Long blends of broken beat music, can it be done and how ?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Long blends of broken beat music, can it be done and how ?

Because I mainly play dubstep I’ve come across a few broken beat 140 BPM tunes and usually I could handle it if I wanted to mix with it.

But for this next particular mix I want to do it’s just long blend after long blend. It’s one of the most minimal and deep mixes I’ve done.

But can it be done a long blend with a broken beat tune ?
How have you handled it if you had a broken beat tune and wanted a longer lasting mix ?

Example:

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I don’t understand the question; if you want a longer lasting mix, just mix for a longer time? The track is 4/4 and should mix just fine with anything else in a similar tempo. The drum patterns might conflict, so be careful what you mix it with, but this should go great with some deep dubstep with similar patterns. Cool track btw! (I’ve just never understood why this kind of stuff was called “broken beat” when the beat really isn’t that broken at all.)

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This track might sound four to the floor at first (maybe I chose a bad example) but actually the track in the first post goes like this:

Kick-Kick longer than normal pause Kick-snare

so 2 rapid succesion hits - pause 2 rapid succesion hits

This is what four to the floor at 140 sounds like:

This is perhaps a better example of 140 BPM broken beat dubstep:

And like you said “The drum patterns might conflict” isn’t this with all broken beat ? How is a long lasting mix done with this ? Is it even done at all ? That’s what I want to know.

And usually with broken beat songs the drum patterns are all different so you can’t really lay them on top of each other like you would normally do for a nice long blend.

You might have something like this:

Kick-----Kick-Kick-----Snare
Kick-Kick-----Kick-----Snare

There’s hundreds of combinations, almost all songs are unique.

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altho it isn’t ‘4 to the floor’ beats, it is in 4/4 time signature. think that is what djproben was sayin :wink:

i reckon offset/broken beats are the best to mix, lots of possibilities to make something interesting from them. if they don’t mix well together tho, you could probs do some quick crossfader cutting with another track to get a custom beat going.

this guy extends the mixing time between tracks using quick cuts:

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I’ve got a dubstep routine and have used those exact 2 songs together, eventually it goes into some Flux P. :expressionless: Creepy

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Yep, exactly. Unless you play straight up house, a lot of music isn’t really 4 on the floor; broken beat really isn’t that much more challenging than hip-hop or breaks or dubstep from that perspective. Some mixes will work and some won’t; you just have to try things out and give a good listen.

[quote=“MyUsername”]
And like you said “The drum patterns might conflict” isn’t this with all broken beat ? How is a long lasting mix done with this ? Is it even done at all ? That’s what I want to know.

And usually with broken beat songs the drum patterns are all different so you can’t really lay them on top of each other like you would normally do for a nice long blend.

You might have something like this:

Kick-----Kick-Kick-----Snare
Kick-Kick-----Kick-----Snare

There’s hundreds of combinations, almost all songs are unique.
[/quote]Yep; that’s why you gotta listen and try things out first. It’s actually not that difficult; turns out a lot of the combinations follow similar patterns, and if that’s the type of music you spin a lot of your ears will eventually pick it up so you’ll know which combinations work without thinking about it.

That’s why I was confused when I first heard the name of the genre. I remember buying a couple records labeled “broken beat” maybe 15 years ago in a long-gone dnb store (Beat Non Stop in LA). I took it home thinking I was gonna hear some seriously glitched-out experimental stuff, think Ugly Mac Beer or Merzbow or some of Negativland’s weirder stuff, and was pretty surprised that it was totally something danceable, heh…

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Have you tried mixing using the eq to cut conflicting drums out as much as possible. I find it works best with highs if there is no vocal, if there is a vocal cutting the lows so it doesn’t muffle the mids and highs. Some times I cut one range while bring in another, sometimes i use the eq in place of the line faders to a large degree then use the volume faders to cut it the rest of the way out.

I mostly play drum and bass, the things that pop up that don’t work most often is either a song has a sampled beat that needs tweaking to keep it from clashing, or the hi hats don’t work together, dropping ranges with the eq makes it possible to mix more smoothly.