How long does it take you to plan, practice, and record a mix?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

How long does it take you to plan, practice, and record a mix?

I was just asked to do 15 minute mix by a DJ friend of mine who wants to send it to this local promotional agency sort of thing, mainly EDM. This means in 15 minutes i need to show off a bunch of genres, at my best mixing, etc. I’m going from House to Dubstep to DnB to Hip-Hop/Rap to Moombah, so a lot planning is sort of required

I’ve been working on it everyday for about 4 days now, and am just now finishing up finalizing the tracklist, and will soon begin the process of planning each transition, making revisions here and there, practicing, and then finally recording. Hell I’ll spend 30 minutes to an hour just trying to find the perfect mix between 2 songs.

He messages me today like, are you done yet, and I told him that I am only just about to finish track planning, he was sort of surprised I wasn’t finished yet, and it always takes me this long to make a mix. I thought as I got better i would be quicker at it, but as I get better I only get more creative with it, so the time it takes hasn’t changed much at all haha..

So, 4 days of mixing, a couple hours each day, only just now finishing up a tracklist.
Am I just really slow? Or is this just the time it takes to create a solid, good sounding mix.

2

It should take you 15 minutes lol. That’s my school of thought. I don’t pre plan mixes, except for what songs I’m going to use.

3

Exactly, spend a minute or two looking for a song to start with, but from there I’m just going off instinct and experience. As long as you have you’re shit organized you should be good to go.

4

no no no, not live mixing. This is like a promo sort of thing, I don’t know. If i’m live mixing, I usually go by what people are liking, keep it harmonic, etc.

But i’m talking actually recording and making it sound as good as possible, like flexing all mixing skills i’ve got.

5

Don’t know what to tell you man. I’d just mix the way you would mix live. You’re misrepresenting yourself if you don’t.

6

Try mixing for like an hour or two and then pick your favorite 15 minutes and send it to them.

7

In that case I tracklist everything and maybe make some little bootlegs to make stuff work better.

8

mmm… I think you’re missing my point entirely. I have 15 minutes, only 15 minutes, to give them an idea of what I tend to spin, and how well I can do that. I kind of get what you’re saying, but I don’t think perfecting transitions/really putting a lot of thought into a mix is “misrepresenting” myself.

I think what i’m trying to ask is, am I simply taking the time to create something of quality, or do i need to stop being indecisive and get on with my life. What also is causing me to take so long I think is how fast my library grows especially in EDM, and I have so many songs to choose from and can never decide.

9

It’s just an unrealistic thing to ask… You’ll never play a 15 minute set.

I could see, if I really thought about it, how it might take me a half day.

10

That is how I make pall my promos and weekly mixes

11

Why not just shorten the time period between each song?

Surely, if they are not willing to listen to a promotional mix longer than 15 minutes, they are looking for a more “Commercial DJ” than hardcore?

12

Im in the same boat as you. I play multiple genres of music from chillout, glitch hop, dubstep, electronica, indie, house, breakbeat, tech house, progressive,techno, minimal, DnB (thats my first love), electro, hard house/hardcore.

I got asked recently if I have any promo mixes to show off and I didnt really have answer, since most of my mixes are usually only one or two genres, and those tend to compliment each other i.e. techno and breakbeat, DnB and Dubstep or Chillout and Electronica.

I started thinking about how I could best present myself to people in terms of promos. I recently got Ableton live to help with my producing side, and was thinking about making 15 or 30 minute mini mixes with the aforementioned genres.

This would give me an edge with different promoters, such as, if I wanted to play at a coffee shop I could hand them an Indie/Electronica/Chillout mix. If I wanted to play at an EDM friendly club, I could hand them a Techno, Tech House, Progressive mix. For a more hardcore rave crowd, I could hand them a DnB/Dubstep/Hardcore mix.

Perhaps making a mega mix about an hour long showcasing all the genres I play as well.

The way I was thinking was to make a 5 min mix live with each genre, with my best mixing all done on the fly. After ive recorded a few of these, I could go into Ableton, string them together, add the tempo automation if needed, EQ, Limit, etc.

Thats one route, and while some may find it “misrepresenting”, I think its the best way to get noticed.

