Mix: to combine so the parts of one thing are diffused among those of another.
Re-mix: to do it all over and sell more copies of the same single.

What a cruel definition. Record company execs may sacrifice tea ladies to keep the great god of the 12in buyer happy, but true musicians look upon the remix in a more creative light.

Emulators, AMSs and other sampling inventions make it easier to stretch 3in to 12, but they're not essential. Yes, the Portastudio remix does exist — with a little outside assistance.

Going in search of dance cuts for the people, One Two happened upon one William Orbit. He is one-third of Torch Song. He is one set of fingers behind the production talents and facilities of Guerilla Studios. He is one big fan of extended mixes. And he is one step away from telling you how it can be done on a budget.

In which we dispense with digital

The two basic techniques at the heart of remixing are 'editing' and 'spinning-in'. The first is obvious — the splicing together of certain sections of the track to produce something new.

But a splice cuts across the whole tape on every track. If there was a way of performing surgery on just track four, for example, leaving 1 to 3 untouched, this would be worthy of a new teabag.

The answer is spinning-in, an extension of the drop-in practice. You switch to drop-in record for a certain section of one track but instead of putting down a synth solo or vocal, you feed in the playback from another tape recorder on which you've perfected an entire arrangement.

That material might be fresh, or siphoned from another part of the Portastudio mix. Or, if you're Steve Levine, you load 24 seconds of Boy George into your custom built AMS, trigger it from a signal on the multitrack, and let the notes drop into place.

"But you don't have to resort to digital," analogues Mr Orbit. "I started spinning stuff in off a Revox, but any good quarter inch tape machine will do. You might get away with using another cassette machine but then it's actually better to have an older one with those 'piano' keys which give you a more instantaneous start to the tape than the logic controlled transports which think about their instructions before doing anything."

In which we take a spin

"With a Portastudio you're working on limited tracks and you've come to a point where you've filled up the first three with drums, bass line and chordal stuff. You want a massive vocal sound for the chorus, but there's only one track to work with.

"First, make a mono mix of the three backing tracks onto your quarter inch, and transfer that to the Portastudio on a new piece of tape."

You now have three, clean Portastudio tracks on which to prepare and dub the vocal chorus. When completed, mix those three only (not the mono backing) onto a further fresh section of tape on the quarter inch. This is the part which will now be spun into that chorus gap on your original song.

"As a visual marker draw a chinagraph mark on the quarter inch tape where the sound starts, run the Portastudio, then hit the quarter inch play button on the beat before the music should start."

The first few times, you'll get it wrong, but with practice and study, you'll be able to move the chinagraph mack until it corresponds with the precise take-off point to keep the music in time.

It might start in time, but will it stay that way? How about tape stretch?

"You'd have to be recording pieces minutes long before that became noticeable, and here we're talking about seconds. If the tape recorder is running at 15ips, and the music is 120 beats per minute that means a beat, if my maths is right, is about seven inches long.

"It's surprising how much you can get away with. Once we wanted to mix up a version of one of our singles, 'Ode To Billy Joe'. We liked the album version but needed a louder vocal, so we transferred the album mix to another tape recorder and ran it alongside the original multi-track with just the voice up, without any synchronisation. It took seven tries to get it bang on, but in the end the machines stayed together for the whole song except the very last part which we dropped in."

The danger lies in changing tape machines half way through. Don't.

In which we use the knife

"I think the real secret of good extended mixes is editing, and again, you need a separate quarter inch for that. Except for repairing breaks or giving songs clean beginnings and endings, splicing a cassette is like trying to fix the spider to the web."

Torch Song's original hit, 'Prepare to Energise' began life as a test tape for the band's new Brenell mini-eight recorder. To trouble-shoot each channel on set-up, William filled every track with its own constant sequence. As levels jumped in and out during playback while the machine ran through its paces, the test transmission took on an unsuspected dance potential. So Torch Song went back, spun in choruses, took out sections, improvised against them, edited, and arrived at a 12in single.

If there's a first law of remixes it's that an edit is greater than the sum of the notes on either side of the splice. "You can join two examples of the same piece of music together, and if they've been mixed at separate times then the way the dynamics will change from one to the other is amazing. It's a good way of manufacturing dynamics, especially with sequencers which can sound as if they're just going on and on. Certain things should stay the same, like the bass drum, hi-hat rhythm and bass line, but on top of that everything can change dramatically.

"If your mix feels it needs something at a certain point; if it feels it's building to a chorus which isn't there, or a chorus jumps out of the blue, you can manufacture that moment, stick something in there, splice the bridge in."

