Extending disco and funk songs using sound editing software

**Funky Dude** · November 8th, 2001, 10:08 PM

I'm no DJ but I have experimented with sound editing using a fantastic program called "Gold Wave" and I have extended 3 minute songs to 6 or 7 minutes using copy and paste method to repeat certain parts of the song such as some of the choruses and some of the funky rhythms that sound really cool to me. I make sure that when I copy and past the parts of the songs that they blend into the songs without noticable chop-changes so it sounds good, although some of the ones I did earlier ones sound choppy and crap because of the difficulty of blending the beats. Anyhoe here are some I have edited:

Rozza & Wine - Disco Boogie Woman 1975 (This one is one of my favourites, too bad it goes for 2 1/2 minutes, so I repeated parts of the song (making sure they blend together) and now the song goes for over 5 minutes)

Bar-Kays - Son Of Shaft 1972 (3 1/2 minute song sounds similar to "Theme From Shaft" and I've repeated a lot of the cool funky guitar wah wah sounds in it and it's now a 7 1/2 minute song)

Miami - Party Freaks 1974 (This one also has a lot of cool guitar wah wah sounds in it so I extended it from 5 minutes to 9 minutes by extending the guitar wah wah bits and some other parts of the song)

Bar-Kays - Shut The Funk Up 1977 (I really love the bit where the bass player plucks the bass strings and one of the band members says "GET FONKY!!!!" so I repeated the bass pluck and the "GET FONKY" bit because it sounds really cool, so it's extended from 4 1/2 minutes to 6 1/2 minutes)

Crown Heights Affair - Dancin' 1976 (I love the disco rhythm bit about a minute into the song so I did a lot of repeats of that rhytm and whacked it at back of the song, this one is extended from 7 1/2 minutes to about 11 1/4 minutes)

Carol Douglas - Doctors Orders 1974 (I really love the instrumental bit in the middle of the song so I repetitiously repeated the instrumental part several times and threw the start chorus in the middle of the song and threw extra repetitious instrumental after the chorus and whacked the last chorus at the end, so this song was extended from 4 minutes to 10 minutes, I just LOVE the instrumental bit)

Soul Train Gang - `75 Soul Train Theme 1975 (Another one of my favourite disco songs, the start of the song jumped track a bit (I guess this was from a 45) so I did a bit of copy and paste to fix the start of the song as best as I could, and while I was at it I thought I could extend this one so I copied a slab of the song and pasted it near the end and threw last couple of minutes of the song at the back, of course I had to make sure it blended very good to make the editing not noticable, it's extended from almost 5 minutes to 8 1/4 minutes)

Rose Royce - Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is 1976 (I would say this has to be Rose Royce's funkiest cut yet and one of my favourites, so I extended this song from 3 1/2 minutes to about roughly 6 or 7 minutes by repeating most of the song twice)

Unfortunately some of these songs I extended I had to delete because my Hard Drive was chockas (i.e. almost full) and I only had a Gig left so I had to make way for space, fortunately now I've got a 30 Gig HD added to my PC so I can do lots of sound editing. Anyhow I love extending my favourite disco and funk songs so I can enjoy the song longer.

**paul** · November 9th, 2001, 12:10 AM

Hey Funky. Good to see your post again. Can you possibly set it up so we can hear what the extensions sound like?

**Paulo** · November 9th, 2001, 02:43 AM

Hello Funky!

It sounds interesting what you're doing. I've done it myself too in my PC, but of course it is just a hobby, not a professional thing, although the results are very satisfactory.

If you use other programs such as Sound Forge or Acid you will be alble not only to EXTEND the existing parts of the song, but really CHANGE the sound an even AD new parts, new sounds to the existing track. As I said, it is just a hobby... the orginals are classics.

You can even create your own dance or techno pieces.

Bye

Paulo

**Giovanni** · November 9th, 2001, 05:08 PM

Almost all the old school djs (me and many other s here) did it live by continously chopping and blending beetween two copies of the same record.

I remember having played the piano intro of Richie Haven's version of "Going back to my roots" for at least 10 minutes back in 1980 with my dancefloor growing and growing with enthusiasm untill I finally let it go on. Great times we had!!!

**Mixmachine** · November 9th, 2001, 11:13 PM

I’ve been trying to experiment with editing in the digital world for years now, but I don’t have the same amount of free time I used to and I’m not up to date with today’s dance music scene anyways, when I was Djing I used to edit/mix/ splice special versions on 1/4” reel tape and played them live in my sets, I still have a few I need to transfer to CDR before they are gone forever, I have a few editing software programs like Cooledit and others and I can’t believe how powerful they are, it used to take me days and weeks to do what they can do in hours today.

**originalbigm** · October 1st, 2006, 11:37 AM

Funny that this subject hadn't cropped before now.I did the same thing foolin around with my 7" version of "Falling In Love With You" by Jimmy Ruffin using the B side instrumental version at the start and blending in the vocal version creating an extended version.Surprisingly it is impossible to detect the blended section. Modern recording and software makes it fairly easy to do with very good results.:p

**Cory Ander** · September 12th, 2009, 09:17 PM

I used to do that in my DJ days, but the only 2 I can still remember was mixing the vocal and instrumental versions of the Human Leagues's "Don't You Want Me" (the instrumental version is on their E.P. "Love and Dancing") and the vocal and instrumental versions of Dan Hartman's "Relight My Fire" (I had the instrumental version on his comp "Keep the Fire Burnin'") though I wish it had the vocal version also.

**Cory Ander** · September 13th, 2009, 06:44 PM

Originally Written by Giovanni

Almost all the old school djs (me and many other s here) did it live by continously chopping and blending beetween two copies of the same record.

I remember having played the piano intro of Richie Haven's version of "Going back to my roots" for at least 10 minutes back in 1980 with my dancefloor growing and growing with enthusiasm untill I finally let it go on. Great times we had!!!

did you enjoy Havens' performance at "Woodstock"? I did, especially after he said "clap your hands, clap your hands" and thousands of people started standing and clapping. Hope that's on You Tube, think I'll go look right now.

**Old Disco DeeJay** · September 14th, 2009, 04:01 PM

Check out Glenn Rivera's posts (username glenngrivera) in the Online DJ Mixes and Web Radio Shows Forum on this site. Or visit his website at SHADES OF SEVENTIES - RESTRUCTURE MIXES for loads of good unique personal remixes of Disco Tracks.

Hopefully, Glenn will visit this thread and share details of his equipment and techniques, or the originator of this thread may want to PM him.

**Noman** · September 16th, 2009, 03:03 PM

Lary Sanders Edits are great.
I have done some myself. Too bad I cant' give you any samples here (:

Live edits is more unpredictable and can give nice results.