TikTok has been the driving force behind an unprecedented and often-unpredictable excavation of music from throughout the 20th century. The app has become a prismatic lens through which pop culture, individual interests, algorithms, commercial motivations, and genuine creativity intersect, resulting in the rapid deconstruction, abstraction, and reassembly of ideas through the emergent properties of chance and subjective interpretation. Of all the various artistic concepts to make a resurgence, TikTok has almost singlehandedly been the impetus for the triumphant return of the mash-up. The term likely denotes many different touchstones, depending on your age, but it’s difficult to dispute that mash-ups haven’t had this sort of mainstream appeal since the late aughts and early 2010s.
This should come as no surprise, especially considering TikTok’s origins as the app formerly known as musical.ly, which was built around lip-syncing and accompanying tunes. As the app evolved, agreements with publishers and rights holders would allow for the official use of music from a wide range of artists. In hindsight, it seems all but inevitable that mash-ups would claw back, albeit in the form of popularity that doesn’t jive with the totalizing nature of pre- and early-internet pop culture. It’s well beyond the scope of this article to dissect the convoluted nature of ideas of fame, popularity, virality, and more in the always-online landscape, but suffice it to say that mash-ups are back and just as popular — if not more than ever before!
Today, we take a brief look at the history of the mash-up and cover some creative and production tools for those looking to add mash-ups to their musical menagerie, from those just starting out to the casual composers and expert producers. Feel free to skip to whichever section feels most appropriate for you as we work through the best ways to make a mash-up for TikTok.
- A Brief History of the Mash-up and Why It Matters
- Mash-up Fundamentals
- Beginner Mash-ups: New Ideas and Exploration
- Intermediate Mash-ups
- Expert Mash-ups and Multitrack Sampling
- Exploring Endless Sonic Possibilities
A Brief History of the Mash-up and Why It Matters
OK, I know you’re not here for a history lesson, but hear me out: understanding the background can help illuminate some unexpected creative avenues or spark some interests that might otherwise go unconsidered. The musical architecture that undergirds the mash-up can lead to some compelling choices that might not seem so intuitive from the jump. In its most commonplace sense, a mash-up is another form of sampling — using part of one song within another song, thus creating a new, third song. We won’t get into the ontology of “music as art object,” Plunderphonics, or how it relates to sampling and ideas of “originality,” but what’s important to understand is that making a mash-up is just another type of sampling, albeit in an “all X is Y, but not all Y are X” sort of way.
As an artistic and creative tool, sampling has been the subject of countless legal and ethical debates. These mainly revolve around a concern for profit by rights holders under the auspices of claiming a desire to preserve some creative “purity.” Musicians conversely insist that mash-ups are a form of artistry that should be protected under fair use or de minimis clauses. That legal stuff only matters if you’re trying to sell your music, so, for purely demonstrative purposes, we can ignore all that. Sampling can be broken down into roughly two main types: 1) direct sampling and 2) a process known as “interpolation.” The former is what we usually think of, using existing audio within something else. The latter, however, involves replaying and re-recording part, or all, of an existing piece of audio to be used in another track. Interpolation sits in a funny area between our commonplace ideas of sampling, mash-ups, writing, and performance, especially when you get into the fuzziness of parts that feel more like references than a direct cover.
Prog-rock and jam-band outfit Umphrey’s McGee’s 2016 album, Zonkey, comprises 12 tracks that include the work of 18 different artists along with their own. Each song uses at least two other artists’ pieces played and recorded by the band. From Pink Floyd and White Zombie to Metallica, Fleetwood Mac, and the Weeknd, it’s an assemblage of new recordings of existing work. Though we can understand that a level of artistry was required to weave these songs together, we can comfortably separate what’s being interpolated (read: sampled) from the decisions made. Put another way, we can separate the Umphrey’s McGee parts from the sampled works, even if they aren’t easily untangled. Still, it’s a collection of bona fide mash-ups.