In which we eq the new

"On the Portastudio you might be sharing tracks — the lead vocal and synth solo dropped into different points on the same track. But when you come to mix that down you could have real problems as the right eq setting for the vocal might screw up the synth solo, and if they're right on top of each other, you don't have time to change.

"With editing you can stop the tape, set up for the synth solo eq in your own time and run that. Then cut them together on the quarter inch and spin them back in. You also don't risk erasing something accidentally by dropping in for the solo and lopping off the end of the vocals. You can leave yourself a two bar space and splice it out later."

In which we think ahead

You don't have to rely just on the material within the song 'proper'. If you've mapped out your next hit demo to be three minutes long, and, as in 90 per cent of cases, you're using a drum machine, encourage the rhythm device to run for another three minutes after the song is finished. You're in the flow, but the pressure's off so you can start taking risks. There at the end of each complete number is loads of stuff to edit, spin in, use as a middle eight or attach as an intro/outro. Obvious, when you think on it.

In which we choose our sides

"What are people making these mixes for?

"When you're sending a demo to a record company you cannot have long-winded intros because the guy might have gone on to the next tape by the time your vocals come in. But if that's not the criterion, you could make the intro more exciting, building it up, keeping people guessing by introducing hints of the music before it arrives. Or run the verses without the vocals, pushing up the instruments that were there at the time.

"You could try to get your remixes played at a club. If you are doing that there are certain parameters you wouldn't normally consider. Clubs are about dancing and so are your remixes. The bass drum has to be really clear, tight and short or the sound system will make it sound very rumbly.

"For drums, keep the patterns simple and don't throw in extra beats for the sake of it. You could put complicated timbale beats with all sorts of patterns and burlesques on top, but they only work if the underlying thing is very simple.

"The way music is heard in a club and the way it's heard over the radio are completely different, you cannot use the same mix for both applications.

"Good remixes can be a case of laying traps for people. Putting in a sound hook, or a drum hook, using it only once so people will wait for it. If you want to see how remixes work, buy a single that fits both criteria — a 7in mix being played on the radio, and a 12in mix being played at the clubs — then compare them.

In which we choose our weapons

THE ECHO. "You can make the edits more interesting by running them through delays, especially at multiples of the beat speed. For instance, 120 beats per minute is a common speed for most dance music, so that means delay line speeds of 60ms, 120ms, 240ms and 480ms will be on the beat. But if you then start working in thirds, like 360ms, you can echo across the beat and play some good games. But be careful of hard panning the echo and drums left and right. If the ear only hears one side of the rhythm it will be thrown off. Especially on headphones. There's nothing worse than a sound that comes from one side only, all the time."

THE REVERB. "If you've got a spring reverb, try eq-ing-out the bass from the signal that goes to it — reverbed bass can sound very muddy. The human ear can't distinguish between too many bass things at the same time. Also, if you have a spare track on which to record your effects, and you have a fixed delay spring, you can get a brighter sound by slowing down the tape recorder as you do the bounce, then on playback, at the proper speed, the reverb time will come back shorter. You trade tracks... either a complicated instrumentation, or a few instruments and go to town on the effects. There's never any excuse for ending up with empty tracks.

THE DRUM MACHINE. "To get that short, tight bass drum, you could try gating it, or raising the pitch, but if neither of those options are open to you, try this. Programme the drum machine as normal, then run the tape recorder at a slower speed, and slow down the drum machine to match. When the tape is played at its normal speed, the tempo will be fine, but all the sounds are now clipped and tight, if you own an eight track, the bass drum should definitely have a track of its own. If it's a four track, maybe try the bass and bass drum together.

THE REVERSAL OF REELS. "It's very easy to flip the tape over on a Portastudio and get backwards sounds or effects, like reversed reverb. But be careful as tracks 1 to 4 become tracks 4 to 1 and you might accidentally erase something you no longer recognise. I always write the backwards numbers on the track listing as well as the forwards ones. Everybody's tried backwards stuff lately, and it is becoming a bit of a cliché.

THE START. How many times have you come to fill up the tracks on your Portastudio and realised no one had remembered to put down a count-in on the original take? Your prayers are answered. "Turn the tape over just past the beginning and you do a backwards count, clapping with your hands into a mike. Keep on going past the 'start' of the track, and record the clapping. Turn the tape back, and there's your downbeat intro."

THE REASON. "The remix should draw something from the original version that passed everyone by the first time round — and it's about dancing."