Poorly Mixed Drum and Bass

[bigheadmikelove]

My first attempt with the record button on in TPro, Nothing fancy (loops, chained FX, mixing skill) and I messed up at the end and pushed the cup button on the playing deck at the end. Also, it was made at a pretty low volume on some terrible speakers with no cue channel used (my sound card keeps on BSOD in Win 7) anyway here's the tracklist lemme know what you think

Drum and Bass mix

Tracklist:
Rockwell - Underpass
Spor - Overdue
Commix - Be True
Break - People are Different
Rockwell - Shards
S.P.Y. - System Crash
Kama - Tears of Jah
BCee and Lomax - Dust Till Dawn
CLS and Wax - Broken
Ultima C - Side By Side
Filibration - Behind It
Ultima C - Seven Days

[murtis]

never heard of ultima c til today

[Flash101uk]

To be fair mate, its not bad at all. Your phrase and key matching are spot on. The EQ is good, consistent and a decent song choice too. What kind of setup are you running? Manual beatmatching?

Anyway, my comments.

Be True > people are different works really nice but the break track needed more punch &/ gain. The vocal hook works really well over the top too, although i think a delay echo would work better than dropping it out quickly, it looses energy.

Dust Till Dawn > Broken, nice bass switch, it worked well and kept the energy. You should try and fit in more of this type of mixing.

side by side, nice tasteful beatmasher usage, not over-done

Filibration - Behind It, im not sure this sat very well between those 2 ultima C songs. Theyre just too different.

The rest of the mixes worked very well.

Overall the main thing you need to work on is your self confidence, and presenting your mix in an appealing way. Not too many people are gonna bother with 'poorly mixed drum & bass'. Give the next one a catchy name

[murtis]

id suggest a mixcloud account too. its wayyy better.

[Flash101uk]

id suggest a mixcloud account too. its wayyy better.

why not use both!?

[murtis]

why not use both!?

could do that. personally i always have problems with soundcloud like waiting for a waveform to load., and the integrated playlists and other stuff makes mixcloud better for me.

[Citizen_Insane]

Good mix man! Gonna agree with Flash that the Fillibration track didn't really seem to fit, also that you should be more confident in your abilities.
What with all these drum & bass mixes popping up, I'll have to record one this weekend, none of the ones I've listened to have had dark and crazy stuff

[bigheadmikelove]

I appreciate the response, as far as my setup I'm using the sync button, no manual beatmatching for me and I'm running a bcd3000 and a kontrol x1. As far as the effects, actually you are hearing the beatslicer with the buzz off rather than the beatmasher. I've just had more luck with it. On to the comments on the mixes.

when I listen to the "be true" > "people are different" mix I just hear something that is almost too busy. As far as getting more "punch" through the mix, I think it might be a limitation of my speaker setup, and it also might clean up the busy-ness of the sound to me. What would you suggest to get it sounding better?

The Filibration track (and the ultima c stuff for that matter) doesn't fit the mix, when I listened to it earlier it almost seemed like a "hey it's jump up time!" sort of moment. They got put in because they were new (to me at least) and really this was a fuck around type of mix.

Again, glad you liked the mix. Thanks for the vote of confidence, I was kinda being snarky, I'll be a bit more positive next time. And possibly put some forethought into making the whole thing (and that delay echo thing sounds like something I should work on)

[bigheadmikelove]

never heard of ultima c til today

To be fair neither had I, I was just playing around on Beatport, played a clip of side by side and the wife started gyrating slightly and made noises to the effect of enjoyment so I had to spend a buck fourtynine... It's not terrible, but it's not really my thing either. Thanks for listening to it

[Flash101uk]

As far as getting more "punch" through the mix, I think it might be a limitation of my speaker setup

Your speaker setup shouldnt matter, youre recording internally in traktor so what you get back from the recording is straight from source.

To get that particular mix sounding better i'd add some more gain to the incoming track so it can take over the mids a bit more and support the outgoing one with the new bassline. That or boost the bass a bit.

if you want a bit more guidance i recommend this article on digital DJ tips:

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2010/09...ake-a-mixtape/

Its a bit long winded but probably the most in-depth way of making a really nice mix.

Keep your eye on this blog too, theres some great articles on there