I got my roots DJ'ing progressive house at a time when CDJ's had just been introduced, but Vinyl was still the industry standard, so beatmatching and riding the pitch were essential.
At the time, I used to think any kind of electronic music was the hardest to mix. With progressive it was usually about having the most subtle, cleanest sounding mixes which usually meant you were riding the pitch fader for a long time.
One day I met a guy who DJ'ed hip hop and R&B and he told me that Urban music was the hardest since you usually don't get a predictable 4/4 time signature. Even urban songs with similar BPM's have different types of breakbeats, or half beats, etc. The other factor was that you often don't get a 8 bar intro with just the beat as you would in a lot of progressive songs. While I could relate to what he was saying, I really didn't think it was that hard until I successfully made the switch from "electronic" music to "commercial" music.
These days, we might have the "sync" in Traktor, but I still think it's harder because you still don't get the intro (although I subscribe to an MP3 pool that creates songs with intros) and there's a lot of overlapping melodies, so it really helps to be familiar with the music or even the key.
A lot of electronic music with 4/4 time signatures tend to be very minimal, or "rhythmic" rather, so it's easy to cross-genre mix between progressive, techno, tech-house, funky house etc. I remember going to friends places and having them pull out record crates saying "this is the techno, and this is the house" and even though I wasn't familiar with the tracks, I could throw them all together. The more minimal, the better. For eg 4 deck mixing is a lot easier with minimal electronic genre's then hip hop, where I think it's virtually impossible. The first time I DJ'd drum n bass at a friends place, I was amazed with how easy it was, especially once I got the counts down.
With popular music, it was like I had to learn to DJ all over again.
Anyone have a similar experience?
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