Forms of musical homage, or allusion, can be harder to dissect. Coolio’s hit 1995 single, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” notoriously and extensively samples Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” from 1976. Coolio’s take features a chorus vocal line that follows Wonder’s original melody, placed in the same respective spot over the “Pastime Paradise” sample, but with altered lyrics that decidedly do not try to be synonymous with the line in the original song. Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” is sampled in the traditional sense, but whether the re-presented chorus is a sample, interpolation, or mash-up is harder to pin down.
Looking at another example, English producer Richard X amassed notable critical and commercial recognition for his interpolation-based mash-ups throughout the early aughts. Tracks like “Finest Dreams” even cracked the UK Top 10, which had Kelis performing the vocals of “The Finest,” originally by the SOS Band, over an instrumental rendition of “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of” by the Human League. A few years later, Collision Course would be released, an officially sanctioned, double platinum–certified 6-track mash-up EP featuring the works of Linkin Park and Jay-Z. Critical reception was divisive with the usual criticisms claiming it lacked originality or existed purely for commercial benefit. The live show had Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda reworking songs from both camps to be more seamlessly performed together. This is a rare example of artists interpolating their own work to retroactively accommodate the “third track” mash-ups of the EP.
The availability of instrumental versions of popular music, alongside a cappella (isolated vocal) tracks, made mash-ups a popular target for DJs since the early days of turntablism in the 1970s. This would make a monstrous jump in mainstream appeal with the work of Girl Talk, who popularized a more rapid-fire style of mash-ups, blending multiple songs into a single track. Legal controversy notwithstanding, Girl Talk would shepherd in a brief era of college-oriented sample-based artists, coinciding with a technological shift that democratized access to digital production software and a burgeoning interest in electronic music in the US.
If you’re wondering why this matters, then it’s because making a mash-up can be — and has been — so much more than just using one song with another. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re interested in electronic music, being a DJ, or just making mash-ups for the fun of it, then having a sense of where something could go can generate unexpected insights in the present. Of course, everyone has to start somewhere, and there’s no shame in that! If you’re early on in your musical odyssey, then keep reading. Those looking for more of a challenge are free to skip ahead.
Mash-up Fundamentals
Let’s assume you want to take the vocal part of one song and place it with the instrumental from another. Seems easy enough, right? When selecting tracks, it’s essential to establish if they’re harmonically compatible. If you know how to work it out yourself, then this won’t need explaining, but finding out if two songs will work together is more than just understanding whether or not they’re already in the same key signature. You also have to consider tempo and its relationship to the key of a song. Slowing down a recording lowers its pitch in direct proportion to its slower tempo. The opposite is true when it’s sped up, thus raising the pitch.
Most DAWs (digital audio workstations) these days have a pitch-adjustment method that will allow for greater flexibility, offering changes in semitone increments without changing the tempo. Conversely, you can adjust the tempo without altering the pitch, avoiding stuttering and chipmunk effects. Even in a perfect world where songs could be infinitely stretched or shrunk without affecting pitch or audio quality, we’d probably agree that not every song should be treated that way. Any four-on-the-floor dance track sounds cluttered as it’s sped up whereas half-time hip-hop beats tend to lose their groove if they’re slowed down too much due to the relative gaps in percussion and perceived “slowness” of the beat.
Most DAWs will quantize a track once it’s imported, letting you adjust the tempo to get a sense of its speed. Web tools like Beatport or Tunebat can help to discover the key signature and tempo of a song quickly, and all8.com’s tap-tempo feature will let you manually count the tempo of a song. These are the fundamental tools for making a mash-up.
