Is it more about beat matching or song selection?

[Zac Kyoti]

Don't forget about the good old fashioned radio-dj style fade. You don't have to trainwreck or rely on fx to make two very different tempos transition well - just work your levels and make it quick. Trainwreck= extended period of out of sync tempos. But quickly fading one tempo out (in the right section of the song) while dropping the first beat of the new track with full volume on the beat of the quickly fading track - that's a tried and true technique that is easy on the ears and can get you rolling onto any number of tempos. The key is the short fade, just think radio edit style.

[rvltion909]

lol i just dont like hardhouse as its like you have to be on drugs to enjoy it and well i dont do drugs xD hahaha...

I feel the same way about EDM in general. Cant stand the shit.


But seriously I cant get enough of the drugs though.

[djhipnotikk]

i think the bulk of importance should be placed on song selection. people come to dance to music, not transitions. the majority of the time they're dancing because they like the tune, if they preferred the transitions more wouldn't they only be dancing 30s-2min at a time? just a theory.

that said i am a fan of seamless transitions no matter what you're playing. there's always a way to get from one bpm the other. be creative!

[wrong chris]

Duerr,

This now sounds like the other thread The point the OP was making here, was how tune selection kept his crowd up, with other things coming secondary.

.

well yeah ofcourse the other things do come secondary to good track selection but I don't think they should be overshadowed by it.

We all know the truth is most the audience is not paying attention to the subtleties of dj technique, they're paying more attention to themselves and their friends dancing and having a good time to the music.. and that's cool i love it.

but if you want to be a real competitor I think it's important to treat the mixing technique with just as much care as you would with your track selection. In this day and age you need as much of a competitive edge a you can get, it as after all an increasingly over-saturated market.

DJs who play for general audiences get jobs, DJs who play for DJs get careers. Noones gonna pay out their butt to see DJ Trainwreck play at a stadium, but you can find him happily rocking crowds at top40 bars. pretty standard.

[kevinmcdonough]

yeah

have to agree with whats been said here, mixing and technique is important but its all about tune selection.

With the whole ressession thing, the club scene here has taken a bit of a beating and the majority of gigs i've been playing recently are in what we refer to as Student Clubs, where its just a huge mix of everything that is expected to be played. These days a lot of Hip Hop & R&B along with a good dose of whatever is in the charts, few guitar or indie numbers, couple of house or dance songs again whatever has been in the charts, and a pile of 70/80/90 cheese, so its all different BPS's, styles and feels throughout the night.

Within the night I always pay attention to the transitions, beatmatching where possible (and you do get some really good and impressed looks when you do some unusual beatmatch from two wildly different genres and pull it off) and using cuts or natural parts of the song to make relitivly smooth changes where possible.

But sometimes you can't help but just crossfade over and drop in the next tune as the last fades out, but quite often these can be some of the biggest drops. With beatmatching or other fancy mixing, there is a window of maybe 20 or 30 seconds where the song begins to come in and different people recognise it at different points. When you just fade over and drop something in that has an instantly recognisable first note and beat everyone clicks at once, there's kind of a reinforcing thing where their excitment infects other people and everyone lifts, and the cheer and bump in atmosphere you get can be huge.

Things like Yeah! by Usher or The Way I Are by Timbaland which are both a bit older now but still drop huge, or maybe Mr Brightside, or Sex on Fire or Fans if you're into guitar stuff, all have such unique first notes that everyone knows straight away. Or things like Want you back by Jackson 5 etc etc.

(lol yeah i know all you EDM guys will be shaking your heads but thats what i've been playing (and making good money! :P) recently so its whats in my head just now! I know there are also plenty of house and dance tracks where during the initial beat while your mixing some wee bass line or vocal sample will happen that has the same effect and everyone will click to the song at once and have a similar reaction )



k

[kowtipper]

wow very nice replies all. good to hear different opinions and thoughts. everyone, keep those dancefloors rockin.

[rdej47]

One thing that I think is really key is your energy level as the DJ. When you think about it the DJ completely changes the atmosphere of the place. Just by a DJ's presence people feel like this is going to be a unique party. It's that difference between just having an iPod to play music. Your presence as the DJ instantly elevates the status of a place/ or setting.

[cielomobile]

Lots of good insight here. Something else to keep in mind is that it's quite possible to have a clean mix between two tracks of entirely different tempos...and you don't always need to match the tempos of the two songs. You can find a break in a song without a clear beat and loop that, you can make a quick cut with a backspin or baby scratch, etc.

For example, say I'm playing "Make Her Say" by Kid Cudi, a hip hop track at like 90 bpm, and I want to bring in "Hot 'N Cold" by Katy Perry, which sits at 132 bpm. I might loop the first word of "Hot 'N Cold" ("you"), filter it, and bring it in at 90 bpm during the break after one of the verses in Make Her Say, slowly speeding both tracks up simultaneously while slowly unfiltering Hot N Cold. If I time it right, when the break of Make Her Say ends, I will have sped up the track to Hot N Cold's tempo and pretty much completely unfiltered it. Then I can end the loop and quickly cut over to Make Her Say, maybe with a scratch or backspin or something if it feels right. All with the VCI-100 by the way.

That technique has the advantage of creating a clean mix and capitalizing on the crowd's epic reaction to that first word, "you", which is very recognizable! I've used this with Hot N Cold before and it works wonders. People go crazy! And you can do similar things with pretty much any track the crowd knows really well.

So you see, you don't have to sacrifice clean mixes for playing tracks the crowd wants to hear!