From Heartbreak to Hard Beats

By Frances Preve

Nine out of ten remixers get their start as either a DJ or a performing musician. Not Joe Bermudez. This up-and-coming Billboard chart-monger got his start as a radio programmer with an axe to grind with a former flame. Vengeance is rarely as sweet as it’s been for Joe.

Make no mistake, Joe is a musician’s musician. With remix credits ranging from Kelly Clarkson to the Pussycat Dolls, Bermudez’s sound is a cut above today’s pop-oriented club fare, with a sense of melody balanced by enough toughness to keep the feeling real. His contributions to the AIR 81 set on XM Radio puts him in the peak-time sweetspots of midnight (EST) every Friday and then 11pm on Sunday nights. Blending cutting-edge electro beats with a touch of pop and tribal is no easy feat, but Joe pulls it off week after week to the delight of XM listeners.

Here’s a glimpse into Joe’s approach to remixing, with a few well-placed production tips to get you started on your own electronica excursions.

How’d you get started in dance music?

One of the main reasons I started listening to dance music is because of Rollo & Sister Bliss. Their remixes for Faithless (“Insomnia”), Kristine W (“Feel What You Want”), and the OT Quartet (“Hold That Sucker Down”) literally changed my life. Living in Maine, I had never been exposed to such a style before. Before I knew it, I was constantly driving down to Boston and raiding record stores.

But your entry into remixing itself is a bit more colorful.

[Laughs] Well, it’s probably not the most typical route, but I got involved with remixing to help me get over someone. I was miserable, so some friends in New York begged me to come down for the weekend and hit up a few strip clubs to make me feel better. I really wasn’t interested, but they also did production work, so I made a deal with them. If they let me play in the studio, I would burn through some dollar bills with them later on that night. The mix I ended up doing was of Mya’s “Case of the Ex” on Interscope, and I was immediately hooked. I decided to name it the “Drop Your Ex Mix,” and most people assumed that it was a drug reference, when in reality I was just trying to move on.

The low end of your mixes is always nicely balanced. What’s your secret?

It’s all about the kick and the bass, but like with most things in life, there can only be one winner. Too many things in the low end fighting with each other does nothing to help your track. You have to make a decision on which one is going to be the foundation of your mix. After I decide, what I like to do is loop a small section and solo just those two elements. Next, I simply roll off some bottom end on the loser and it instantly cleans up the track. It doesn’t take much, either. Using a Waves Q4 with a highpass filter anywhere between 60Hz and 90Hz will really make a difference, and it’ll make the other sound punch even more. It also doesn’t hurt to use a bandpass filter and increase some of the frequencies between 1kHz and 3kHz. This will help your kick or bass really cut through the mix and give you that impact you’re looking for. It you’re still looking for more, add a Waves Renaissance compressor. Put the ratio around 1.25 and play with the threshold, between –2.5 and –7.0.

What about some of those super-wide sounds in your mixes: Are there any plug-ins you use to get that spaciousness?

Instead of creating a delay for each track in [Digidesign] Pro Tools, I set up a few main delays and bus everything else to them. First, create an Aux input and then hold down your Apple (command) key while clicking on the solo button for your new track, so that it works when you solo other elements that are bused to it. Then, select your delay tempo and pick a rhythmic feel, such as quarter-notes or eighth-notes. Next is the part most people overlook. When you assign a tempo in Pro Tools, both your right and left channels are exactly in sync. One of my tricks is to pick one of the channels and offset it just a few milliseconds. It may not seem like much, but it makes a big difference in how your delays sound. From there, set the feedback to around 35 per cent and then open up a 1-band EQ with a highpass setting of around 360Hz. This will help keep your delays from bogging down the mix.

THE HIGHS

Here are some of Joe’s remix highlights from the past year or so, including three of his No. 1 hits.

JOE BERMUDEZ STUDIO RIG

“I run everything on a dual 1.25GHz Power Mac G4 with 1GB of RAM,” he says. “I handle MIDI in Cubase SX3 and mix audio in my ProTools Mix Plus TDM rig. Cubase has excellent stock plug-ins such as Bitcrusher and StepFilter, but one of my favorite plug-ins is McDSP’s Filterbank. As for synths, Vanguard is really popular right now, but I also still like to touch buttons, so I end up using my Access Virus B quite a bit. I monitor through Mackie HR824s.