edits

[DigitalDjigit]

Inspired by Woebot...

 

[swears]

Needs a "depends" option.

 

[Troy]

what's an "edit"?

 

[Guybrush]

Most of them are awful and utterly pointless, but when they're rescueing deserving records from obscuredom they definitely have a place. That being said, the talk about them being a new genre or "this year's sound" is to stretch things a vee bit, in my opinion--is this not just the "tasteful" logical extension of all that tack-an-80s-tune-onto-a-house-beat-nonsense?

I almost exclusively play modern remixes of old tracks whenever I'm asked to play any btw, so it's not that I have a problem with people fiddling with the classics, it's just that most "edits" (as opposed to "remixes") I hear are far to reverent to the original recordings. This makes them utterly redundant, because the original will always have the advantage of being bound to a particular place and time ("Uncle Joe listened to this exact recording in 1975"), and a glossy "modern" remix will make the song work on contemporary dance floors. These edits too often fall into that all-to-crowded middle-ground of records which works modestly on most floors but rocks none, they're excellent as background music in trendy bars though, but that's probably not what the "editors" intended.

Okay, enough ranting I like some of Todd Terje's stuff, same goes for what I've heard from Theo Parrish (the The Love I Lost edit in particular) and Beatconductor. Danny Krivit's edits, too, are fab, but they're more like full-on reworkings to my ears.

 

[IdleRich]

What is the difference between an edit and a remix anyway? As I understood it edits were a kind of step on the way to remixes, usually extending a track (or in particular the break) by cutting up and re-ordering the tape on which it was made. Since technology advanced they seemed to become redundant but the word has come back in to currency in recent years. Does it just now mean "a remix that isn't very different from the original"? I guess I can see the point of tidying up the beat so it's easier to mix but is there normally more to it than that?

 

[stelfox]

very, very useful from a djing point of view. the top secret hip hop edits all work like a dream and make the rcords about a million times easier to play

 

[hint]

very, very useful from a djing point of view. the top secret hip hop edits all work like a dream and make the records about a million times easier to play

Exactly.

The best edits take the original, make it nicer to mix with, perhaps beef up the production a bit for club play and make the most of the best bits (from a dancefloor point of view).

 

[swears]

What is the difference between an edit and a remix anyway? As I understood it edits were a kind of step on the way to remixes, usually extending a track (or in particular the break) by cutting up and re-ordering the tape on which it was made. Since technology advanced they seemed to become redundant but the word has come back in to currency in recent years. Does it just now mean "a remix that isn't very different from the original"? I guess I can see the point of tidying up the beat so it's easier to mix but is there normally more to it than that?

With a remix, you're working with individual tracks in one particular tune, and probably sticking in your own elements (new beat, new bassline, new counter-melodies, etc) as if you were sitting down at the same mixing desk as the producer/engineer.

An edit is working with the entire track, pre-mixed as if you had just bought the record.
You don't have access to isolated individual parts like the orignal vocal, or beat or whatever, so all you can do is put bars or loops of music from the record in another order.
And of course, there can a be a fine line between what's considered a remix or an edit.