Mixing Techniques

[Haze]

Sorry for the newbie-ness of the reply haha, but "45 button"

the 45 revolutions per minute button on your turntable. speeds up the deck alot but if you use keylock the pitch stays the same. i hit it by accident last weekend during and found a wicked way to switch to much faster tempos. fuckin cheesy but it works haha.

[fusion]

Ahh right,
thanks very much for your reply!

fusion

[wikkid1]

i realize that this is a somewhat dated thread, but i think my question best fits here, aside from creating a whole new thread that is

ive seen quite a few articles/threads/how-to's/etc regarding mixing house music, and from what i can recall the ones that went into eq'ing during the mix all strongly suggested that bassline on the two tracks should be switched on the first beat of a phrase. to me that sounds somewhat strange when the whole objective is to achieve a smooth mix instead of just slamming from a to b.

and whenever im mixing i pretty much always gradually bring up the bass on the incoming track until its almost audible enough to clash with the outgoing tracks' bassline, at that point ill drop the outgoing bass to a point where the track doesnt become totally flat, but neither is the bass all up front, and gradually bring in the incoming bassline...

that to me sounds like a smoother mix, or am i just being silly with this? how do you guys deal with basslines during transitions?

[sine143]

It depends. Are you keymatching? What type of eq are you using (4 band, 3 band). The reason I personally dont let basslines play out together, is because kick bass (75 hz range) is a surefire proof of mismatched beatmatching. Also, given the wide variety of kicks in electronic music today, layering kicks makes a big mess.
If you are introducing a bassline in a break, you can totally introduce that over the top of the current track. The basic rule for me is to never have 2 kick lines running at the same time (I'll eq one down to about nothing). bass is a scary thing on a big system, and its easy to tell when things are off when you are playing on a big system.

[Jester]

bring the bass up on the second track to about -40% before smoothly swapping the basslines and highs over 3 minutes, prog style

[Villinus]

Great thread. Learning lots here guys! I'd contribute, but I'm still somewhat of a noob.

If I may ask, is it safe to say that mixing Top 40 songs is a bit more choppy? With more cuts and juggles between songs vs house/dubstep/d&B where you do more mixing of the beat before the song actually kicks in?

Any suggested techniques here?

[wikkid1]

@sine143
i do not keymatch, at least not with the aid of any software, i do pre-listen though to see if tracks work together. i use a 3band eq, the classic one, i messed around with the 4band eq, but i simply had no need for 2 separate mid knobs, i have better uses for them extra knobs

@jester
thats pretty much how it works out, gradually bringing it in, i do drop the outgoing by like 20% or so before i start bringing the next one in

@Villinus
yeah i think top40 would be more choppy slammy type of mixing, i think id also dump dubstep into the same category (not top40, choppy slammy i mean :P) cuz pretty much every dubstep mix i heard they dont really do long transitions, maybe 15-30sec.

[Jester]

I would suggest work on say 3 different methods, that way not only does you mixing improve, also you have a couple of extra "tricks" up your sleeve

[djmoonie]

i realize that this is a somewhat dated thread, but i think my question best fits here, aside from creating a whole new thread that is

ive seen quite a few articles/threads/how-to's/etc regarding mixing house music, and from what i can recall the ones that went into eq'ing during the mix all strongly suggested that bassline on the two tracks should be switched on the first beat of a phrase. to me that sounds somewhat strange when the whole objective is to achieve a smooth mix instead of just slamming from a to b.

Nothing wrong with smooth transitions, but remember thats just one of many ways to get a mix across.

I think the point about getting the bass to hit on the first down beat of the phrase is more that you dont want it becoming audible on the 2-4th as it will sound out of phase.

I'll often slam bass from say -100% to -30% on the 1st down beat, so it becomes audible, then softly mix out the bass on the other deck whilst bringing this track up from -30% to 0db. So you dont get the bass becoming audible part way through the measure, but its still smooth.