How do you switch it up?
I want to hear from the rest of you out there about what techniques you use to switch up genres and tempos that are at a distant range. You know, when your programing (by that I mean improvised song selection for the crowd) rises, and then breaks, pauses, changes to break your set into different sections.
So you’re not just beat matching one record right after another and stuck in one genre/BPM range for the night.
Thanks
The possibilities are endless, sometimes crossfading will sound good, others i end the slow track with an effect. Make a cool loop and then pitch it up or if your really aggressive just spin the platter backwards and cut over, just play around really, you’ll easily hear what’s working or not :]
This all depends on the medium you use to play as well.
Analog (Two turntables a mixer and a Microphone) all the above techniques work great.
Digital, you can use the above techniques or plan out/manufacture transitions that you could keep as a tool set for disposal. Be it a loop you have slowly tempo up, effect, record a Brittney spears CD skipping that you tun into a break loop.
As stated above the possibilities are endless
You could use effects that are not linked to a tempo to manipulate the track until it losses its beat/rhythm completely before dropping your track with the different tempo - i would use this for going down tempo mainly to try not to lose too much energy.
Alternatively you could use effects linked to tempo, turn your effects up so the song does not sound recognisable and ramp the master tempo up to the desired amount so the effects ramp up in time with the tempo creating lots of energy before you play your next track.
Obviously if its half the tempo you could run it in half time and cross fade over as your leisure.
Mix into some spacey pads where the tempo is hard/impossible to pick up.
CueJuggle/Mix into some acapellas.
Scratch the track a little and quickly cross fade into it.
Experimentation is the key, different techniques will work for different songs/styles.
if you are going up in tempo quite abit, try cueing up the incoming track at the climax, and just cut into it at the climax of both tracks… it will depend…
a trick i used to use with vinyl and going up in tempo was to beatmatch the 2 tracks, start the blend and cut the power on the outgoing while bringing the incoming back to 0%. pretty cool effect.
for drops in tempo, use beatless breaks. let them roll until the old tempo isnt in their mind and then bring in the slower track.
for genres, mix percussion lines.
I love it when a really good DJ can raise the energy in a room by lowering the tempo - create some tension, lose the beat, wait… wait.. wait… then drop a large break or bassline at the new tempo.
It’s all about how long you can keep teasing people with that tension. I always bottle too early.
limey: wait until you cant take it anymore and then give it an extra 4 measures.
master seamlessly changing tempos through the night and you will have total control over a crowd. To really effectively do this you may want to have a few helpful tools built in advance that help you make the transition. Otherwise a big echo fill into nothing and the dropping a new tempo works nicely. sudden BPM changes freak out djs but they can work really well if done right.
Can you give an example..? 
sure,
i had have one that remixes a hip hop song over a big break beat and then slowly slows the song down to the original tempo of the hip hop track. I Use that to play a few songs at 70 bpm then double it up to 140 and boom- big energy jump.
Ah I see I see. I wasn’t sure what you were referring to when you meant tools, like effects or something else. Thanks!
I think this, and other tempo transitions would make a great blog article.
Ian,
Have you ever thought about taping yourself at one of your gigs and then making a video-montage of your song transitions? I think it would be a great way for people to see some of the things you are talking about. Dubbing over the clips with commentary would be absolutely helpful to many many people!
Yeah, that is a great idea Constant!
i like dropping in loops via MLR/40h that are half or double the speed of the currently playing song.
That’d be cool but at the same time I almost don’t want to know that much in a sense…know what I mean?
At the same time I spend a lot of time listening to mixes and figuring out the transitions.
More knowledge…more power!!!