I’ve been learning how to mix tracks together and, to my ear, they sound OK. I transition from one song to the other fairly smoothly. The thing that bugs me is that I transition by mixing the outro of one song, to the end of an intro to another song.
I’ve been scouring the forums and people say that it’s good to mix tracks straight at the end of a chorus to keep the energy up. How would I do that? It sounds simple but it really confuses me.
But that is really some one else’s style of djing, If you really wanna do that the easiest but hard way to do it would be with Ableton, if you have a controller you can chop up/edit the song to your liking the configure your controller so that when you hit certain buttons it triggers that certain clip/sample/part of song, it’s long but trust me when you get used to it you’ll have so much fun and fall more in love with mixing it up.
One for when the baseline kicks in.. that way you can mix your outro > intro and skip to energy pumping baseline point of the new track from almost any point in the outro of track 1.. e.g. bring in the baselines of track 2 right on the button where the baseline shifts on track 1.
One for the Outro, can be handy if the track is getting boring and you want to finish it faster.
In essence it means you are not needing to wait for the regular 8/16/32 bar intros or outros to complete before pumping in the next track.
You need to learn to count bars. Old school DJ’ing before all this computer stuff, you counted bar. Each song will consists of 4 count bars. Most chorus will be an 8 count bar. So you count the bars, and either fade in at the start of the 8 count or cut at the end of 8 count.
If you learn this, you will not have to rely on your software. Back to basics of DJ’ing.
I’m sorry, but it’s even more simple than ‘counting bars’. You just need to listen to and know your songs. How else do you expect to be able to mix them well?
If you know when the parts of the song appear and how long they are then you can time your mix to fit that.
Yeah, just experiment with dropping in the intros of the new song when there’s a drop in momentum in the current track. Usually i swap the bass lines then fade the new track in over the next 32 “counts”. Give it a go.
I think this is the answer to what the OP wanted, but…I don’t usually like that kind of DJing except for top40 and hip hop. I guess it works with dubstep, but I still haven’t heard but one dubstep performance (nero) that I even remotely enjoyed.
Intros and outros are there for a reason.
If you start sounding like all these prog/electro-house douche bags that mix out at the first breakdown, you’re essentially just playing intros and missing out on the bulk of the track…the parts where the magic happens.
I understand not wanting a breakdown every minute or two, but those are issues with production and should be dealt with accordingly (by adding drum breaks either by doing an edit before you spin or live with Ableton, Maschine, Sample Decks, some other sampler, a 3rd deck, skipping them with hot cues or doubles…or an edit…whatever).
Technology has progressed to the point where it’s fucking easy to do these kinds of things either in a cheap DAW (Logic Express is amazingly powerful for $200) or with stuff that a lot of people have access to in a live situation. And what are we using all this power for? Smashing the hell out of the clip lights and mixing out before the breakdown.
Yeah…that’s totally what progress sounds like. People had better solutions to annoying breakdowns in the 70s.
you’re staring the solution to your problem dead in the face: you don’t need to mix solely from outro to intro.
You can mix from anywhere in song A, to anywhere else in song B, it’s just a matter of how good it will sound.
Knowing your tracks (and phrase-matching. google/youtube it if you haven’t already) is key.
Also, as mentioned earlier, you can use hotcues to jump around individual songs to skip breakdowns/buildups to keep the energy up/constant, and you can always use loops if there’s a great part in a track to mix out of, but isn’t quite long enough as-is.
The best thing is to mix your tracks longer than just a couple of measures. The way I judge other dj’s on their mixing ability is if I can tell they are mixing or not. I can’t tell you are mixing when you are then you are a pretty good dj. Try mixing all your track together and find the songs that go best together. After time you just know, you could hear the songs in your head that will go together. Also don’t try to mix vocals over vocals you are just waiting for a disaster to happen. I suggest if you play a full vocal track and then play a track with no vocals or with just minimal vocals. If your mixes last longer you give the new track long enough to build and get to the best parts and the first track breaks out into the outro. Hope this helps… Here is my profile on www.House-mixes.com you can listen to some of my mixes and see what I am talking about. D3RKIN Profile - House Mixes I have been mixing since 1994.
