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Would like to hear any interesting tips for mixing top-40 and requests with traktor fx, besides echo-freeze. I started mixing house and trance back in 2000 and stopped for a bit in 2007, came back and now have a gig where I have to play top-40 and heavy requests (I dont like playing this way!) have crazy bpm jumps depending on what people want to hear (and this changes dramatically each week)
Any help would be great
I play nothign but open format. When you say Top 40 what you mean by that. Hip Hop or Calvin Harris?
If you are worried about BPM jumps, I'll jump around most of the night but in segments. So lets say I just play 6-7 "dance" tracks (think Calvin Harris, Pitbull, LMFAO), I'll use a transition track to get me to a hip hop that will bring my BPM's from 128 down to 95ish, and then I'll play a few hip hop songs and reggea songs working my BPM's back to the 120's range. Then I'll work my way back down as the night slows down a bit. I'll never go BPM - 128 to 100 to 117 to 95 to 126, etc.
Mixing hip hop and lots of mainstream dance music all have 8 bar chorus or 8 bar segemnts you can mix thru. For hip hop, tracks with edited intros are you friend.
The way I do it is through sensible mixing. If it doesn't make sense, don't do it and work your way to it. If it's only a 10-15 BPM jump, it's easy to get to by gradually slowing down your music throughout the song. Then just do that over the course of another song or two. VOIALA. You've now gone from one track to another to the one they requested fairly easily. If I'm playing 115+ and need/want to go to upper 80's or lower 90's, I might keep going for a little bit to the point where an open format/commercial crowd would get bored with what I'm doing... with those crowds, it usually ends up in 30-60 minute rotations. Then I might scratch it and slam it in.
well when i say top 40 i mean across the board from rock, hiphop, radio stuff kinda everything
yes i have many into tracks, but its not really a dance spot..people want me to just play their song next so 128 to 75 to 93 to whatever, they do not care or listen to mixes (i hate it but it pays good) I just want it to sound cleaner. I know how to mix as I have been doing for 10 years and started in the vinyl days, but this is different.
also its a four hour gig!
4 hours of top 40? You will have to play some lesser known stuff, and I pity your ears, but I think you should be able to get by if you find a good "ladder" of songs to get bpm down and back up.
thx guys for the tips
Transition songs are my best friend's :P but if your finding the long hours of top40 difficult, just have say a hour and half - 2 hour set, that you just rinse and repeat, Cause in your kinda club where Top40 is bieng played your going to get a high turnover of people :)
Transition songs? come on man, you guys are supposed to be DJ's. Thats a poser way of doing it.
To the OP, just a couple things I want to mention, if you're used to tempo matching and blending everything then you got to remember that blending in that way is only one way of transitioning as a DJ. In fact thats only one way of blending in general. Work on other creative ways of transitioning and you'll free yourself of being stuck in the same BPM range. The second thing is, the longer you stay in a certain bpm range, the more any change of tempo sounds ackward, and the more songs begin to lose feeling because staying in the same tempo for too long, makes that tempo become boring to a general dancefloor (hope I used the right words to explain that last one well enough to understand). Being able to change tempos and genres is your friend.
This is why I started the thread manchild, u mind in actually explaining or giving any tips on transitions NON-bpm matched- as this is what I have donly done for years.Quote:
Originally Posted by manchild