Help me find the right software for creating mash-ups and sound collages.

May 27, 2009 10:28 AM

Help me find the right software for creating mash-ups and sound collages.

I'm looking for software that will let me create mash-ups and sound collages.

Ideally, I'm looking for something that will let me take specific parts of a song, such as only the bass line, drum line, etc., and separate it for use in another creation. Oh yeah, I'm a PC.

I've been looking at Tracktion, but if anyone has other ideas more suited to what I want, I'd be glad to hear them. Thanks!

posted by elder18 to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I have used a combo of SoundForge and Acid. Acid is a pretty brilliant bit of looping and mixing software.
posted by Ponderance at 10:32 AM on May 27

Seconding the previous. I used Acid to do a few of these a while back. It has a decent beatmatching system, and you can shift pitch by semitones to match songs better. It can get a little futzy for the small-scale precision editing you'd want to pull out a short segment from an existing track, which is why SoundForge (or its opensource cousin Audacity) will also be handy.

Bear in mind there's no magical software filter that will extract the parts you want, and you'll have to hunt around in some songs to find a section that will loop cleanly with only the parts you want. For making instrumental mixes, try this common vocal remover technique.
posted by echo target at 4:02 PM on May 27

I've used Ableton Live to do this kind of thing on numerous occasions. I think it's an amazing piece of software.
posted by Magnakai at 4:16 PM on May 27