Which DAW is best for making mash-ups? Whichever one works best for you! Here are three of our favorite DAWs for making mash-ups and other sample-based music:
Beginner Mash-ups: New Ideas and Exploration
Everyone starts out as a beginner, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s exciting! We’ll define “beginner” as anyone who has a working knowledge of how to use a DAW, no matter how rudimentary. MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones all come with Apple’s DAW, GarageBand, preinstalled. It may be considered a “beginner” DAW, but artists such as Rihanna, Justice, Nine Inch Nails, T-Pain, Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar, Usher, and more have produced hit songs in part or entirely with GarageBand. In truth, almost any DAW will do, and we’ll outline a method that will work in nearly all of them.
Before we do anything else, create three audio tracks in your DAW — one for each song and a third “edited” track. This will help keep your workflow clutter-free as you decide what pieces to pull from each song. It may sound obvious, but the song selection is the most critical part. This is a consideration of style as much as it is one of technical possibility. If you want to use the vocals from a track with unrelenting drums that dominate the mix, then you’ll have difficulty getting it to sound right with a song whose half-time tempo might resemble an R&B rhythm, for example.
Selecting and Editing Tracks
With the previous thought in mind, let’s dive into it. For this article, I’m using Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning,” from their 1984 release of the same name, as the instrumental base. For the vocals, I went with the Mike Jones 2004 classic “Still Tippin'” because, as a hip-hop vocal, we don’t need to be as worried about issues of key alignment (though we will address this later). When using older or otherwise popular-music tracks, looking up sheet music is an easy way to find the key signature. “Ride the Lightning” is in the key of E minor.
This may seem like an odd choice given the high-energy output typically associated with thrash metal. “Ride the Lightning” does, however, feature sections much more conducive to hip-hop groove, wherein the drums enter a half-time progression and the guitars ring out more rather than chugging away. The track clocks in at approximately 153 bpm while “Still Tippin'” sits at about 143 bpm (according to online services such as tunebat.com or songbpm.com). With this in mind, we’ll set our project tempo to 150 bpm to split the difference. With modern DAW time-stretching (or warping) features, an adjustment of a few beats is practically inaudible. We’ll drop in the Metallica track first (referred to as “RTL” from here for ease). If you scan the track to about the 2:30 mark, then you’ll find the song has more breathing room. We’ll carve out an 8-bar section, which will sound like this.
After putting this on a track, dubbed “3 Inst” in the session, we’ll find the vocals we need. For this purpose, I’m going with Mike Jones’s verse, which starts at approximately 1:47 in the original song. Isolating vocals can be tricky. Sometimes, a cappella vocal tracks can be found online, but there are plenty of ways to get around the issue with audio processing. Xtrax Stems, from Audionamix, is a great beginner tool that offers a free trial. With it, you can engage rudimentary isolations of songs to extract vocals, drums, and instrumental sections. Alternatively, services like Beatport offer stems for select tracks, typically veering toward the electronic variety. In my DAW, I select a time-stretching setting that accounts for complex, polyphonic material (“Complex Pro” in Ableton, “Polyphonic” in Pro Tools, “Sound” in Studio One). This type of time-stretching method is the best for maintaining consistency and quality through larger, denser audio files, eliminating worries of undesired pitch changes or stuttering. Using the master tempo as a reference, you may need to set or adjust time-stretch markers to keep the track in time.
This is a common way to adjust or fine-tune tracks in your project. While there are plenty of creative applications for otherwise-impossible sonic textures and rhythmic distortions, these are perfect for quickly dragging the beat into place. If you’re not accustomed to looking at waveforms, then it can take a bit of adjusting, but the kick drums tend to have the most pronounced (tallest) spikes in amplitude. With that in mind, cutting out the piece of audio you need and dragging it into place is a cinch.
Next, we’ll look at the vocals. Once you’ve cut out the Mike Jones verse, you’ll need to ensure the vocal sample is quantized in time with the rhythm track. Different DAWs usually have different algorithms for analyzing audio based on its content.
