How to mix?

[willmorton 0]

Hi All

 

I been DJing bedroom-wise for some time now, and am ok with vinyl and CDs, but have recently discovered MP3 mixing and my interest in DJing has been boosted by this. I've always done this from a dance music background - all the music being beatmatched creating a seamless night of music, be it house, trance, whatever. However, I'm now considering actually trying to get into mobile DJing, and get bookings at parties etc. However - this is something I know nothing about... how do you go about forming a set with tracks that aren't traditionally 'beatmatch-able'?

 

I mean, doing a 20th Wedding Anniversary for instance, where most of the folk are likely to be in their 40s and 50s, a house set is just going to be completely wrong. So, say for instance the hosts have asked for Rolling Stones and bands like that - how do you transition from one track to the next? Do you do any kind of speed/pitch-manipulation, or even crossfading? Or is it generally better to cut from one track to the next with a swift crossfade between decks? Are there any rules/tips for how to 'shape' the night's music?

 

I'm completely at a loss as where to begin with this - if anyone can offer me any advice, or point me in the direction of a book or website I can get more information from, I would be most grateful! Many thanks!

[Paul Smith 0]

QUOTE (Willmorton)

point me in the direction of a book or website I can get more information from,

 

You've found the website (don't know about the book) http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/Welcome.gif to DJU

 

The way I work at a mixed age function is to play sets of between 2 - 4 songs of a particular genre and a set would either all be at around the same tempo or slightly speed the bpm with each track (or slow it down). If I was going from a fast set into a slow one then I would break the transition by saying something on the mic.

[DJ Marky Marc 0]

there are no best ways or rules.. you just learn to make it happen and make it feel right...

 

best thing to do is go watch other DJs playing this kind of function. listen to what they do..

 

listen to what sounds good and more importantly listen to what sounds bad and why... because you will learn more from the mistakes...

[Andy Westcott 0]

Don't be too stuck on beat mixing - I've never found it necessary for the kind of mixed age functions I do. I can beat mix to a degree, but generally choose not to.

 

Far better to just fade one in as the old fades out - this itself isn't as straightforward as it might seem, as there is a bit of skill involved in making sure you don't overlap the music too much creating a muddle, but also ensuring you don't leave a noticable gap. A bit of mic fill on a tricky one can help smooth the transition.

 

As regards oldies specifically, too many people know the songs too well, and any speed change would get noticed. I'd say mix only the kind of music with electronically generated percussion produced with this in mind. http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/smile.gif

[RobbieD 0]

Mr Smith (5 Star) sums it up well.

 

Most importantly I choose the next song as the song that will go down best, not the one that will beat mix best. But if they can be mixed with no more than a plus or minus 4-5% pitch change on either deck (or both ie 8-10% total difference) then I will beat mix them. (This is where Master Tempo / Key Adjust - speed change but no pitch variation - modes come in useful.) At a typical mixed age group function this means that around 50-70% of my transitions will be beat mixed.

 

The other thing is that on tracks with "real" drummers BPM's vary considerably - meaning that beat mixing is no longer a case of matching the tempos by setting the pitch control once. Instead these tracks require constant riding of the pitch through the mix to keep the tracks in time.

 

To get a feel for this try a running mix from any current house track into Edwin Stars "Contact". To keep the tracks synced together for the 1 min and 35 seconds up to the vocal (you can tell I mix this a lot!) takes constant tapping of the pitch bend buttons. (When the hand claps come in, after the first share hit, the tempo suddenly increases by about 10 BPM!)

[tonyj 0]

QUOTE (willmorton @ Oct 4 2006, 10:39 AM)

I mean, doing a 20th Wedding Anniversary for instance, where most of the folk are likely to be in their 40s and 50s, a house set is just going to be completely wrong.

hi and welcome.

 

be careful of your assumptions, people in there 40's now will have been in there late 20's and early 30's during the old school house era of the late 80's early 90's and you'll proberbly find they will respond better than todays youngsters to house music.

[Gary 0]

Firstly - Welcome to DJs United http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/042.gif - and thanks for a really interesting first post.

 

As already mentioned, theres no hard and fast rules about mixing - I think thats one of the main appeals of manual mixing...knowing in your own mind that the mix that you perform between Track A and Track B, most definately WONT be exactly the same as DJ X and DJ Y when they doubleclick [Automix-this] on their system. What system of mp3 playback are you using by the way?

