No, you’ve got the right idea. DJs do something different from what everyone thinks DJs do…even beginner DJs for a time.
Yeah. That’s, fine. Well, it’s a mistake. But it’s not as big as you think.
Start paying attention to song structure: verses, choruses, bridges…all that stuff. You have to pay attention to that more so with top40 and hip hop than with any other genre because the intros and outros are shorter in those genres than, say, house or techno.
Also, you’re probably trying to play the tracks together for too long. Hip Hop DJs are very different from house DJs. It’s not uncommon for a house DJ to play 2 songs together so that the last third or so of one track is playing along with the first third of another track. That fits with the structures. With hip hop…the vocals are so intense and upfront and the intros and outros are so short that you can’t do that. Hip Hop “transitions” tend to amount to just slapping the crossfader over at the right time…maybe playing the songs together for a measure or two.
The biggest thing to remember when cutting like that is the simple rule “respect the chorus”, which really means “respect structure.” Whether they know it or not, people have been taught for decades to hear verses lead into choruses and vice versa…probably with a bridge thrown in b/t a chorus and either another chorus or a verse to break up the monotony. They’re aware of it even if they can’t describe it.
So, don’t mix from the chorus of one song to the chorus of another…mix from the chorus of one song to the verse of another. Or vice versa. Bridges can be really useful for that, but you have to be careful about energy level.
The best advice I can give you for hip hop mixing, considering that I suck at it myself, is to go see some hip hop DJs. Mobile DJs don’t count…they do something completely different. Pay attention to what they’re doing and most importantly when they’re changing songs (it helps if you’re familiar with the music they’re spinning).
If it comes up, the best I’ve hard live are Jazzy Jeff and Young Guru. They’re really impressive and basically do everything right with the exception that JJ tends to overdrive his mixer.
It’s really just a completely different skillset than spinning–for example–house, where you often have 32 or 64 measures of intro before the primary lead sound really takes precedence. Hip hop…you might get 4 bars…though it’ll probably have people talking about headphone volumes, the producer, or audibly lighting a joint or something that’s also hard to mix over. So, you just skip that part and scratch in the first real downbeat of whatever verse you want to play at the right time, and slap the crossfader over in time with the previous track.
It’s a lot easier to hear than to describe, but I don’t have a good example handy because I don’t really spin hip hop. I want to…I just don’t own the equipment to do it justice…nor the music collection.
Also, spinning hip hop takes a huge music collection. Spinning house, I always plan on 10-12 tracks/hour. Some of the hip hop sets I’ve heard went through that in 10 minutes if they’re only pulling one verse/chorus out of each song.
In hip hop, beat matching is less precise; you can get away with flaws in mixing technique and effects usage or any of the other stuff EDM DJs go on about…but spinning hip hop well will stress your ability to program a set, pick tracks, and understand song structure more than any other genre unless you’re really fucking good at the other genre.
