I’ve started making a christmas mixtape just for fun, but the selection I have ranges almost too much in style and bpm to make things fit, so I was wondering if any of you could recomment a good app to make mixtapes in. This is just for fun and for my family, so anything is cool.
I tried a few times in Traktor with my VCI-100SE and parts work fine, some not..
I’ve been looking at MixMesiter and been wondering about trying Ableton, but I’m not particularely good in any of these so was wondering what you think. Maybe even Acid would suit my needs for this task? How is it making mixes that change tempo in any of these apps?
MixMeister is alright. Back before i even knew about traktor i had a copy of it and made some really terrible mixes on it. Looking back on it now i realised that it’s probably very good at making mixtapes.
Changing tempo on MixMeister is pretty straight forward. You can just type in the tempo values you want on which ever part of the timeline you want. Then the tempo just changes to these values as the mix plays through. If you get what i mean?
I don’t really have much experience with ableton or acid so don’t really know about them.
There are probably demos for all these programs available though, so I’d say just give them all a try.
do you mean that you’re gna make a mixtape that isnt live? poor show.. lol
Just go for it in Traktor - and just try to make it as perfect as possible i guess. If you have a lot of changing bpm and you make it in a DAW, it might sound a bit too contrived… Just give it a go live! It’s good practice, and it’ll make you a better DJ for it..
EDIT: Acid and Ableton (in DAW mode) are pretty rigid in terms of changing BPM. Ableton would work in session mode, but it’d be pretty much the same as if you used Traktor…
couple different ways you can skin that old cat in traktor
if your mixing into deck B from deck A,
make deck B MASTER and deck A SLAVE after you’ve already tempo synced deck B to deck A’s tempo. then just raise the tempo of deck B to it’s original tempo.
or you can do a quick abrupt cut/drop like many hiphop djs do. either by stauling deck A on it’s 1st beat of a new bar, then starting deck B on that same beat so it’s seamless… or you can do a quick cut/drop using delay or reverb, just drop the next track on the first beat of the measure of the last track.
but if its just for shits and giggles, you can probably get away with not being so crafty. just experiment, have fun with it
Thanks! Tried out Mixmeister, but as I’m not beatmatching at all, it’s abit of a pain as it wants to change main tempo all the time.. best ting would be a timeline without a master tempo actually.. see what I’m at? I’ll try Ableton Live now in timeline view.
I made it in MixMeister and it worked out ok. I’ll try to do it again now live in Traktor Pro with my VCI and see which one’s best.
For next time, I’m still wondering though.. How could I arrange it in arrangement view but not have it synch to the master tempo. Can it be overrided? Probably a stupid newbie question, but when making a mix like this I just want them arranged like you said DvlsAdvct. Like a radio DJ.
I’d just line up the tracks and test out the transitions, moving things bit by bit. Really, it wouldn’t be much different than making a gapless CD and cutting out the excess noise at the ends of songs. You could do it with audio editing software and CD burning suite.
I did something like that in Ableton, in the Arrangement views Master section go to the Mixer Tab, ther´s the option Song Tempo wich gives u a line to edit as u please. It´s a good idea to enter the range of BPM´s, gives u a better control.
Hope this is somehow understandable.
I sat down with an old copy of CM later yesterday and it has a review of Adobe Audition and it struck me how simple it would be to just do it in a simple audio editor! Thanks for all tips anyway. The mix is done, and I’m quite happy with it. Might post it up later.
