Both of these songs are fairly old, of course. Monument came out in 2014 and Bloody Mary came out… longer ago than I care to consider. So this is yet another mashup that is woefully out of date, but I don’t particularly care because I think it sounds pretty cool. This one came about when I was listening to my Freezepop station on Pandora. I heard the Royksopp track and was immediately entranced by what I was hearing. Then the chorus hit and I thought, “Wait a fucking minute.” I took a note in my phone and the first chance I had I got to work on the mix.

Royksopp ft. Robyn vs Lady Gaga – “Bloody Monument” (Download)

Media used:

  • Royksopp featuring Robyn – “Monument (The Inevitable End Version)”
  • Lady Gaga – “Bloody Mary” (Studio stems)

Not a huge amount to say here. It came together fairly easily. I started a “rough” mix that I ended up working with until I was happy with the composition as a whole. So my “rough” canvas became the finished product. Almost.

I’ve started a new mastering process that I hope will be successful. I’ve noticed in the past, especially on tracks like “Dominion – Even More“, that the more I throw into the mix, the more fatiguing and crowded the sound feels. This isn’t anything new to music, and I was aware of the issue, but not really sure what to do with it given the source files I was working with. However, I’ve started experimenting with some things I can do to help make room for sounds to live together.

On this track, once I had finished the mix, I exported it as several files: Music, Vocals, and Noises, then brought those tracks into their own mix session so I could manipulate them more holistically. This allowed me to really play with levels and implement filtering of the music at the parts where things got crowded. For example, at around 4:28 in the track I have the vocoded “gaga” sound overlapping a fairly busy portion of Monument. So I moved the portion of Monument into a new track and implemented a noise reduction routine with the “noise” defined by the “gaga” sound. Basically, I subtly reduced the frequencies in Monument that were clashing with the frequencies in the “gaga” sample.

That’s just one trick I used, among others. Center channel reduction was another, which I used to make room in Monument for the majority of the Lady Gaga vocals by filtering a small frequency range out of the apparent center of the soundstage, where the Gaga vocals reside. This was especially key at the end where there is a LOT GOING ON around the vocals. It’s still a bit crowded, but I didn’t want to make changes so drastic that I seemed to be forcing the issue. I feel like it all works well with how I’ve presented it. Could it be better? Sure! Will I revisit this again in the future? Probably!

I sorta wanted to make this more of a mashup by bringing the entire Gaga song into the mix instead of working with just the stems. And maybe I will? I dunno… This felt right.

For now, however, I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. And I gotta say… that Royksopp track is beautiful. Either the TIE version or the original. I feel like I could listen to it for days. And I just did, so that’s not an idle statement.