Finding the right parts of a vocal track to manipulate can be difficult given that a vocal track doesn’t typically lend itself to the same type of obvious rhythmic cues. Moreover, you’ll find that, while the nonsilent portions reliably align with individual words or phrasings, you’ll quickly realize how nuanced our speaking patterns are. Mike Jones opens his verse with the words, “four fours.” Unlike with plosive letters — such as “d,” “k,” or “p” — the “f” sound is what linguists call a voiceless labiodental fricative. In making that sound, the lower lip contacts the upper teeth as air flows out of the mouth, creating friction without completely stopping. I point this out to illustrate that, even in a simple, singular letter, there’s a notable arc of sounds just to get out that single “f.” So, finding the proper starting point of the word to begin the verse doesn’t necessarily coincide with the beginning of the accompanying waveform. Instead, look for the sudden increase in amplitude, indicating the primary emphasis of the word.
Once the vocal parts are set into place, drag them over to the designated audio track (“Vox” in the session). Place the accompanying instrumental onto its respective track so that they start at the same measure. You’ll notice that the 4-bar Metallica loop is a bit short compared to the length of the verse. Assuming the beat is lined up with the duration of the four measures, we can copy and paste successive blocks of that 4-bar chunk. Before we do, however, we want to make sure to avoid any clicking or popping with the ends of the audio by drawing in a fade.
With everything in place, we’ll do a bit of mixing. Because RTL is a studio track, we’ll focus primarily on the track level while adding master tweaks. I’m using a multiband compression on both the Vox and Inst tracks and an 8-band EQ on the vocals to filter out any low end in the original. I’ve also added a bit of flanger to the vocals to create some texture, seeing as these were never recorded to match a beat like Metallica’s RTL.
Now you’ve got a bona fide mash-up. Mike Jones over Metallica? Unexpected, fun, and kind of ridiculous, but that’s what it’s about: finding unusual sonic overlaps to bring interesting, new ideas to life. If this all makes sense to you or if you’re just interested in seeing where else these ideas can go, then let’s move on.
Intermediate Mash-ups
I find that differentiating beginner from intermediate or advanced mash-ups is more an expression of creative complexity, assembling the building blocks of a greater vision, rather than gatekeeping what is or is not a “true” mash-up. That said, context is important. We’ve constructed a solid excerpt, but it doesn’t necessarily function as its own full track. Plus, as novel a blend as it may be, you’d probably agree that something is missing. With a hip-hop vocal, the beat should probably match that feeling. So, we’re going to add some drums by using “Still Tippin'” as something of a template.
Next, we’ll isolate the guitars from the same section to make them into their own track. This way, we can add any effects or sidechain compression without the original thrashy drums getting in the way. Plus, the drums will hit a bit harder, giving us more of a groove. With the addition of a few instrumental flourishes, we’re able to achieve a better balance of the two songs without compromising the interest of hearing them together. A bass line is another valuable inclusion, filling out the low end in the mix.
I’m also going to throw in some hi-hats to add more syncopation to the rhythm. We’ll keep those on their own track, EQ them by cutting off some of the hissy, high-end frequencies, and throw on some reverb.
An intro is always nice for those looking to incorporate this into something like a DJ set or if you just want to get more mileage out of listening to it. As it stands, we have a simple fade from the chorus as it precedes the verse we’re using. One option would be to take the beginning of RTL and let it open like the original song. This adds a greater conceptual contrast once the “proper” drums come in.
Conversely, we can get a little more creative with our samples to keep the mash-up’s spirit. We’ll reimagine the rhythmic distribution of the introduction by punctuating it with the drums while overlaying guitars from our newly created, isolated guitar track. It will make a parallel movement to the original intro lick with chords that move up alongside the lead guitar but reverse direction at the final measure. Together, our core loop is four bars, which we’ll loop for a total of 12 bars, the last four serving to bring in our vocals. Some claps are peppered into the introduction to tease the coming changeup — another small and simple contrasting detail to generate a bit of hype as the song moves along without getting too crowded. Altogether, it’ll sound something like this.
