Finnish analog synth wizard Kebu has launched a remix contest for his track Super Troopers with a chance to have your remix published as part of the forthcoming Super Troopers single release. Now, I’m not necessarily a a big remix guy or a competition guy and I’m not really fan of having the extra pressure of deadlines for my producing either but I am a HUGE fan of Kebu and I totally love both his music and the amazing live performances. So, it was clear that if I ever take part in the remix contest, this would be the one.

My remix is now done and available for listening through Kebu’s Soundcloud account (link above) but I thought I will give a short description here about the process of creating the remix and my ideas and thoughts for creating it. I can only include very limited information for social media posts but here at the website I can be bit more verbose (… and those who know me, I really can be very verbose every now and then)

My philosophy on doing remixes has always been that I want to try to embrace the feeling of the original track and give space to the elements the original producer has considered essential for the track. I’m not a fan of totally recreating a track for the remix – it is the original track and the original author that deserves the credit and my role as a remixer is just to give that little bit of my own sound as a spice.

In case of Kebu, the essential thing for his music is naturally the warm sound of analog synths and his keyboard wizardry so my approach for the remix was to take especially the lead sounds as samples from the original. For the other parts like bassline and pads I used the midi tracks provided and tried to find sounds that matched the style I had in mind for my remix.

I began my remix with an idea that I am going to do a progressive trance piece but while working on it, it quite quickly started to feel that the original track and the sounds I wanted to keep from it were actually much more of the uplifting and energetic nature. There was also a bit of an issue with the tempo: the original has a tempo of 84 bpm, which is rather slow and very far away from the usual tempo of a trance track. So I decided to slow it down and double the tempo for my remix but as progressive tracks tend to have have a tempo of around 130 bpm or less, I would have needed to slow it down quite a bit.

I then decided to go for epic / euphoric trance instead and set the tempo to 140 bpm which seemed like a decent compromise. In the end, that turned out to be a good call since many parts of the original I wanted to use as-is sat pretty nicely on the drops and build-ups for an uplifting track and really created that energetic, feet-moving, hands-in-the-air thing that you want for epic trance.

So, how did it go in the end? I knew it was going to be challenging as I really wanted to do a good remix and have the balance right between the original and whatever I was going to bring in to it. The relative complexity of the original compared to the styles I usually work with, the amount of modifications needed for changing the tempo and some structural things not really fitting too well with the idea I had in mind gave me a hard time during the project. However, it was great fun to work with the remix and extremely interesting to investigate Kebu’s work in detail as part of it. I’m happy with the result too and while you’ll of course enter competitions to win, I’m not too bothered with the result – being part of it has been a pleasure.

So thanks Kebu for giving us the opportunity, you can be sure I’m taking part if there is a another Kebu remix contest in the future!