Advanced DJ (mixing) techniques

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Advanced DJ (mixing) techniques

Hi guys, this is my first thread on this forum.

I’ve ‘discovered’ Harmonic mixing, with the camelot wheel.
It helped me to make my sets more fluent and coherent etc, this was a few months ago so at the moment I’m searching for something new, something advanced, something which will help me adding that little extra to my (live) mixing performances and sets.

So please, if you have any remarques, tips, websites, ANYTHING which could help me please post them below, thanks in advance

Gérald

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I think that you’ve reached that level where you should start adding effects to your mix. What music do you play? Also analog or digital?

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Answer Stewe

Hi Stewe

I try to play music people of my age, which is 19, want to hear when they’re in a club or at parties.
Since electro house, deep house, house and trap are pretty big here in Belgium, I chose those genres to play.
I’ve been ‘experimenting’ with simple FX (flanger, reverb, delay, beatmash, …) before and came to the conclusion that it mostly doesn’t make that much of a difference to the crowd (few people actually gave me negative feedback saying I destroyed the song).
Although I cant’t say I’ve been doing more research involving adding FX…
I use NI’s traktor s4 at home and mostly pioneer CDJ2000 and DJM2000 at clubs.

Thanks alot for the response

Gérald

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Obviously FX is a good choice here as another string to your bow. Or, depending on what you are mixing on , things like adding another controller for vocals and loops. Maybe an F1 for live remixing.

Give us a little more info on what your current set-up is, and then you’ll really start to see some answers.

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loops and samples.

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next level would be scratching and Live remix. Check out Laidback Luke he incorporates some scratching and turntable tricks in his sets or your can go the live production route. Check out DJ Enferno. good luck

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+1 to this. What’s your setup?

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This over FX any day.

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It would help to know what kind of style/styles you play, as that can have a big impact on where to go next.

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I have to say i feel just like this ! I already know i want to go into samples and loops, but donna where to start from !

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+1

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I disagree, I think FX is the next step, then maybe scratching depending on the style of music and what controller he has - there are lots of DJs who think they can scratch and do the most horrible basic patterns over electronic music, only those with actual scratch talent can pull it off.

FX he can add to his set, live remixing then look into other aspects…no need to run, we are in a marathon of sound, not a sprint.

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I personally find it a lot tougher to mix Top40/Pop compared to Electro/Techno/House genre’s. Currently I save my ass by using the echo freeze alot, but I figure I won’t always be able to use my own gear so I need to figure out how to mix all-round without effects. Could someone point me into a general direction, as I can’t even seem to find Ellaskins tutorials going further in-depth than the standard cutting…

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FX > scratching if you’re mixing anything like house etc. Scratching is very genre dependent too IMO.

Laidback is a great DJ, but sometimes the stuff he’s mixing just sounds like garbled noise.

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First check your timing. Use some drum samples and practice until you make a constant beat.

Then play a track and try to keep beat going. When you master the tempo you’d be able to juggle samples and hotcues.

I was there but I picked the FX route first :wink:

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fine i get it some people aren’t fond of scratching… here some advance stuff… hot cue juggle, Key Play, Word Play. I guess i didn’t take into consideration peoples style, genre, and crowd. I always assume everyone wants to be a party rockin open format dj that loves to make people dance guess not :slight_smile: