Steinhardt Freshman Changes the Sound of Music

By Jennifer Zwiebel

It all started when James DeVito, a freshman in the Steinhardt School’s Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, was listening to a CD in high school. He was trying to figure out how to play the bass line of a song. Then he wondered if there was a way for the average person to remix music by lowering the vocals or changing the drum loops. That’s when the idea for UmixIt was born.

DeVito brought the concept to an executive producer at Columbia Records, Don DeVito—his father.

At first, Don rejected it, saying that artists might be reluctant to share access of multi-tracks in a song. But then the elder DeVito told some musicians about the idea. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler was the first to go along with it.

“Steven Tyler said he’d heard his songs the same way a million times and wanted to hear them differently,” says James, a music technology major.

Last September, James ran a contest where Tyler picked the three best remixes off Aerosmith’s You Gotta Move (Columbia) album, as mixed/created by the general public. Then Intel’s CEO, Craig Barrett, used UmixIt during his keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES 2005) and replaced Tyler’s lyrics with his own in Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” USA Today, Forbes, and the Hollywood Reporter all picked up the news and wrote about James’s invention.

Currently a patent for UmixIt is pending, and the technology is available to the public through a collaboration between Webster Hall Records and Enterprise Goldenhawk, James’s personal venture and hundreds of tracks can be mixed.

UmixIt has turned into a full-time job for James’ sister, Marissa DeVito, a graduate of Ithaca Collage who studied entertainment business and is managing the project. “We’re trying to appeal to more artists to try UmixIt,” she says.

Meanwhile, James is staying focused on studying and playing bass in his band, Stab the Matador, which he describes as alternative dance rock, and mixing music, of cours