18 tracks in an hour

[MrPatrickDenny]

He was just asking for some help. There's absolutely no need to respond in a derogatory manner like that. It's not even like this is a thread you see often here...

10-20 tracks is pretty standard for an hour long mix of the genres you're mixing. Best bet is to start mixing with your 18 tracks in mind and then adjust based on how it's going.

Thanks.

[hola amigos]

I make house and soulful house mixes and my sets include like 9 or 10 and sometimes max 11.I usually make my sets for 1 hour and not more than that maybe one song less 55 mins is ok .But ı believe 18 songs in an hour is too much mixing in ? I believe in the sets rather than live you can choose the sounds and play it on the last 32 or 16 beats.I do it that way especially on soulful house ı go with 32 beats and then the other song starts.

So you start track A at the beginning, then once it reaches 32 beats, then you push play on track B from the beginning and let that play to 32 beats, then load up another track from the beginning and start another song once that reaches 32 beats? I just tried that method, its a new type of mixing i never had experienced.

[Maven]

Most of the time something new happens in every 8 or 16bar so you can try to figure out which songs you want to let it play and which songs you want to mix in halfway etc.

[hola amigos]

Yeah but its hard for me to find the "breakdown" or any other transitioning spot by ears. So i have the feature that tells me what bar I'm on. And i just watch till it gets up to 32 bars and then i push play on my other track from the beginning.

Pretty much trying to find the most common bar to start a new track on to transition smoothly I've listened to mixes and watched videos but none are hitting the question, what bar should i start my other track on. Im starting each of my new tracks from the beginning. Once the track hits 32 bars, i turn down the "Lo" and plus play on track B. then let that track take the more dominant role.

[Maven]

Well breakdowns are usually the part where the tracks lose its kicks, so its only like pads, simply the melody etc. The soft and smooth part lol. If you are using traktor its the part where the waveform is thinner than usual unless they compressed the shit out of everything and it looks like a straight waveform lol

[hola amigos]

Can you tell by looking at the waveform that its a breakdown? whats the best spot to mix out of and into a new track? The end of a track? The first breakdown 32 bars or later like 54 bars or 64 bars?
Like when the waveform is all like this

Pretty busy in the song.


Then is this considered the breakdown when the waveform looks flat?

[backtothefront]

Haha, that's what I thought.

Anyways, for me the magic number seems to be 13 tracks per hour. Somehow I always end up with that. I play mostly deep and tech house and some techno, though. Might be quite different with an ADHD genre like electro house.

Great post, well summed up for me.

[backtothefront]

Can you tell by looking at the waveform that its a breakdown? whats the best spot to mix out of and into a new track? The end of a track? The first breakdown 32 bars or later like 54 bars or 64 bars?
Like when the waveform is all like this

Pretty busy in the song.


Then is this considered the breakdown when the waveform looks flat?

You need to zoom out on your waveforms, it's very evident when there is a breakdown generally. Also most dance music (club mixes as opposed to radio mixes) will follow a 32 beats or 8 bars pattern change, although this is not a rule and there is likely other musical elements will be change at 16 beats/4 bars but the drum programming will almost certainly be based on 8 bars. Working to this principle 'most' mixes will 'sound' natural in terms of timing. It's difficult to explain in words but it is a fundamental ability required of a DJ to understand where he is in a track at any one point, with practice it should be second nature and you should be able to do this with even previously unheard tracks, any dance music really. In fact any one who listens to 4/4 based music (whether a DJ or not) has the ability to anticipate change within the track i.e. breakdowns, percussion changes, key change etc. I'm rambling now...

[lethal_pizzle]

Good rule of thumb is that quite a lot of house music takes about 4 x 32 blocks of music (or phrases, if you will) until everything kicks in. This you will probably want to mix in over the last 128 beats of the previous tune. At 128bpm this will take a minute or so. With 18 tracks, you have 17 transitions, so you'll spend 17 minutes in the mix. If each track is 5 minutes long, your mix will be 90-17=73 minutes long or so. If you do any quick mixing, your mix will be shorter etc. So total up the length of your tracks with Calc and knock 17 minutes off.

[photojojo]

I play lots of deep stuff and will get 18-25 tracks in 2 hour sets. I don't play any electro. When I play deep sets I usually play about 95% of the song, but at least 50% of that song is usually being mixed with either the next song, samples from previous songs or both. I don't count and I usually don't watch the beat counter, but I do start stuff in phrase.