The Art of the Mixtape

The mixtape, the dj set, the demo mix, whatever you want to call it is one of the dj's most powerful promotional tools in our arsenal. I'm always interested to hear the different approaches and techniques other dj's use to create their mixtapes as it seems to vary from person to person much the same as how dj's all have a unique approach to their live performance work. So I thought it would be fun to open up some discussion about the craft of creating a mixtape, I know this bunch will have plenty of opinions and knowledge about the subject.

Points of interest:
- the dos and don'ts of mixtapes
- personal approaches/techniques to creating mixtapes
- software & hardware used
- tips&tricks
- your favourite mixtapes by other djs

erm... as long as the mix is, is as long as it takes. might spend 20 mins putting a prep list together, but 9/10 times that gets changed or ignored. then if i like what i recorded i put it out, if not i delete it.

if/when i take another shot, the playlist ends up different again, so technically all my mixes are one take :D

yeah I probably should've added another option for "1 day or less" to the poll, oh well. either way the poll was just something i thought would be fun to tack on to give some scope as to how we all have different styles.

for the sake of discussion i'm more interested to hear about your guys' processes for creating a mix, lets get into the science of this thing, dissect the fuck out of it like a frog in a highschool biology class. i think there's a lot to learn from getting a feel for the different schools of thought on the subject.
:)

I usually spend a couple of evenings coming up with ideas, runnning some tracks together etc. We make cd length mixes so also have to do a timing run as well before the actual recording. Two recording runs and keep the best one. With the djtt progressive mix train we are working on atm i pretty much spent a whole afternoon laying down my 30 minutes section ;)

I usually bang tracks into an itunes playlist that I feel like listening to or new tracks I haven't used yet, organise them a bit in the sense of what would go into what loosely based on key but mostly on just flow and obviously compatibility then just mix that bitch up.

As brad said if it's good I'll up it and if not chuck it. I don't really bother with organising in/out cues or effects and just do whatever. Probably spend an hour all up to do a 30/40 min mix.

I also usually have a playlist in my library that I can chuck songs into when just listening during the day, I've got a habit of forgetting about shit once it's out of my 'recently added' and often find gems just in the library.

Not too much science here

it takes me 1:30hr...if I spend more than 2hr its no good. Once I think the mix is good and its time for pressing it, i dump it in mixmeister so I can track the cd, then I dump a mp3 copy in my iPhone and listen to it. I press about 20 copies on my cd duplicator and give it to my friends.

Points of interest:
- Please no airhorns or vuvuzelas
- just make the damn mix! Practice makes perfect!!!!
- Traktor/Ableton & MixMeister to track my mix on cd
- Have fun like the old man djing

for anything over an hr mix
it usually takes me a nite of choosing tracks I want to play.
get them all ready on the flash drive, putting them in order of play and laying down cue points. then its practice practice practice for about 2-3 days, then take about 2 days for recording / mixing down final product.

one of my fav mixtapes so far is Rusko - BBC1 xtra mix
SLAMMIN!

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Originally Posted by xbubbax

for anything over an hr mix
it usually takes me a nite of choosing tracks I want to play.
get them all ready on the flash drive, putting them in order of play and laying down cue points. then its practice practice practice for about 2-3 days, then take about 2 days for recording / mixing down final product.

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i'd be bored shitless of the mix by then

i guess im one of the few who get completely ocd about it ( like i do about a lot of things hahah). it used to be something that wouldn't take me much longer than a day or two, but the last couple of mixtape releases i've done took roughly 2-3 months from start to finish for a 2 hour set - mind you i don't work on it every day of those 2-3 months and a day is usually 2-6 hours work at the most. I'm working on a new one right now that's almost done, i've been working on it since the beginning of june.

the lions share of the time is creating the set structure and playlist. It takes about a day or two to create the basic structure or rough draft of the playlist. From there I start the long process of refining it to the final draft of the playlist. I start weeding out the weaker parts, and the challenge is finding other songs and variations to fill those gaps in the structure. This process of restructuring,refining and test driving the playlist takes about a month or two itself.

After the playlist is done then I start the easy part which is finalizing the plan for all my cue points, beatgrids, the fx i will use and write notes for each transition so I can remember for my recording. Do a couple test runs to make sure everythings tight, then it's time to record.

I record each transition/pairing of tracks one by one, multiple takes for each pairing so I can choose the recording that sounds best. Then I start cut&pasting all my pieces together in soundforge. When that's all done, there isn't much left to do but encode it to mp3 and upload.

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Originally Posted by duerr

i guess im one of the few who get completely ocd about it ( like i do about a lot of things hahah). it used to be something that wouldn't take me much longer than a day or two, but the last couple of mixtape releases i've done took roughly 2-3 months from start to finish for a 2 hour set - mind you i don't work on it every day of those 2-3 months and a day is usually 2-6 hours work at the most. I'm working on a new one right now that's almost done, i've been working on it since the beginning of june.

the lions share of the time is creating the set structure and playlist. It takes about a day or two to create the basic structure or rough draft of the playlist. From there I start the long process of refining it to the final draft of the playlist. I start weeding out the weaker parts, and the challenge is finding other songs and variations to fill those gaps in the structure. This process of restructuring,refining and test driving the playlist takes about a month or two itself.

After the playlist is done then I start the easy part which is planning all my cue points, beatgrids, the fx i will use and write notes for each transition so I can remember for my recording. Do a couple test runs to make sure everythings tight, then it's time to record.

I record each transition/pairing of tracks one by one, multiple takes for each pairing so I can choose the recording that sounds best. Then I start cut&pasting all my pieces together in soundforge. Then she's basically ready to go.