 

I like to mix at any type of function - but normally nothing more than 20~30 seconds - maybe a bit longer for bog-standard clubby type tunes - expecially if they're nice'n'easy instrumentals with no words getting in the way of a long mix.

 

The same as said above, I too will pick the next track to play on how it will be received by the audience rather than "is it a compatable BPM?" or "Are its keys in harmony?" etc,etc.

 

With mobile "favourites" often having wonderfully varied beginnings, rather than 16 beat intros etc, straight-forward mixing out of each tunes Intrumental Breakdown into intro, breakdown to intro, breakdown to intro etc...just isnt possible.

 

Add to this the factor that many older songs, such as 1950's / 60's etc had that rare commodity, known as a real human drummer, you also have the fun of the tracks BPM wavering ever so slightly as the track progresses.

 

I'll often set up a seamless loop at the point of the tracks that I want to mix from and to, meaning that I've got two definitive, solid pieces of track to work with for beat mixing. Alternatively I'll sometimes loop the track I'm mixing -from- and play the intro of the new song over the top.

 

Also, St st .... st st ...... st st st st st st stuttering the next track in can be a workable mix too. Filtering the old track out - eg: removing clashing basslines/drums, whilst leaving workable vocals in place.

 

A simple 3 second crossfade will often suffice too.

 

Perhaps in conclusion - Anything that isnt a silent gap is pretty much passable though.

 

Once again, http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/Welcome.gif to DJs United.

[willmorton 0]

Fantastic advice guys, many thanks to all of you!

 

I'm using the Hercules Mk2 DJ Console with Virtual DJ that came bundled with it. It's a fantastic tool - I'm very impressed with it's auto-beatmatching system... having this taken away from you has given me more time to think about the position of the mix and song placement, which was what made me think about mobile DJs that deal with day in day out - spending more time thinking about flow and changing the direction of a set, rather than worry about the technicalities of beatmatching. I set Virtual DJ to use pitch rather than timestretching for it's beatmaching though - I wasn't convinced the timestretch was 100% smooth. Fantastic piece of software though!

 

I'm certainly going to follow up on this. I'm going to a fairly big engagement party in a couple of weeks so will pay a lot more attention to what the DJ is doing, and I've started to organise my music collection to cope with more than just dance music :)

 

Once again thanks!

[SnakeyEyes 0]

a good place to learn how to mix together pop songs is to go to one of those really bad nightclubs (wont mention any brand names) where there seem to be a lot of underage people and they play a lot of chart pop stuff....see how their djs do it. Or ask a scouser, all the scousers i know are masters at mixing cheese lol

[Jimbo55 0]

You will find that some fat funky house mixes will go down well with a 40 to 50 year old age group. Some of the tracks will have samples and or remixes from the 70's 80's and 90's. Most of the Funky House that has charted will go down well.

try these

 

Body Rockers - I Like The Way

Studio B - I See Girls

Dan Hartman - Relight my fire

Max Graham V's yes - Owner of a lonely heart (nice long intro to play with)

 

Mr Mole is one of our resident Funky House experts. He may point you in the right direction if you bow to him nicely http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/notworthy.gif

 

Jimbo

[RJ de Vera 0]

Hi Will,

 

I too own a laptop with Hercules DJ Console and VDJ2 software and your right it’s an awesome piece of Hardware & software. Every Saturday night I blow all of my mates away with an hour set before the taxi arrives for the big night out. However this is too easy as I know what they want to hear.

Virtual DJ is really good 'Tutor' for getting people to a reasonable standard especially when your mixing music genres with a regular beat e.g. house:cense: and the beat matching also works well so you get the feeling of a good mix early on which is encouraging. However when you get to genres that go not have a really defined, regular beat e.g. Hip Hop, the beat lock does not always work and ends up playing the next track ridiculously slow or fast.

Personally I think you should use beat locking to get your ear trained then take the stabilisers of your bike and mix without beat locking as much as poss as its much more rewarding when you do a good mix and less likely to get your finger burnt when moving across to mixing on CD decks and eventually vinyl as I'm now doing.

 

As for playing older stuff and Radio edit pop tracks with short intros and outro I agree with everyone else that track selection with the audience in mind is more important than thinking "what does this mix with". A fade out, bit of vocal and fade in is usually enough to keep a 'Pop music crowd' happy (in my opinion).

 

:cense: Even though house has nice regular peaks and troths, that doesn't mean mixing house is easy! But when your a complete beginner I think this is the best genre to start with.

