When scrolling through Spotify, many remixes of songs aren’t all that great. I’m sorry, but in many cases I like the original more. Remixes often tend to be flat, lacking depth.
But that’s because I’m listening to the remixes in the wrong way. When you listen to an hour-long remix, it seems so much better. Like, 100x times better. The unity of a string of remixes together is much better than the individual remixes on their own. Kinda makes sense.
For instance, take the one-hour 19-minute remix by the mashup artist Hong Kong Ping Pong. This remix is totally fantastic. Listen to it, and you’ll be dancing in your chair.
I were to listen to these as individual tracks, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Maybe the power of skipping over songs makes me more critical of what I’m listening to? With a longer remix, I simply play it, and don’t think about skipping.
With a long remix, the transitions between the songs are some of the best parts. The energy built up before the transition, then BOOM laying down a new beat. Then the beat gets layered with another segment of percussion. A few seconds later you get a little recording falling into place. It’s like making one big beautiful painting.
Cutting up the remix is like…
If you cut a painting up into little pieces, then the painting is just segments. You lose the context of how all the pieces connect together.
Cutting up a painting is exactly what baseball card manufacturer Donruss did in the 90s. They signed the Baseball Hall of Fame’s official artist, Dick Perez to create paintings for their “Diamond King” series.
Donruss then took the paintings and printed them onto puzzle cards. You had collect all 21 cards to complete the painting.
In every pack of baseball cards, you got one puzzle card. You might end up with masterpieces like this:
That’s right kids. You have an image of Carl Yastrzemski’s ear.
This standalone separated card is kinda like listening to individual remixes that were meant to be in a larger remix. The total remix is 100 times better than the individual remixes.
Funny, back in 2015 I wrote about how hour-long podcasts need to be broken up into five-minute segments.
https://www.mattmaldre.com/2015/12/03/pulling-five-minute-highlights-from-a-60-minute-podcast/
That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m saying here with hour-long remixes. But I still stand by that notion. Hour-long podcasts do need five-minute highlight teaser segments.