Let me see you spin some hip hop/r n’ b/rap
I am really getting fairly good (By my standards) at spinning dubstep, house and electronic music in general. However when it comes to hip hop, rnb or rap I kinda suck. Basically I can make a few songs sound good but the majority of what I try pretty much sucks. Can someone show me either themselves or a youtube video of mixing some newer songs cuz I’m finding it really hard to progress in that area.
im the exact same. i think electronic music is alot easier to get to grips with especailly when its all what ive been spinning all my life. yea i can make a few hip hop songs mix alright but for me to do a decent mixing set of it would be pure crap. would also like to see a video as i think its a common problem with the hip hop illiterate lol
Im at work and have youtube blocked but there are some decent vids up on how to do this. I agree “mixing” EDM is MUCH easier than hip hop. Mostly because of the long intros and roughly the bpm are all pretty close. Here are few tips.
BPM’s — slowly go up in BPM’s through out your set. It’s pretty tough to jump all over the place. With hip-hop I normally stick to +/- 2 bpm difference between songs and slowly work myself up.
You have to count beats/bars. When downloading songs from dj pools most of them come with an 8 bar intro. A bunch of hip hop songs don’t have your standard intro’s making it hard to mix in. So count your beats during the chorus so you can bring the next song and kill the first one at the right time (I’ll describe that in a bit).
Transitioning between songs in hip-hop happens much faster than EDM. I normally transition between 4-8 beats.
How-To.
If your song has an intro give yourself lets say 8 beats. (some songs may have a 16 intro that sound great and can’t be broken in half). I don’t know off the top of my head how many beats/bars are in all my songs, so I count them on the fly. During the first chorus of my playing song I’ll count. Lets say I count 16. I now know where the 8 beat lands and when I need to press play on my incoming song. I usually will do it on beat 9 so that the incoming song has one beat on its own before the song kicks in. So as the next chorus starts I’m counting (while my incoming song is cued). On number 9, I kill the bass of the song that’s playing and hit play on the next song. Bring up of volume a tad if I need to…and at when I have about 4 beats to go, I start to bring the volume down on my first track and then kill it right on time. The next beat should start with the incoming song. (I’ll try to get you a video of this)
other times songs have something you can sample a few times. For example 50 cent P.I.M.P. has a 4 beat little jingle intro. I’ll sample that a few times, then hit play, lower the volume on the other song and kill it. Trying to do this in time with when the chorus ends.
loops. Other times you may just have to get creative with loops, cutting songs on beats, etc. but for me the more traditional and smoothest sounding way is to count beats.
Pretty much what haze has said, but here’s a free tool to help you out with those BPM’s.
http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmanalyzer/bpmanalyzer.asp
Great little tool, all you have to do is join their database and I don’t think I’ve ever received an email from them. Maybe I didn’t use the right one… Anyhow, used this for years. Sometimes gets a bit confused with the slow ones, but you just half what ever the BPM is.
Instrumental intros that you can loop are your friend, and custom edits are gold. If you have both the instrumental and full version of a tune, make your own intro edit and you’re sorted. Also you can try digging up the sample source and doing something clever with that, for example:
drake - best I ever had
Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds - Fallin’ In Love
pitbull - you know I want you
Nicola Fasano - 75, brazil street
warp into a steady grid in ableton live if necessary, mix the original tune in and then at an opportune moment slam in the hiphop track.
I’m not claiming to be great or anything but here is part of a hip hop mix in traktor I did
https://soundcloud.com/djstreetfighta/spring-demo-hiphop-mix-pt-2
I play hip-hop/r’nb/top 40 every thursday, just to make some cash. The first few weeks i was horrible, i kept trying to mix like i was playing electronic music. But after a few weeks i started using more loops at the beginning and end of songs, and doing short mixes; and the occasional slam mix. And now i’ve gotten pretty good at it. Plus it gives me more time for little flare tricks, like scratching, flippin’ doubles, and fx. It’s really fun to get up there and just have fun fucking around, not having to worry about a prefect mix and transitions.
I’ll try to remember to shoot a video tomorrow night, and i throw it up here so you can see what i’m talking about.
This is how you should mix with hip hop and rap music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCA4yiPfFIg&feature=player_embedded#!
hah!
^^^^ hahahhaha. You killed’em
here’s a guy getting pretty creative with loops.
Great advice Haze…counting your bars and beats is key. In hip hop I find that it’s all about timing just like in EDM, but that timeline is really quick.
Here is a vid of Vice using loops, cuepoints and acapellas for mixing HipHop. He uses serato but this can be done using Traktor as well.