 

Hope I make sense and have not offended anyone with my first ever post!!! http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[lateandlive 0]

Firstly, let me add my welcome to the post....Welcome!

 

As far as getting gigs goes, i'm in it purely for the enjoyment. As much as i'd love to get into club DJ'ing, I really can't mix to save my life (as much as i'd like to think I can)! Some of the other guys would be better telling you about residencies and the like.

 

Getting gigs on the mobile circuit, however, is really a question of spreading the word. When I started, my first gig was to help a friend who had no DJ for her 18th. Following that we put a free ad on yell.com and are still waiting for replies from it! Any gigs we've done have come from word of mouth from either that original party or from people who are friends of friends of friends. One of those distant mates had a party at a local club, and they now use us for all their functions. Another had a friend doing a charity party once or twice a year, and they now use us for all theirs.

 

Just taken our New Year booking for 2006/7 from a contact my uncle had.

 

It all very much depends if you can get a residency and then want to do mobile gigs as a sideline, or if you're going to take the bulk of your money from mobile really....

[shakermaker 0]

I personally find that if I am playing the type of music that can be mixed togeather (ie Dance) then I will do my best to mix it in. I don't find it hard and I don't class myself as a good mixer. There are loads of tips and most of them have been said above such as cutting the bass out when you are going into the next track etc.

 

I find that the easiest way to try and make it seamless when doing everything else is to use the mic etc...You don't always have to start a track from the very beginning either to make this work.

 

For example : Imagine you are playing say Bryan Adams 'Summer of 69'...This track fades out. It's an ideal situation where you can talk over the mic while the next track starts coming in. I find that something like Bon Jovi 'You give love a bad name' has a long synth/strings intro as it builds up and then there is a snare drum roll so I cue it up to the point of the snare drum roll and bring it in that way. I find it keeps everything constant with no gaps. I try to do this on a lot of stuff too. It's always worth checking out.

 

Another example is the original mix of Barry White's 'My First My Last My Everything'....This has quite a long intro where he talks over the beginning. I remember once I picked a compilation that I hadn't used before and found it and as I was running out of time rapidly (a punter was talking to me) I just banged it in the CD player without listening to it. All my other versions are the ones that go straight into the song but on this occasion it was the longer version with the intro. Some people only know the shorter version so didn't recognise it and went to walk off when suddenly the main part came in and they all came back!!

[C.S 0]

good way to start mixing is with 2 copies of the same track and see if you can get them to run simultaneously. Then try and find a break (a space in the song where there is only drums or no vocals ) and see if you can bring in the 2nd song over the top of the first without it sounding out of time. mixing takes time to learn and practice makes perfect!

[Disco24-7 0]

I remember Greg Wilson many moons a go doing the 'skill' listed below on the TV prog' The Tube...phasing!

 

Anyway, chopping the tempo, slowing down, speeding up? Use you voice to cover obvious changes and remember to use tracks that have a gentle start or a 'voice over' start to mask a change in speed. You'll find quite a few in all types of genre's.

 

Oh, I did a wedding for mostly 30 somethings a while back and all they wanted was house music...and was told under no circumstances to play rock and roll? Yes, apart from a few classics, that genre has well and truly come off the rails...Hoots mon! (sic).

 

good way to start mixing is with 2 copies of the same track and see if you can get them to run simultaneously. Then try and find a break (a space in the song where there is only drums or no vocals ) and see if you can bring in the 2nd song over the top of the first without it sounding out of time. mixing takes time to learn and practice makes perfect!

 

[Andy Westcott 0]

"good way to start mixing is with 2 copies of the same track and see if you can get them to run simultaneously."

 

Spot on.

That's how I started my sister off, and is so much easier than trying to mix completely different songs.

[DJmoonie 0]

As I've said in other threads, beatmatching is only one of a number of tools in your armoury as a DJ. Don't forget the rest.

 

Beatmatching with the same two tunes can be a good way to learn, but it also causes some issues. Identical tracks that are matched together and *just* out of sync, cause a wierd 'wooshing' effect, which if you can pull it off, is in itself a cool sound.

 

Personally, I'd just get some tracks with decently long intro's and just jump in there.

[Andy Westcott 0]

"cause a wierd 'wooshing' effect"

 

It does! It creates a phasing type of sound, and by dragging one deck or the other you can vary the frequency of the effect.

 

Very cool, but you do tie up two decks doing it.....