Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir SkratchaLot
Z-Trip is a very high-profile DJ so there is a very good chance that he may have access to certain tracks or even components of the tracks ("stems") directly from the Beastie Boys. I suspect that's how he got the early version of "Make Some Noise". Even back in the old days, DJs would get advanced a cappellas so that they could remix tracks for official remixes. So, DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill fame got the a cappella of "So What Cha Want" back in 92 and used that to create his remix for the single. There are also a good amount of "unreleased" instrumentals floating around that were obtained from concert/show vinyl that ended up in collectors' hands. Also, the Beasties self-released a lot of a cappella trough this website some time ago (Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun was one of them).
It used to be that DJs would have to track down the vinyl and piece these mixes together (either live using turntables, or on a multi-track recorder) directly from the vinyl. So, for example, you can get the instrumental version of a track and put the a cappella from another track over that. There are tons of tricks. You can create "instrumentals" by manual looping of parts of the track turntables. Or, you can track down the source samples and use those. You're basically just tempo-matching the sounds and bringing them in and out in much the same way that hip hop tracks are produced in the first place.
Now that DJs have digital tools, they can piece together audio from any source and the sharing of digital files is really easy. You no longer have to track down concert vinyl with only 10 copies in existence to get instrumentals. You can just download the file and put it into your digital djing program and control it just like it was vinyl.
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Thanks for this detailed explanation. That's kind of what I assumed, but wasn't sure if that's still how it worked, albeit without the endless searching for show vinyl like you said. I have a pretty big and pretty useless collection of singles from back in the day when I'd want to get the instrumentals to something and the only way to get them was to find a 12" that usually had the LP version, clean version, instrumental, and acapella.