mixing electronic music

[djxsquizet]

having trouble here.

as you guys no I am a hip hop dj and I barely dabble in electronic that much.

So I just got mixed in key and I was doing some harmonic mixing everything sounded great. I did not know where to bring the incoming track in. Like say after the breakdown on track A do I bring in track b. and do I just let track A finish or should I just wait a lil then take it out.

for some odd reason hip hop seems alot easier to mix lol

[FrederiklaMode]

Depends most of the time I like to play the track out. Dj's often release club remixes (dont radio edits!), and they have intro's and outro's where the songs is pretty minimalistic and easy to mix.

[Sunshine]

Depends most of the time I like to play the track out. Dj's often release club remixes (dont radio edits!), and they have intro's and outro's where the songs is pretty minimalistic and easy to mix.

Very well said! Playing with traktor, I'm finding that to avoid a discordant mix, it helps to find a minimal area on one track. In traktor, I find the visual sound waves very helpful and it's quite possible to mix without headphones just by coming into a track where the sound waves start to look flat or where there's an obvious pattern that can blend well with another track.

[FrederiklaMode]

Yep, the thing is that the most people want the melody to build (just like a journey), starting with some notes of melody but mostly not all of them.

When you suddenly come out of breakdown A and release the full melody of B, although, it could sound good when you use the same keys etc. it sounds more like a dropping/switching faders technique, . But not all songs are build for it , sometimes they go from percussion/kick to full melody. Also when I mix my type of music I find that it's nice to add a vocal into the third track and mixing with that, because when you only have got the percussion/kick you want something for building it up

Having all this said... what kind of electronic music are you trying to mix? I'm noticing that electro-house is more difficult to mix in then trance or minimal. It has more distinctive melodies and rhythm's and it's more difficult to get from deck A->B unnoticable. Most trance song have long snares and long chords so they blend easily as long its the same key.
As for minimal, it's also easy to mix because of the "minimal"-ness, less notes means more compatible

[tekki]

It's also nice if you kill conflicting frequencies.

Bass/Low kill can be used, as these have a nasty habit of eating frequencies from the other.

It always helps if you gradually switch the bass from one record to the other, when transitioning from one record to the other.

[darrel855]

having trouble here.

as you guys no I am a hip hop dj and I barely dabble in electronic that much.

So I just got mixed in key and I was doing some harmonic mixing everything sounded great. I did not know where to bring the incoming track in. Like say after the breakdown on track A do I bring in track b. and do I just let track A finish or should I just wait a lil then take it out.

for some odd reason hip hop seems alot easier to mix lol

Play it like you would hip hop . The only difference I find is I sync to snares with hip hop and kick with electronic music .

[DvlsAdvct]

The simple answer, to me, is just mix it so the rhythm is always present. Even if you're just smashing the fader left and right as long as the kick drum doesn't stop you'll probably be okay, if you're dabbling.

The more complicated answer is to utilize EQ fades (not just kills, as this can really ruin some of the build ups, depending on the songs) and overlap drum patterns and rely on snare drums to build up your energy.

As much as electronic music is painfully repetitive, there are so many different techniques you could use to mix two songs together there really is no easy answer :-)

[tekki]

EQ fades lead to kills right?

[DvlsAdvct]

well, yes Tekki, they CAN. But usually I won't completely kill the bass on a track because the incoming track might not have a bass line yet. Hence fades. If the outgoing song has a good, catchy bass line whereas the incoming song does not, then I won't kill it. And I won't always just hit the kill switch, I'll fade it down to nothing. Stop trying to one up me, dammit ;-)

[tekki]

Viva Mario...

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