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imo, you can't do this live so why do it for a demo? i know the obvious reasons are to get it sounding it's best, but you wouldn't have nearly this kind of time to prep for a gig and wouldn't be able to work in this manner in a live setting.
also, if the promoter knew that you were cutting and pasting, it would make them question how good you really are. hell i used to purposely put a mild fuck up in a mix, to a) prove it was live and b) show that i can recover it and keep the flow up in spite of that happening.
harder to do that in traktor with sync turned on :p

I checked "2+ months" because I haven't recorded a single full-length mixtape since 2004 :o

(and because I love fucking up statistics)

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Originally Posted by BradCee

imo, you can't do this live so why do it for a demo?

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If someone's just doing a mixtape for friends I don't see a problem with it. For the record I don't cut and paste anything. :)

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Originally Posted by photojojo

If someone's just doing a mixtape for friends I don't see a problem with it. For the record I don't cut and paste anything. :)

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for the record i have no problem with people doing it, as long as you can back it up live

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Originally Posted by ctrld

I checked "2+ months" because I haven't recorded a single full-length mixtape since 2004 :o

(and because I love fucking up statistics)

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Did you record your beat battle winning set?

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Originally Posted by BradCee

imo, you can't do this live so why do it for a demo? i know the obvious reasons are to get it sounding it's best, but you wouldn't have nearly this kind of time to prep for a gig and wouldn't be able to work in this manner in a live setting.
also, if the promoter knew that you were cutting and pasting, it would make them question how good you really are. hell i used to purposely put a mild fuck up in a mix, to a) prove it was live and b) show that i can recover it and keep the flow up in spite of that happening.
harder to do that in traktor with sync turned on :p

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^ oh i don't pass it off as a demo, what i'd call it is more of a studio mix i suppose. i just figure if i'm doing a mix at home, why not go for the gusto and create a really polished product to the best of my ability. When i do that kind of mix the goal isn't to showcase my live performance ability.

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Originally Posted by duerr

^ oh i don't pass it off as a demo, what i'd call it is more of a studio mix i suppose. i just figure if i'm doing a mix at home, why not go for the gusto and create a really polished product to the best of my ability. When i do that kind of mix the goal isn't to showcase my live performance ability.

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i'll let you off then ;)

^lol and you're right beatgridding has kind of foiled the dead give away of a "bad dj" now that we don't have to beatmatch anymore. You can knock back quite a few barley pops and still sound fucking awesome at a show :D

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Originally Posted by photojojo

Did you record your beat battle winning set?

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nope. there's a video on youtube though. keep in mind that I made both sets from scratch in less than 2 days and didn't rehearse them at all, it's not even close to the standards I set for myself - but apparently it was enough to win. whatever, if you want to know useless details read the video description :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSiZ2Buc3HA

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Originally Posted by BradCee

i'd be bored shitless of the mix by then

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hahaa

i like my mixes to be on top.....so when i play out i can rip it up!

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Originally Posted by xbubbax

hahaa

i like my mixes to be on top.....so when i play out i can rip it up!

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maybe 10 years mix experience has made me lazy...? plus i like to be spontaneous. have a few 'routines' i'll practice. but for the most part i make it up as i go

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Originally Posted by BradCee

maybe 10 years mix experience has made me lazy...? plus i like to be spontaneous. have a few 'routines' i'll practice. but for the most part i make it up as i go

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+1

every DJ has a few blends that are guaranteed to work. but preparing a playlist? no. because in a live situation, it will be useless.

In the past I would set a playlist and redo an entire planned mix over and over until there were no timing/beatmatching mistakes, then overdub the EQ and level mistakes inside traktor (that was when you still could do that of course).
This however did not feel spontaneous one bit after the first attempt, which I dislike. So nowadays I just try to play for around 2 hours and keep the best hour.

Depends on alot of things i guess -

A intricate studio mix set is going to take longer than a A/B djing set

I can do a normal A->B mixing set in a day and come out with good results, studio sets can take much longer, easily a month or two if you wanted to go absolutely nuts on a really long mix. If i was going to do a studio set i could easily see myself taking about a month to complete it, doing little bits in my spare, shorter if i was really hammering away at it.

I'll usually spend a couple of evenings getting tracks into a list and mixing and matching them to get a feel for the overall flow. I'll then run the set through once or twice to iron out any parts I'm having difficulty with. Then I'll go ahead and record it, and barring any really major f@ck-ups, I'll keep it even if it has small mistakes. I've found through the years that the things I notice, no one else does. I'm good with the editing and have no ideological problem with doing it. After all, I play differently live than I do on a recording anyway. Live, I'm all about reading the crowd and improvising, and on a recording I like to go experimental and really create a story. (Most recordings I make aren't for getting gigs, for the promo stuff I keep it simple and bangin').

As for process, all of my audio goes through mastering plugs in Ableton, and is recorded into a clip slot. I'll take the final product, drop it down to 16 bits in an audio editor, normalize it, cut it into regions, name the regions and export as wav/aiff. Then burn with no pauses.

I'm not a fan of re-encoding mp3s, and since that's what I use for source I almost never deliver the final product as mp3. Lossless only.

... Sprinkle liberally with european beer.

I tend to have 2-3 mixes in various stage of done (by way of track selection) I'm always tempted to try and fit a 'themed sample' through the mix a la The Nextmen's Yoga Mix (featuring an odd 60s/70s Yoga lesson through it) or Personal Golf Instructions (featuring an old Arnold Palmer golf lesson)

It's the second bit that tends to prevent me completing enough mixes (though I do a fortnightly radio show that keeps me on my toes)

VDJ is my software of choice, and it auto saves a list of the tracks I use every session. If I have a night that particularly kills it, I go back the next day, take that saved playlist, run through it a few times to work out my transitions, then record it.