A Challenge I find in mixing is knowing the exact point to cut the live track and have the cued come in, and being able to do this bars and bar in advance. I usually try to start the next track 16 or 32 bars into the played one, and allow the structures to compliment one other. Otherwise, I’ll just play whatever bar loop for the cued track, and drop the 1 of the cued onto the finale of a verse or build up of the track playing (hip hop type club - dancy mix context). But without the help of my software flag points, sometimes I miss the point where both should sync and everyone here knows what I’m talking about.
People always say “don’t rely on the software, you should be able to do with by ear etc”. Just wondering if there are some mixing techniques or helpers that I’m missing. Thanks!
Try to keep count in your head while practicing and it’ll start to just become 2nd nature, after a while, to follow the structure of the beats, bars and phrases.
I’m gonna go off the beaten path here so far, and could get flamed to hell for it, but here’s my bit on it.
I will agree, know your tracks, especially your “secret weapons.” This is true for a variety of reasons, not just for this particular topic. For a lot of people, routine practice will get you there no problem.
I have a Top-40 residency at a small nightclub around the area, and frequently end up pulling the newest stuff from my record pool a few days in advance of the gig. This means I don’t usually have a lot of time to commit tracks to heart. What I typically do is prep each track something like this:
Cue point 1 at the best mix-in point.
Cue point 2 at the first drop
Cue point 3 at the breakdown after first drop
Cue point 4 at the second drop
I then put in Cue point 8 at the natural mix-out point of the track. With tracks prepped this way, it’s a matter of mixing Cue 1 of the new track on Cue 8 of the old track, giving you a seamless mix.
Hoping I won’t incite a riot here with this laptop-centered blasphemy
While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a little bit of a “paint by numbers” way of doing it. Since it’s top 40 it’s makes way more sense to do that but with non pop electronic music, it’s always more interesting to hear a DJ mixing 2-4 tracks for long periods of time and going with “feeling” and intuition. Sometimes this leads to complications like a perceptible drop in energy but that doesn’t out-weigh the feeling of a good DJ really “workin’ it” and doing things on the fly. It feels much less static and stale to me. Just IMHO
Most tracks have a natural in- and out-point, but doing your own edits is a cool way of making it easier for you. Until the official “extended club remix” is released a bit of tune-chopping and Acid Pro-knowledge have made my day several times… What software do you use Cook? Ableton?
yup ableton, ive always generally got my buildups coming in after 3 sets of 16 and going into the drop at 4th set, Edited all my tracks like that for about a year now, never f’d a mix up since
know your tracks, but…If you realize that you dropped your new cue too early or too late. You can just 4 bar loop the new or old track, for one bar, just get em back on track.
