Any tips on mixing chill out and ambient

Hi,
sometimes i like to play some chill out and ambient tunes
but find it kind a hard to mix them.
Anyone has some good tips for mixing Chill out and ambient.

Cheers
Lao Ma

I can suggest you this:
Let the tracks breath. That means that you should play the track until the end ( not necessarily from the beggining) so your transitions wont be to crowded. Since you're probably playing at a slow BPM I suggest also to avoid longer transitions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ginno

I can suggest you this:
Let the tracks breath. That means that you should play the track until the end ( not necessarily from the beggining) so your transitions wont be to crowded. Since you're probably playing at a slow BPM I suggest also to avoid longer transitions.

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Okay,that's a start i can work with.
Thanks!

Try order your playlist by bpm - then see if there are any tracks that actually mix together - the rest fades/fx transitions will do.

Ambient and chill mixes are best done with subtle mood shifts and creating interesting key shifts. I would consider varying BPM through your mix. Mood is king here.

An ambient mix? I would've thought an iTunes playlist would suffice.
As for Chill out, I use harmonic mixing quite a lot, and employ a mixture of blends and 'EQ switches'. I'll rarely do a full frequency spectrum slam from one tune to another as it's too jarring. I find you can quite easily employ 4 or 8 beat loops quite successfully with this kind of stuff if there's no intro/outros. Although my definition of chill out might extend out into hiphop and general beats more than for most peeps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lethal_pizzle

An ambient mix? I would've thought an iTunes playlist would suffice

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^^LOL.

Don't be in a hurry. Pay attention to key. Drink a bottle of wine while you're mixing.

Do play lots of ambient and down tempo. I use a combination of mixing styles. Depending on the tracks they can be short or long mixes. Another thing I use alot are recordings of nature, city scapes and sound FX. So for instance, if one of the tracks I'm playing has forest or jungle noise mixed into it, I'll add to that with more of the same allowing me to fade the music but keep the atmosphere and build upon it. Also, vocal quotes and spoken word are always fun to mix in. The trick with a qood ambient downtempo set is to try to keep the flow and also take your audience somewhere "relaxing". If you've got people in the "chillroom" at a party, they're probably there for a reason so it's your job to get them comfy and relaxed and then slowly build things up to get them back to the party. :) Or just really mess with their heads.

Thank you all,
will try some of your tips!
Peace
Lao Ma

mixing in key is key lol :D also breakdown to breakdown works well... take a section without drums or percussion's and have the intro of another one creep in.