I think it’s safe to say we’ve got a more unified project here with a solid introduction that helps the main part hit hard without taking too long to get there. Various filtering, isolating, and sourcing can be used to eliminate aspects of a sampled track that might otherwise be too intrusive to use. Moreover, clever mixing and level adjustments can “mask” the parts of a song that would otherwise be unimportant to the final product. Your mileage with this will vary, depending on the software used and your musical goal. Regardless, what’s essential for a mash-up is to capture the spirit of the ideas being invoked. This can be philosophically slippery, but the presence of whatever songs or artists that are being referenced or sampled is as much a conceptual concern as it is a manner of sonic outcome.
Expert Mash-ups and Multitrack Sampling
Here’s where the gloves come off. Anything being considered “expert” is not a definitive, prescriptive construction — just anything more complex than the skills required to accomplish everything up to this point. Creative potential enters an inverse relationship with this fact as we shed limitations, wherein we approach a space of limitless opportunity. Furthermore, this is a general execution that could as easily be approached in any number of alternative forms and shouldn’t be considered the sole means of achieving any of the outcomes presented here.
We can safely agree that a successful mash-up is comprised of at least these two key components: sampling (in some direct or interpolated form) and contrast. While the former is probably apparent, the latter is an important distinction. Technically you could take something like a vocal stem from Blur and put it over an Oasis song, and that would still be a mash-up. Of course, this would be much less fun or intriguing as it wouldn’t promote the sonic exploration that makes for a good mash-up. Remember: there’s no one way to flesh out the value of contrast. What matters is that you’re having fun exploring different ideas. The various sonic dimensions of your total aural landscape will inform how you incorporate multiple tracks together. If the pitch needs to be adjusted, then it can affect the texture of the voice or instrumentation used in that song. The same goes for time stretching, which is another rhythmic, textural, and tonal manipulation tool.
So far, this mash-up leans pretty heavily toward the lower and middle registers among the guitars, Mike Jones’s voice, and the bass track we’ve added. To balance that out, I’ve opted for some funk and blue-eyed soul in the forms of two different tracks: a 12-inch mix of “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)” by ’90s R&B/new jack swing outfit Mint Condition and Ambrosia’s 1978 soul-infused, soft-rock ballad, “How Much I Feel.” The tracks were recorded in G minor and C-sharp minor, respectively, meaning each will need to be adjusted by a relative range of three semitones. I’m deliberately choosing to use a less-sophisticated analysis algorithm to take advantage of the textural differences of the pitch adjustment. You may wonder why given the technological prowess at our disposal, but the intersection of pitch and timbre create unique, otherwise-impossible expressions of sound that shape the aural topography of a mash-up. Not only will this fill out some of the higher registers, but it will also create a tightness in the sound that contrasts with the openness of the guitars. Experiment with different pitch adjustment settings to find the right one for your creative application. Because we’re going to be working more abstractly, this is the track in its final form.
As you can hear, we’ve got a lot going on, and things sound pretty different from before, except for our vocal track. This takes more liberal license of the sampling side of a mash-up, and our brief “pre-introduction” is now comprised of a tight loop taken from Ambrosia, which is found in the first chorus around the 1:07 mark. The loop begins on the word “for” of the phrase “for your love,” syncopated to begin on the fourth beat of the previous measure. To make this loop a full bar in length, we’ll take the third quarter note and duplicate it, creating a skipping sound to fill out the last quarter note. With a touch of reverb, the loop should sound as follows.
You’ll notice we’ve got a few additional syncopated samples as the proper introduction starts. Part of that is from the quarter-note lead-in of the pre-intro loop. The sample underneath is a bit trickier, also taken from the Ambrosia track around 3:02, starting with the word “and” of the phrase “and you both realize.” So far, the Ambrosia samples have been sped up by a considerable percentage to meet the tempo of our track, the original version coming in at just 100 bpm compared to our 150. With this specific piece of audio, we’re going to time-stretch it at 200 bpm, stretching it out so that it’s forced into a relatively slower progression, despite the increase in pitch. Below, you’ll hear it at its adjusted tempo before and after the time-stretching change and played alongside the supplementary samples.
