Software saves the day song...

Tech saves the day? Well song… In this age of daily hyperbolic messaging extolling the virtues of BIG tech.  Technology doing this and changing that for the good or more pernicious, more access to personal data and its exploitation.

AI is changing, running and listening to your life and in many situations, folks aren’t even aware. Who actually take the time to read any EULA?  That said, the advancements in AI applied to music is really phenomenal. In fact, in this case software really did save the day and, the song more specifically.

My collaborator and composer/producer friend Ruth Mendelson brought me in to mix a soundtrack for a video production associated with a documentary film she is scoring.  The goal was to get Ruth’s new world arrangement soundtrack put together so that the film’s director who also wrote the song could lay down her vocal at none other than Skywaker Sound (yah, the place where they did Star Wars) north of San Francisco.

Ruth sent me all the tracks that included, varied world ethnic instruments she had used in her arrangement along with a well-produced drum/rhythm section track created by the films production team.  I assembled everything and went to work on improving an already great arrangement. I turned in the track and thought this is done and really cool!

A few days later Ruth gave me a call. She said the track sounded great, but the director was not feeling the groove…  What? The drum track was well produced and sounded good to my ears.

Then the story unraveled.  In fact, the singer/director really wanted to use the drum beat from the original Mp3 that was provided as her mock-up of the tune.  Something about that groove was how that song needed to be for her. The well-produced proxy we were working with just did not do it for her. She was not “feeling it.”

Hmmm? Then the ask: could I extract out the drum beat and bass synth from the original MP3? I asked don’t they have stems (stems are breakouts e.g., drums & bass, guitars, keyboards combined together)?  Nope. Then I recalled weeks earlier, I had received the latest version of iZotope RX boasting of a new Music Rebalance module, that I had yet to check out.

I thought nothing like a deadline or trial by fire to motivate you. I just dove into the new software.  To my amazement, I was able to extract out the different components of the MP3 mix file with not allot of effort. I sent over the outcome of my experiment.

A day later I heard back from Ruth about remixed track using the extracted components. Our conversation started with, Thank You!  Tomorrow (Deborah Charles) the director says thank you! Tomorrow is the director of the documentary Taking Down Giants which is in production.  ‘Let It Be Said’ is the name song/video in production and slated for release in 2022.

Then I learned more about the thank you and why she could not provide stems for my mix work in the first place.  As it turns out, Tomorrow was in a San Francisco Starbucks with her laptop connected to its backup drive.  She turned away for a moment and the laptop and drive were gone… the only version of the song and its backup gone.

So, AI really did save the song. Specifically, iZotope’s Music Rebalance really is some amazing technology rolled into an easy to use experience.  In an age when we hear something pernicious about AI and Big tech daily, here’s some good news on how it made the impossible not long ago, possible and, saved the song.

Finally, a special shout out to Andrew Rossa, Mark Ethier and all the folks at iZotope for supporting me with tools to do what I do.

Thanks for reading!