Producers, Have You Made An Instrumental Remake Yet?

Producers, have you made an instrumental remake yet?

If you're not familiar with instrumental remakes, they're basically similar to karaoke audio, where one takes the challenge to recreate the instrumental of a commercial track with accuracy and precision—very common in the urban and pop music realm. However, there's a group dispute whether these works help music producers develop music originality or not. From my perceptive, the outcome of doing instrumental remakes produces more benefits than harm. Others will argue that it destroys a beat maker's ability to create true original material. I argue, that it does not. What they're not seeing are the benefits and ultimately the purpose for it. Let's talk about this.

The Process:
The process in remaking an instrumental is indeed a lot of work. First you have to find the tempo and key by ear, then listen closely to the timbre and textures of each instrument/sound element, then you have to find the melodies/chords, then you have to arrange all of it to match the structure of the original song, and finally mix accordingly to how it originally sounds like. I mean, yeah it's a lot, but I enjoy it so much because I'm able to learn and take some production techniques from various styles to create my own unique sound. 

Ultimately it's a great exercise that trains your listening and analysis skills, which, by the way, is a significant skill that all music producers should obtain. Imagine yourself in room of industry professionals discussing the fine details of a commercial hit song, and not being able to contribute because you're not hearing what they're able to hear. Creating instrumental remakes is all about dissecting each element in a song (vocals, keys, guitars, bass, and so on); the more you listen, the more you will find. You see, most don't always catch everything in the first listen. In fact, I challenge you to break down an entire hit song with five replays. You might say, "Well let me just choose a song I know with simple beats, melodies, and arrangements." That's fine, but I promise you that when you listen to it again the next day, you'll be surprised by how much you didn't catch in the first five tries.

I encourage young music producers to try an instrumental remake of their favorite song. And if you have some time please check out some of mine. Good luck! 
SoundCloud - Instrumental Remakes