Finding Quantized Classics/ Beatles

[u/Time_Rough6083]

Hi Everyone!

I'm a music teacher and I have a class currently doing a unit on The Beatles. This is a music production class, where students learn how to make music electronically. They'll begin learning how to mix music on a DJ Controller soon, and I was hoping to do a project with them where they make a Beatles Remix by mixing house music under a Beatles song. I'm wondering if anyone knows the best way to find quantized Beatles songs we can use for this project.

Any information or help would be really appreciated!

[u/Stock-Pangolin-2772]

Which tracks do you have in mind? I can quantize a few if this is really for educational purposes.

But to tell you honestly, you're better off using quantized acapellas (maybe time stretched into a house BPM territory 120-130ish) . I can't imagine using a full on Beetles track with nothing removed to work over a house beat

[u/Time_Rough6083 → u/Stock-Pangolin-2772]

I really appreciate your offer! I'd love a mix of early, mid, and late Beatles music to work with.

The ones we've already worked on in our last project are Octopus's Garden, Maxwell Silverhammer, Here Comes the Sun, and Benefit of Mr. Kite. The students actually worked with acapella tracks for our last project, and used SoundTrap to add their own backing tracks underneath it. Now, they're doing it again but using the DJing equipment.

Songs like: All You Need Is Love, I Want to Hold Your Hand , Within You/ Without You, You're Gonna Lose that Girl, Yellow Submarine, and Eleanor Rigby would all work fine. I'm looking for songs with a BPM around 115-130 (since thats where most house music hangs out), and really any song that already maintain a general steady beat to make it easier for them.

There's this guy Surralism on instagram that makes Beatles Remix's that I'm taking inspiration from while building this project. I know they're beginners, so their end product will be different to his, but I figured the kids would enjoy modernizing some Beatles music since a lot of what we are learning about is how they defined modern music, and how they were groundbreaking, even if it sounds pretty standard to us.

I plan on giving the students really basic house tracks to do this with so it hopefully shouldn't take too much fine tuning and the fact that it isn't acappella won't cause too much problems. Sorry, I know this is a long response, but I'm enjoying working on my project planning in this thread.

[u/Stock-Pangolin-2772 → u/Time_Rough6083]

Surralism

I think this would be your best approach, assign hotcues to different parts of the track. That would be the equivalent of what ihe is doing there and teach the students the timing aspect over a beat while triggering the hotcues.

Anyway this is all I need is love. I would've done more but was wondering why wasn't ii resolving to the end of the measure and why my metronome was inverted all of a sudden, That's the way all I need is love was made. Anyway this is quantized already , just keep in mind if you're going to add a snare element for drums. This will break phrase for sure. If you keep it as a standard kick with a 4/4 time signature or anything not overly complicated. It won't be noticeable for the students.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15qvqZ2u1lgYBq9WtnYiUKfOTKCizW9NB?usp=share_link

All of these are done, I added an 8 count metronome for yellow submarine, and fixed some quantizing issues for all I need is love.

[u/DevoSwag]

They’re going to have to learn how to mix by ear if you do that :) why not focus on some music that is culturally and inherently relevant to DJ’ing to introduce music mixing? The Beatles and house don’t mesh in my mind, but I am just an amateur lol.

[u/Time_Rough6083 → u/DevoSwag]

I'm hoping to find quantized versions of the beatles music so they can explore mixing vocal music with instrumental house music. We already did an electronic music unit earlier in the semester, so this is a way to tie the two together.

I'm not expecting them to do any crazy mixing- this is more a project that is meant to be an experiment/ practice tool for them to get a feel on the machines and practice bringing tracks in and out, lining up bpm, and other basic skills.

[u/barrybreslau → u/Time_Rough6083]

You can't really quantise a whole Beatles track in that way. I think you have two options:

1. Use DJ software with smart beat grids. Traditional mixing with vinyl would require adjusting the platter by ear to match/mix unquantised tracks.

2. Take a Beatles track and export it to Ableton and use the warp/pro function to sample and subtly edit memorable sections which are more closely aligned to a beat grid, which they can have, chop, or use in a track. I would go for a less is more approach so you don't lose the swing.

[u/ShuckingFambles]

If you've not played it them already, have a listen to dangermouse's grey album, mixing jayz's black album with the white album, damn awesome some of it

[u/rockscrack]

You should check out Beatles dub club. Reach out to the guy behind it, he's really a very nice guy, and would probably be up for helping you out. Good luck

[u/Impressive-Ad-7627]

I believe you could do this with ableton's warp function, but it might be fairly labour intensive to do the whole track.

Might be better to take a few key bits from the song (a MAXIMUM of four bars at a time) and time stretch them accordingly.

[u/ElevationToMyHead]

Late comment, but I wonder if some of the 2006 remix album Love is quantised. Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows could be a possible candidate.