Respecting the song by mixing with outros?
I had a weird conversation with a DJ the other day, guys has had residencies all over the world, quite famous. I was scolded for mixing out mid-way through a song because I was bored of it. He said I might be bored by the audience wanted to listen to the song. Now he also produces so I thought he might be sensitive about it but it got me wondering regardless. Do you guys tend to only mix in the outros and intros?
Sometimes tracks are produced that don’t really have a traditional outro after melody. I get this occasionally in “nu disco” where a refrain seems to play on and on for 32 bars and then a sudden end to the track…maybe this is the outro :\ haha. But I’ll typically try to get out of it using FX.
However there are times when I loop a portion of the breakdown and bring a new (or old actually) track in.
Sometimes songs just take too damn long to develop for a short attention span audience and I’ll make an edit of these kind of tracks or find a loop before a drop.
I dunno, I don’t think there is a definitive proper way to go about. If the crowd enjoys it then great…if you enjoy it then great as well. I will say that listening to a mix that tries too hard to keep new tracks every 3-4 minutes gets tiring.
I’'l do this while prcticing at home but would never play this way out for a whole set.
So had the crowd cleared the floor for that song or was there still a good number of people out there dancing?
depends on the genre. if you did this with trance there would be no flow to the mix. its easy enough to chop and change with a lot of house though.
Jester, you nailed it for me.
Dancing before and after
Mix whenever you want. If there’s a long break with nothing happening then I think mixing before that is what you should do (I’m talking about mixing in clubs, not festivals) or edit the track and remove the boring parts. But I do see a lot of DJ that mix before the best part of the song even comes, which I find f*cking weird.
You will get bored of your songs before anyone else (unless you spin the same big room set as everyone else), so be mindful of that.
As for mixing out early? Idk…use your judgment, but it bugs me when DJs mix out just because they can’t stand to sit there and do nothing for 5 minutes. If the song isn’t good enough to listen to, why did you play it? (Hotmix sets and hip-hop where you’re often JUST pulling out specific verses is a different beast)
As for long un-danceable sections, it depends on the crowd. But in this wonderful technologically advanced world, there’s no reason you can’t just add a drum/bass groove to a long breakdown.
A lot of older DJ’s philosophy is that tracks should be played their full length and with minimum of effects added afaik
Agree with people saying it depends on the genre. Having said that if I’m on the other side it annoys me when people constantly chop and change… hip hop DJs are the worst offenders IMO. I saw Tim Westwood ages ago and he couldn’t play any track for more than about 1 min… he was very good at mixing but a terrible DJ.
I find when I mix trance usually it’s phrased to go when the outro is starting the next tracks Intro is ending… When I do deep house and prog house it’s different I usually will wait until after the main break and start mixing in percussion and phrase in say a stab or maybe the bass line depending on track…
With nudisco I do roughly the same as with the newer style techno that’s in that deep house range… I also with usually mix all three of those genres together with each other fluently.
I also really enjoy a lot of the trance tracks I mix so maybe that’s why…
But I also find it fairly hard at time to mix trance in the “bootleg” style where you over lay say 3mins of each track trance that’s in the 136-142 range mostly epic/uplifting trance due to the nature of the synths used in this style trance and it requires heavy eq work to successfully achieve the proper affect
If your tunes are boring you, you’ve probably not made the right choice. 
When i first started DJing I’d have tracks play forever. A lot of tracks I purchased used to be 8-10 minutes long. You could mix in and out of them a few times mid set. Doesn’t work to well with the ADD crowd unfortunately.
Today, my mix points depend on the crowd, venue, party more than ever. But it seems shorter mixes seem to be the norm to keep a crowd interested lately.
That is true most party goers now prefer the new big room style where a track only plays for 3mins I find when I’m doing weddings and I start getting edm request I usually will mix the radio edits with only a 32bar loop as my mix point loop twice cue jump to end… Sadly I miss the old style of mixing and would love
To be able to find a outlet besides mixcloud that allows me to mix this way when your doing a prog house mix and prog trance where your mixing for 3minutes and riding your faders and eqs the whole time especially now since running filters is so nice and using filters with eqs to really make that mix ride… When I mix prog house average mix length is 3minutes since most tracks are at minimum 8mins
When you mix you take people on a journey,there are ups and downs and you need to let the crowd experience both. You should have some tracks that are groovy and quick, and you should always have a few long melodic breakdowns. If the crowd is dancing, this will give them a moment to chill for a second, talk to whoever they came with, etc. Cut and quick mixing will work best with electro in my opinion.
I call them “Piss break” tracks 
eyyy m808 those are the best parts of the tracks ya cheeky little runt
Mix when u want it! Your set you judge the effect of mixing the track out will have on dancefloor - obviously if u mix out every tune after 1min people may start getting pissed off but I don’t understand why the other dj had to say anything
i like ice cream but o don’t want to eat a whole pint wink wink