to find out where it would go - but remember to deselect the "!" icon first).

 

Now press play, and here it is better, but the tunes will not match, so now solo the instrumental ( the "!" icon) and either try to sing the song in time with the tune or count the bars on both the instrumental and the accapella.

 

Next select the accapella, go to track properties and click preserve pitch when shifting, this stops it going squeaky when you speed up and low when you slow down. - Ohhh, very clever!

 

Now click Stretch (at the top of that little menue next to General)

 

Now click where it says "Origional tempo (BPM)" and just keep changing it using your own judgement and experementing until the two tunes fit. If the tune starts to go out of time towards the end, only change the BPM very slightly, like by 0.5, this will make a small difference the the start of the song and a big difference to the end. NB: going higher makes the tune slower and lower makes it faster.

 

Well there you go, your own remix pat on the back for you. If you feel up to it, maby add a couple more accapellas in while your at it :)

 

You are now ready to go onto the next stage of remixing. 

 

There is an acid tutorial sample that I did underneath for you to check.