Transition from 130 bpm (EDM) to 60-80 bpm (hip hop)...how do YOU do it?

[GI Trackt]

Wasup my fellow dj gurus. Drop some knowledge on me please! Just wondering how to transition from electronic music to hip hop. Any ideas or advice?

I'm guessing you would stop the first song while adding sort of effect such as turntable FX (brake) / echo / reverb...and then drop the new tune in...

Thanks!

[Cook]

Echo freeze

[GI Trackt]

Awesome hoodless. Sorry for the rookie question, but what do you mean by freeze? Stopping the track right? thanks for the quick reply.

[azunderg]

edm - 130 bpm / hip-hop = 65

[manchild]

edm - 130 bpm / hip-hop = 65

yea thats what I was gonna say if you still wanted blend. Either beatmatch or x2 the bpm and sync

[GI Trackt]

cool cool thanks i'll fix that up top

[manchild]

Awesome hoodless. Sorry for the rookie question, but what do you mean by freeze? Stopping the track right? thanks for the quick reply.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w18hImPt8U

[GI Trackt]

haha Manchild you rock. Good looking out! Thanks for sharing that.

[3heads]

60 to 80 sounds damn slow, even for hip-hop. Should be more like 85 to 100, I would say (which renders the 130 = 2*65 solution impossible)

[Frank112916]

A few ways:
1) Slam it in on the 1. Slow your beat down to something that is less than a 10 or 15% difference between that beat and the hiphop beat and then just drop the hip hop beat on the 1. Easy peazy. You need to slow your beat down very slowly so it's not noticeable. What I did once was I was playing some EDM track, and slowly started to drop the tempo while I played a loop. As I dropped the tempo I would cut the loop length to keep the illusion of a similar not-to-dissonant tempo (you want key-lock on!) then I had the loop length cut to 1/4th or 1/8th. In the background I was also dropping the ratat remix of Party & BS by biggie. Let the intro build than cut the EDM track on the vocal/beat drop right on the 1 (Sync was on! I don't have 6 arms!). The party went nuts chanting my name as I was doing this and then went even crazier when the beat dropped. The point is you HAVE to create a buildup and a lot of tension. There is no subtle way to change tempos so drastically, so if it's going to be obvious, you want to make it REALLY OBVIOUS so people know to get excited about the transition and drop if you want to even attempt to mix the tracks.

2) Echofreeze, let it sit for a few second (typically you want to do this at the end of a vocal section) and then drop the new beat on the 1. Kinda boring and can seriously kill a vibe if the party is dancing and all of a sudden they just hear an echo freeze out, then a new beat. This I'd only do if I have to.

3) Make a transition in a DAW or buy one. Typically (I'll assume you are playing top 40, otherwise I can't understand the transition from EDM to hip-hop. It seriously makes very little sense in any other situation.) you can drop a vocal loop (something that gives the feeling of energy: Fatman scoop or some other person yelling something the crowd can do a "call and response" to is good) and continually slow that down with the beat. You do a sliding tempo-range that will slow the beat down to the desired speed. For example - Anthem Kingz has a transition where they continue to slow the beat down from some dutch house beat and eventually they slow the beat down considerably with Fatman scoop yelling "if you love hip hop make noise." It gets the crowd hyped. It builds tension, and you notice the beat is slowing down but you know there is a reason! You're telling the crowd you are going to drop some phat hip-hop track right after this guy stops yelling so they better be ready to dance. Vocal tracks are a good way to mask - but also make more obvious at the same time - large tempo transitions. By obvious I mean you know it's coming, by mask I mean - your brain doesn't care because it seems natural.

And that whole 130-65 bpm just sounds...really bad... not to hate, but 65 bpm is SERIOUSLY slow. I don't even know any hip hop track I'd want to dance and party to that is slower than 80 bpm and even that is stretching the lower boundary of tempos for a party/club event(black and yellow comes to mind). I like to stay in the 95-101 bpm range for hip hop party music.