13

Unless you are just putting down a blistering amount of music, the way a ton of chicago house dj’s would tend to drop a new track every 45 seconds, I don’t know how 15 minutes is long enough for an EDM type demo. I think maybe if you have routine that you are currently using, play a track, mix into the routine, mix out of the routine and close, that is about all the time you have. You might even want to start at the breakdown on the first track to save some time.
I would probably put it together in a session, then start mixing that playlist until it is tight either later that day or the next day. So probably no more than 4 hours of effort from start to finish.

14

I would listen to the radio one mini mixes to get some insperation, heres some of my faves

awsome also proves calvin harris plays hip hop, just not shit hop

oh and my fave dj ever YODAAAA

gotta put cable in there as he is local

15

I think it’s unrealistic of the promoters to ask you to do a 15 minute mix. You can easily scrub through an hour mix to listen to transitions, song choice etc.

16

The only time I’ve done a mix this short for “promo” was when a VJ mate asked for one - so we could do a video promo. Even then, all I did was pick the tunes I wanted to play (5, in 10 minutes), run through a couple of times finding reasonable mix points, set cuepoints on the CDJs (this was before I was using Traktor) so it could work - and then bang it out.

I ended up doing it twice, because the first one had a cock-up I just couldn’t pass on.

If I was doing the kind of thing you’re doing, I’d probably do it in a DAW rather than live. Because if the mix wasn’t representative of the way I actually play, then I wouldn’t constrain myself to actually playing it.

And the reality is I’d not do a 15 minute mix as a promo, unless there’s a real good reason. I’m never gonna play a 15 minute set, as someone else has already said …

17

I honestly think you are over thinking it wayyyyyy too much. I can make a fairly banging mix in 30 mins, with about 10 or so tracks in there easily. You can fit a fair number of tracks if you mix correctly.

Choose from a pool of tracks and mix with a little bit of ADD and you are set.

Sometimes I screw up and I have to remix the set, but its actually even better cause I know my transition points better. So I say like 30 mins of picking tracks, 15 mins of actual LIVE mixing, and give yourself another 15 mins in case you screw it up a couple times. So in total an hour to make a perfect 15 min mix.

18

15 minutes is not enough time to show off what you want to show off. If I were doing his job and got a 15 minute mix as a submission, the guy wouldn’t get hired…period.

But, then, I’m not that promo company.

15 minutes is still complete bullshit for what you want to do.

I’d record an hour mix or however long it takes to show off what you want to show off and then cut out everything that isn’t absolutely essential in a DAW. If they or anyone complains that its cheating…I’d say 15 minutes is selling myself short and that I don’t care……but I probably wouldn’t bother anyway. If they only want 15 minutes, either I’ll get it off my facebook, twitter, and mixcloud pages or I won’t (almost certainly the later).

19

Dude almost any promoter on earth will probably only listen to a mix for about 15-30 mins MAX. They have no attention span to listen to any further then that. Asking them to sit for an hour out of their time when they have lord knows how many submissions is just dj masturbation.

An hour long mix is REALLY long to show what you have. You don’t need to take them on a journey cause the guy doesn’t care about the journey. He cares can you mix and what songs are you dropping. In chicago almost every promoter I asked to play with asked for 30 min MAX mix.

You need to show whoever the person listening to it your style right away, move through some signature tracks that make you who you are. If you hook them enough either they will book or listen to another mix.

I dunno maybe I take it from a promoter side, but I promoted in addition to DJing in Chicago and I know there, where its goddamn cut-throat, you need to be noticed anyway you can. Just to get them to press the play button is big enough.

20

Exactly, so the way I feel is; shit I have 15 minutes to impress the hell out of whoever it that’s going to listen to this

Well, it’s already sort of my style to not spend very much time in one track haha. I got effects and samples, but I hate the feeling of not doing anything.

Yeah, I keep asking what EXACTLY they wanna hear, because i play all around EDM. And they could even say Dubstep and I wouldn’t know if they want Skrillex, or Kromestar, I’d gladly play either one, but they are such different things. they could say Electro, and I’d still not know what they want.

They keep saying just like edm, or electronca (in the respect of “electronic music”). So I got 15 minutes to cram like 6 genres in.

Yeah I’m dropping a new track every 30-45 seconds in this mix. I just keep getting indecisive.

I got the message she didn’t want a jounrey when they said 15 minutes, so I think I’m just gonna choose the loudest bangers i can and hope these promoters are trying to get at this hyper-aggressive rave crowd of today.

Yeah I live in a pretty small town, not many DJ’s, but at the same time not much of a scene.

Eh, I guess i’ll work this out eventually…