Next, the proper intro takes off. We still use the same bass instrument and drums from the previous iteration, but the sampling is more intricate. For starters, we’ve got a tight loop in the upper registers. This is the same quarter-note chunk of the Ambrosia sample we previously used to fill out the pre-introductory loop. We’ll place it onto a new track to add some auto-panning.
Now, we’ll move on to the guitars. Each piece is cut from the same loop we’ve already used, only now they’re syncopated, chopped up, and rearranged. Like the original progression, we start with the opening chord, but its shortened length allows us to better use the instrument’s timbre. Rather than using the very first half measure of the guitar, I’m opting to cut out a snippet of equal length from a bit further down the chord’s resonance. This gives us a wider range of harmonics while eliminating any of the “start-up” or pick noise. I’ve applied the same logic to the rest of the resonant guitar parts while the palm-muted bits provide additional syncopation on top of the melodic variance. Together, the guitars are arranged to follow the motion of the original riff.
As for the remaining samples, they’re pulled from our new tracks with a sole piece taken from the 12-inch mix of Mint Condition’s “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes).” Though this is pitched down, our selection features a male vocal sung relatively high, generating a compelling textural juxtaposition. This is the only piece of the Mint Condition track that we’re going to use, placing it on the downbeat of the first measure of a larger 4-bar loop.
Next, we’ll move on to the rest of the Ambrosia samples that you’ll hear moving around the mix. These have been much more meticulously chopped and arranged, comprising the back half of the second measure of our loop with a total of four pieces of audio. The first two each have a sixteenth-note duration, the third is an eighth note, and the fourth is a quarter note. Below, you’ll hear them together and with some space between them.
Both of the first two samples are pulled from the line “how foolish you’ve been,” which is found at about 3:08. The first is cut from the word “how” while the second is taken from the held portion of the word “been” being sung. These are followed by a violin strike just before the previously used “and you both realize” section. The last sample is the beginning of the word “both” at its 200-bpm time-stretching. The samples move around the mix via different tracks with different panning values to give the syncopation more expression. The second and third samples are panned left and right, respectively, while the first and fourth are centered. With that said, our 4-bar loop will sound like this with the guitars added back in.
With this, we have the core of our production. Everything after this would follow a similar structure to the intermediate sampling with a bass line that follows our new melody sidechained with the kick drum. In this case, I’m lifting the progression of hi-hats and snares/claps from our previous example, but it’s really dealer’s choice at this point.
Exploring Endless Sonic Possibilities
When it’s all said and done, the most important thing is that you’re having fun with the music and challenging yourself to reimagine sounds and repurpose them into an assemblage of audio. It can be easy to overthink things, but it can be just as easy to find yourself limited by preconceived notions of how much of the original songs need to remain “intact” to still qualify as a mash-up. Or, put a different way, how recognizable they are. In that way, sampling music in a conventional sense and making mash-ups really aren’t so different — it’s the intention that matters, a desire to infuse the spirits of different elements into a singular whole that represents the musical value of the originals.
The purpose of this walk-through isn’t to prescribe any one methodology but to illustrate how this is one of nearly infinite ways to reimagine and recombine music. The DAW I’ve chosen has always been conducive to my workflow, but what matters is that the DAW you use works for you. For the hardware-inclined, any number of samplers would be just as valuable. Whether you want to have a little fun, create a viral banger, or add some unexpected zest to your DJ set, mash-ups are an excellent foundation for exploration. If you want to continue this aural odyssey, then contact your Sweetwater Sales Engineer today at (800) 222-4700, and they’ll help you find the right setup that meets your needs!