Hey guys i’m doing a DJ drummer set and the route were going is dipping into tracks for max a minute then getting out of it so we can keep the hype parts of tracks. Plus this way we can play old school tracks that really aren’t great for playing the entire thing and still keep it enjoyable and nostalgic for the crowd. The trouble is were relying heavily on quick cuts and they just sound so abrupt. Does anyone here have any suggestions for smoothing those out with FX. I don’t want to rely too much on them and I don’t want to overkill the delay. I’m beginning to see the limitations of 2 decks already when doing a set like this.
Its pretty tough to get smooth cuts in every transition, but the easiest way would of course be to use the ‘freeze effect’
Other than that if you say your just chopping and changing a lot, using select bits from tracks, then try using loops to bring in the tracks, I sometimes mix in loops with a slow up fade, filter, mixture of effects etc… to give the impression of a smooth mix, yet the track will still have plenty of mixing out time and you wont need to have such an abrupt transition.
Hey there, I do something similar as well in Traktor pro, I set the
auto cross-fade for 30sec, as the current song is playing and gets to the
2 min mark, I time the right moment and hit loop, run that for 2 bars, hit auto-fade, as it’s looping and the other song is coming in, slowly lowering the bass and use the filter over the 30sec to filter it out, and if I need to be creative use some chained effect over the filter and bam! the other song is in nice and smooth, and to change it up I very the effects during my set.
ontopic: dude, you have a drummer! from time to time, go out of a track with a really long delay tail and let him play an 8 bar solo or something before you drop the next track. you can also rhythmically cut in parts of a looped phrase from the track that’s coming next and at the same time work a lowpassfilter with a slight delay on top of it while your friend goes crazy on the drums - super easy and excellent buildup to a drop that can be stretched forever if necessary. I’m sure the crowd’s response will be great and you will look like more of a team, but you need to work together really well to pull it off.
also, don’t be afraid of hard cuts - they can really pump up the crowd if executed correctly (by which I mean, if the track combinations are harmonic). or, you can add a bit of highpassfilter+reverb and cut the last part of a bar (leaving only the reverb) right before you drop the next track, too. I could go on for hours because there are countless possibilities, but as you pointed out yourself - don’t overdo it with the fx, ever.
