Remixing "Thriller" with Serato Stems 3.0

Is Serato’s new Stems feature any good? Let’s find out by using one of the greatest songs ever recorded! Spooky Season Mashup Challenge! Here are the rules: Number 1: I have to mashup at least 5 different Halloween songs. Number 2: I’ll do it using Serato’s new 3.0 stems beta. This allows for instant acapella, isolated drums, and more. Number 3: I can’t pre mix any tracks outside of Serato, and no existing remixes. Everything has to be on the fly from the primary recordings, only using serato. Q

uestion; what is the greatest Halloween song of all time? No! Not monster mash. Stop it. Be serious. I’m going to center this mashup around Michael Jackson’s 1982 hit “Thriller”. This song and album changed everything, and that’s not really an exaggeration. It’s the obvious winner for best Halloween song. If you’ve ever tried to mashup one song with another, you know the struggle of searching for instrumentals and acapellas. Sometimes the artist releases an official instrumental, but most of the

time, they don’t, so in that case you have 2 main options available to you: 1: Use EQ on your mixer to try to focus on the vocal or instrumental. The vocal usually sits in the higher range, so rolling off the lows makes the vocal a little clearer, and rolling off the highs makes the instrumental stand out. This kiiiinda works but isn’t that clean sounding. Option 2 is to use a service that will separate the vocal and instrumental for you. Some of these work by isolating frequencies, phasing out

the vocal, or using AI to determine what’s what. But these can be hit or miss. Sometimes it sounds pretty good, depending on the service you use. But even when you get a clean instrumental, the downside is, this takes a lot of time for preparation.You have to upload the original track to the service, re-download it, and load it in Serato. THERE’S GOTTA BE A BETTER WAY Now there is. Serato has introduced a brand new stems feature in their 3.0 beta that allows for the best of both methods. DJ’s n

ow have the ability to separate not only instrumental and vocal, but drums, bass, and melody, all at their fingertips, all on the fly. And yes, Algoriddim DJ users have had this feature for a while, but stems coming to Serato feels like when the iPhone gets a feature that Android has had for a while. Sure, you had it first, but now it’s going to be MUCH more widely used. Using serato stems, we’ll be able to separate the track even further than just acapella and instrumental. And by utilizing Ser

ato’s other features, it can get pretty crazy. This is gonna get fun. But before we talk about stem specifics,, let’s talk about what songs we want to use, and since we can isolate elements, which parts of those songs we want. Song number 1 is Thriller. Song number 2 is… Ghostbusters, obviously. Ray Parker Jr. It’s a classic, came out in 1984, a couple years after Thriller, and even if you don’t know it, you know it. You know? Let’s use the bass and melody from Ghostbusters, but I want to keep t

he drum groove from Thriller going so it feels like the same song. We’ll also have to transpose Ghostbusters up a whole step to match the key of Thriller. Song number 3, is kind of a combination of both song 1 and 2. It’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell. It came out in 1984, same year as Ghostbusters, and the background vocals are sung by Jermaine and Michael Jackson. We’re definitely gonna use the vocal from this, and let’s throw the bass in there to match. We’re already in the same key, s

o this works great. I think what we’ve just discovered is that the early 80s was peak spooky music time. For song 4, let’s go with something more modern… How about Stranger Things? Modern show, maximum spooky, and… also… takes place in the early 80s. Whatever. I love the arpeggiated synth thing, but I’m going to take out the drums, which is really just the heartbeat pulse, so it’ll just be the synths. We’re gonna have to change the key to match Thriller. Song 5 - uhhh… What else we got? “This is

Halloween” from Nightmare Before Christmas… nah… “Nightmare on my street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince…. nah… Monster Mash? No! Musn’t… play… monster… mash… WAIT - THAT’S IT Ooooooh this is gonna be fun. You know what? I’m not gonna tell you. You’re just gonna have to stick around to find out what the 5th song is. Alright, let’s get to work, figure out how we’re gonna do this, and see how well Serato Stems works. Two VERY IMPORTANT THINGS before we start - ONE - you can download this b

eta for free and try it out, but BEFORE you do, make sure to rename your regular copy of Serato. Otherwise, the beta will overwrite your main copy of Serato. This is important because of POINT NUMBER 2 - Which is - when you open the 3.0 beta software it gives you this big scary warning that it’s still a beta, and is potentially unstable. So, basically, use at your own risk. If you’re performing with this and then it quits and you get booed - that’s on you. So we’ve got Thriller loaded into the S

erato 3.0 beta. From the top part of the display, right away you can switch to acapella or instrumental. Now, if this is your first time selecting that on this track, it takes a second to analyze, but once that’s done, it’s saved on your computer that way. You can also set it to analyze for stems automatically on song load. Let’s take a listen to see how this sounds. The sound quality on this is as good or better than the AI generated version I played at the beginning of the video, the differenc

e is, I didn’t have to upload anything, this feature is baked into Serato for me to use on the fly And then if we open up the stems tab on the track, we have even more control. For one, we have the bottom row to echo out the vocals, echo out the instrumental, take out the instrumental with a braker effect, or echo out the drums. With the top row you have full control of the track. You can leave in or take out the vocal, the melodic parts, the bass, and the drums. This is absolutely insane. The f

act that you can have the ability to separate all of this out on the fly, and it sounds THIS good, that’s crazy. Of course, if you have the original studio stems it sounds better, but these sound good enough to work with, and it’s so easy. If you go in your serato settings you can replace one of your pad modes with the stems menu, so now I can change stems without touching the computer. Rane has even teased a new controller that has built in acapella and instrumental buttons right on each deck.

For this remix, I’m going to do everything live, which is a LOT - I need to get all the tempos the same, all the keys the same, and bring different stems in and out. Since I’m centering all of this around Thriller, I’m going to utilize another GREAT Serato feature to help make this easier. The problem is, according to the rules set at the beginning, I can’t pre-mix anything. So while I might normally edit Thriller in Ableton to be the EXACT form I’m going to use, that’s against the rules. Instea

d, I’m going to use a feature called Serato Flip. This basically allows you to pre-set cue point triggers throughout the song. So I’ll hit record on a new flip, then scrub through to the part where I want to jump, hit the cue point, keep going, and save it all at the end. Then I’ve got a brand new edit of the song, that’s still using the original track, with just my cues triggers saved. This is a great feature for creating intro edits without having to pull open any additional software, or in th

e case of this remix, cutting it to the exact form that I need so I can focus on the stems. The ONLY thing I wish is that I could also record in my stem cues. Like if I could save a version of this song that has the bass and melody drop out on the chorus, automatically, that would be incredible. Maybe they’ll add this in the future. I sure hope so. Alright, enough talking, let’s get to the remix. 5 songs, Serato 3.0 Stems beta, all with original recordings, not official acapellas or instrumental

s. Here we go! This is incredible technology, but maybe more incredible is how a song from 1982 can work so well with all these other Songs. Michael and Quincy had a knack for writing songs that perfectly integrate the past they’re coming out of, make a great hit in the present, and have a massive influence on the future. Another perfect example of this is Rock with You, which I’ve also remixed with 3 different songs from 3 different eras - and for that story, you’ll have to watch this video.