ReFIX vs ReMIX

I love where music is headed these days. The first house DJ's at the Warehouse or the Garage way way WAY back in the day (ok, the late 70's) were just tired of the stinky Disco music coming out, and wanted to provide a NEW experience for partiers and club-goers, so they started to take the songs they liked, and reworked them into something they could play (and mix), that people would actually dance to.

I mean come on, if YOU were a DJ in the 70's and you had to play "Get Down On It" every night, you'd probably do the same thing. Either that or put a Solid Gold (haha) bullet in your head...

For years and years now, most of us have gotten our music from a service, or directly from the record label. You were stuck with whatever thing they created for you to use. Sometimes it was inspired, sometimes... well, sometimes not.

Technology has finally caught up with us all, and it is now a reality that with some time and some talent, any one of us can head into a "studio", really just a PC (or Mac) with some studio gear hooked up, and create a new mix of a song, something to suit our individual flavors and needs. If you're really a badass you can create and snap your own video's down for a truly multi-media experience.

So with all these new producers and DJ's has emerged a new term, and a bit of confusion. What is a ReMIX VS a ReFIX?

There are two schools of thought here, and two production styles. You can either create a new version of the same song, or you can completely strip the acapella out, and set it to a new beat entirely. Those are our two different styles, if you will. I think we can all agree that a reFIX and a reMIX are definitely two DIFFERENT things.

I've spent some time researching the forums on this subject, just to see what everyone else is saying...and I'll admit that the majority seem to think: Remix = New Beats, changing the arrangement of the vocals and sound samples. Refix = Edit or some type of mashup of a track.

Sorry rookies, but you are WRONG! Nice try. I asked my friend, Serial ReFIXER and DJ, Chew Fu what he thought. "Most of the time;with a Re-Fix, I create all new music and take the song from "Style-A" to "Style-X", for example from HipHop to Electro, and just use the acapella of the original." says Chew Fu. "With a Remix, I take a song from "Style-A" to a sub genre of "Style-A", for example from Trance to Electro, and I will use original music parts..."

Since I used Chew Fu here, I will also use a Chew Fu ReFIX to illustrate my point. Below you will find two different versions of Rhianna's Rude Boy. Listen and Compare.

REMIX

As you can hear in this remix, the basic track remains the same. The key'd synth line that runs the course of the original also basically runs the course of this remix. They have added a new drum track, with some Reggae style (and I swear I heard that Reggae horn in there somewhere too).

REFIX
In this example an entirely new beat has been laid down. Chew Fu may have actually sampled parts of the original song in order to create the new beat, but it's a totally new production, keeping just Rhianna's voice.

Here's how I think of it: In a remix, the song is pretty great already, it just needs a little of this or a little of that. I have friends who like to add different House beats or Drums to tracks in order to make it easier to mix, or just to make a cool track pop even harder (see the example of a remix above). When the song has potential, but the beat is just crap or you have an even better idea, and you create your own groove for it, that's a refix. You FIXED an ok track into something sick.

I'm sure some will disagree, but I hope this will become the definitive guide to the Remix VS Refix.

Share my blog please, and have a great weekend!