So I have always wondered about this and with technology making life easier i have to ask. How many tracks do you try to have in a typical 1hr 20 min mix? Back in the day when I used TT’s I was lucky if I managed 16 tracks in a cd mix. But with DVS taking so much of the work away and allowing you to focus more on fx, looping and sampling I find that im up in the 23-27 track range. Now I know this can be sort of genre specific since some styles dont lend to long(er) mixes but more cutting, scratching and juggling etc. So for the house, trance and techno guys and gals out there what do you think. What works best for you more or less? and do you find its easier to maintain the flow in the mix with more or less tracks?
i recently recorded my first mix and did it live with no edits. i let each of the tracks play out, some almost completely, and the mix reached 1:30. a few comments i received were positive, but the same amount said they’d like shorter tracks more. i then recorded a quick mix of some of the same tracks (though it was live again, so some differences exist), and the opinions were split again.
so i’ve decided not to listen to them, and instead play what comes out of my head. i find when i worry about a detail like that, it makes it a bit tougher for me to play.
soz if i came across a cunt, but i’ve recently had to deal with a dj not only using the damien moniker, but was claiming to be me. i heard about it through a promoter i’ve worked with several times
unfortunately, a personal name is in a class of words not subject to a trademark, unless you prove the overwhelming public know “damien” as you and you alone.
im not really in the mood for reading all the posts at the moment but, you want to play the meat of song and include the build ups in some of them, so the number of songs kind of depends on the length of the meat (tee hee, that was diiirty)
i like to mix it up and try to find a balance between fast mixes and long mixes/playing songs out, layering multiple tracks and just playing tracks alone.
lol sorry but i really had to laugh at this. I love it when people use the word Legal.. The ultimate bluff.. Lets say there is a DJ Damien in Romania playing popper house. Good luck legally getting across.
I can understand if there was someone else using DJ Damien1138 like thx1138
I chose the furthest country I can think of from the united states.
It could be dj Damien from greece as this is where the name orginated from Daman. Or DJ Damien from Iraq, or Dj Damien from Croatia. My point was that this is an international dj forum. And it just was funny to see someone make a statement publicly rather than a pm when its a first name. Dj John or Dj Frank
no disrespect to Romania, Ive partied with plenty of Romanians when I lived in germany or Hungary(didnt live there but wife has a home there)
i’ve always mixed pretty quick, and with the addition of loops etc… have found i can get through anything upwards of 25 tracks in a hour. highest record so far is 36. Not all of this is playing tracks for a few seconds though, some of it is looping parts from 2 or 3 tracks and playing them as one track. so it could be argued that, even though i’ve used 30 or so tracks, there’s only really been 20 or so individual ‘musical events’ in a mix as i’ve drawn two or three 8 beat or 16 beat loops over a few minutes. do this with breaks as much as i do house
1h20m for me that’s about 18-20 tracks max, I work on the basis of allowing the main part of the track to play and then mixing them out, depending on track I usually start to mix them out around 3.30m to 4m max maybe slightly longer all depends on what’s going on, that’s how i like to work, to be honest do what you feel comfortable with
I play as much as the song tells me to play it at the time I’m playing it. That said in my last two hour mix I had 20 something songs. I think 12-16 would be about normal if I did 1 1/2 hour mixes.
That’s funny cause I was thinking the same thing… just kidding aside im just glad to see you spell your name with IEN and not ION, IAN etc etc. and yes my first name is Damien and no plans on using my first name as a dj name.
yesterday I was listening to an “Alex Bau” podcast and the tracklist has 12 tracks. Now its an amazing mix and technically its perfect. The mixing is tight, eq’s are spot on and transitions were flawless but 12 tracks in 68 minutes in a digital mix seems a little low to me even for a promo mix. Years ago when Sasha and Digweed would put out mixes is was very common to have 12 tracks in just over an hour but these guys were mixing on TT’s without DVS and holding the mix for 3 minutes and sometimes longer. I just feel that if we are going to help push the digital dj into the next era and be accepted by venues “everywhere” then we are going to need to step up. Anyway, I just wanted to sort of guage how some people felt about this and im glad to see that the track count is on the higher side.
