Mixing RNB
I’m planning on making a RNB mix but it feels like there isn’t much aside from cross fading and song selection. The tempos are all over the places so is there any room for technical elements? It would also seem inappropriate to use effects cause it would end up butchering the song and listeners just want to feel the groove. It sorta feels like I might as well make a itunes playlist instead.
I would do your best to keep it smooth. Maybe work on places where you can loop 1 or two bars (not always at the end of a track), and blend in as seamlessly as possible.
If you cant do that, quick mixes and drops will work for difficult tracks.
Just arrange your tracks slow to fast and see if you can get up the BPM scale over the course of an hour or so.
What I do when it comes to R&B is trying to find a straight beat, 2 or 4 bars, that is instrumentally silent. this can be done through filtering, or even finding another song that has sampled that same beat, loop that in, then loop in the desired song.
although it seems varied, rnb is a very easy music type to blend (of course you will do a lot more tempo tweaking than with most digital genres) usually it runs on a four-32 beat meaning even slow sounding ones will easily mesh with faster sounding ones, usually you are only held back by imagination (key lock is your friend here)
The way i see it, is most rnb will run from around 70-120 bpm. So what i usually do is, mix 3-4 tracks that are in the same tempo range, then if the track stops abruptly - slam in the next track of your new tempo range, if it doesnt, fade it out or filter it out and slam in the new track. Then just play another few songs in the same range. Rinse and Repeat.
I’d usually suggest build it up from slow to faster bpm over the course of the night but it doesn’t alway work.
Just loop the bars if you can. Maybe add some beatgrids. You know i find in most RnB mixes that they just filter from one song to the other or just cut (which makes you look like, well not a DJ) so I suggest looping, maybe finding some good effects to fade out the first song and make it cross to the next.
Here is an example (and it’s not the best mix I made, but still an example) of an all R&B project mix
https://www.mixcloud.com/ParisCreative/the-rb-junkie-volume-1/
I would be VERY careful of too much “key lock”
R&B is all about tracks that old school people know. If you stretch them out too far past their original BPM - everyone is going to notice (key lock or not) and you will lose a lot of the impact of those songs IMO.
i find when mixin rnb… if you go past 4 or 5 on the pitch… it kills the tune… even with key lock… people will know (and usually dislike) the difference