Styles of music encouraging certain mixing styles?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Styles of music encouraging certain mixing styles?

A concept I’ve been noticing lately is the EXTENT to which different styles of music lend themselves to different styles of mixing, and even to different hardware set ups. I’ve always spun freeform between 6-7 different EDM genres and because of this, I guess I’ve previously just ignorantly thought that 4-deck live-remixing with a controller was the ultimate set up for everyone. Over the last couple of years, the one-genre DJs I play with (which is most of them) have shown me that each genre sort of has a mixing style it points you in.

Techno (tech house, tribal, minimalist etc. etc.) DJs seem to be all about long mixes on two turntables, because there’s rarely a key to worry about matching, and it’s a very straightforward style that doesn’t involve much interaction with the music… I dunno what you’d do if you weren’t beatmatching and EQing.

Trance DJs seem to prefer very simple transition-DJing on CDJs, because, as it’s been explained to me, the trance scene is more about track selection and whats in your collection than your mixing. They apparently do this because of the long context of the music, and because of their roots in radio show DJing. So trance DJs seem to make transitions at key moments of the tracks, and not need any more than 4 decks, or any effects.

Straight Drum n Bass DJs seem to be into a two turntable set up for some of the same reasons Techno DJs are into it… Long mix, load next track, beatmatch, long mix etc. etc.

Hardstyle/Hardcore/Gabber DJs are all about crossfade bouncing and filter knobs, and never more than 2 decks.

Dubstep and Electro DJs are almost always on a mixtrack or some other cheap controller that they usually keep permanently synced and don’t do much of anything with between transitions. I think this is more because of the age/experience of DJs who spin these genres predominantly… Dubstep and Electro don’t seem to have found their place yet.

What do you guys think, are these localized, or have you noticed similar trends in music genres? I’ve almost never seen anyone mix more than two decks… And I really don’t know why that is… Is that a thing that’s only useful if you’re going through a lot of genres quickly?

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Techno and tech-house certainly has keys, ALOT of them actually hehe.

to give an example. More often then not the bass gotta match aswell, and the hihats need to communicate for it to sound good.

I always mix techno, minimal, deephouse and tech-house, and with the right phrasing you can do VERY cool stuff, with melody’s, vocals and drops. I’m sure different genre’s require different mixing, but the more you get into one, you’ll notice there’s alot more to it then you once thought.

For me the key in making a solid techno mix is creating a solid, smooth 2 hour song in which you wouldn’t notice a new song coming in at all, and there are million ways of doing that, each one sounding different then one another. Just look at Carl Cox, would you call that straight forward and just mixing a new song in and EQing?

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You and the crew you play with clearly have no immagination when it comes to mixing…

italian/shranze techno is absolutley the most involved style of mixing, when you do it right if you are beatmatching you should really only play 2 tracks at a time and you will never stop tweaking the mixer because it all sounds good cutting from one track to the next and make sure you drop the bass to increase energy… This type of techno lends itself really well to 3 decks always having 2 tracks running with sync and too many effects is never enough when you create your own edits. The best thing to do is effect bars 12 - 16 occasionally. Effects that suit this style are filters, crushers & flanger, phazer, roll, delay, ring mod… pretty much everything

Minimal techno and MNiML is not as busy as techno but the same principals apply you should have an ever evolving sound, but you have to respect the groove and just let tracks play… effects are the same as above, use them to create your own edits to close a phrase, and this style of music also lends well to reverb, delay, echo, & white noise generators to fill in the space in the tracks when you want to create some tension.

Drum n Bass cover a lot of sub genres if you are playing repetitive neuro type stuff then long mixes are usually best. liquid is about being smooth and respecting the music and lyrics, so its all about key and flowing in and out of tracks. Anything more energetic like jump is all about speed and dropping the bass of the new track at the end of a build up to send the crowd wild. Harder stuff depends on the track… In all cases of drum and bass effects should be avioded as they just don’t add anything to the music.

mixing dubstep for me is finding basslines that work together and letting the subs shake shit up, slow mixes are best and no effects should be used. Brostep & electro is pretty much all noobs so yeah they play on mixtracks, but when done right you should be mixing quick and smashing in new tracks at the end of buildups. But you can smash in a track anywhere with brostep though. The mixer doesn’t really get used accept for changeovers & I would avoid effects although noise generators can do wonders and the occasional filter is forgivable.

The key to mixing well though in all cases is to know and love what you are playing, always play the song you can hear in your head next over keymatching and don’t try to outshine the music with how awesome you think you are using effect combinations you got of djtt, cause in pretty much all cases it sounds shit when you have a gate, roll and crusher, flanger running all the time over tracks, although those effects do sound great over acapellas so only use them on that.

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I hope I won’t get crucified for this, but I am going to attempt to defend the mixing style of electro. I will agree with your point that at the moment it is plagued by kiddies with mixtracks hitting sync and then crossfading. However, I’ve also seen some electro DJs just wreck the bejesus out of a set in a very tasteful manner. A few things I’ve found while mixing electro (my primary genre):

It’s a very “up and down” genre. The main selling point for me on tracks is the drop. You build the track, then drop it. After it drops, you should already be on the way into the next buildup. It works sort of like a wave, if you will. Personally, I like to throw in a few drop swaps in, LP filter right before drops, but also occasionally let the ambient breakdown play through, as people need a break from going balls to the wall all night. This up and down energy allows for a.) an indication for people to go and get a drink/smoke/breather and b.) provides an overall energy level that stays more or less consistent throughout the night, even though you may be banging the bejesus out of it. I like to bang it out hard for awhile, then drop into something with a little less energy to let people recover.

It does suck though, because you gotta sort through a lot of crap mixes to find some good mixes :disappointed:

Idk, my $0.02; do with it what you will.

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Yes, Clearly the correct conclusion to come to when i ask if other people play the same way in other places, is that I’m mixing unimaginatively.

Not on my face please.

Fair enough. I’ve just really never seen such a thing, even going to see some of my heroes. (for Designer Drugs, one of them showed up, and transitioned at the end of tracks in ableton.) I mix electrohouse too, and I’m hoping some creative stuff happens with mixing in this genre. Currently I’m thinking the best direction to take it is utilizing the new remix decks in traktor to chop songs up on the fly and make a sound like what people are calling “complextro”. I think it’d end up sounding SUPER expressive

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Now swallow it bitch… If you don’t want an answer don’t ask a question, After first line it’s actually to help you as I dissagree with your conclusions of how music is mixed, but you can continue being a shit current it’s no skin off my teeth champ.

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at this thread

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Faderswagger… your a punk, why’d you ignore what synthet1c wrote? I read his paragraphs and they are valid points. You simplified the genres way too much…

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This thread is going to be full of win :notes:

@ woah, sick track mate. love it.

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Too lazy to write a novel about but :

I love how you spit on electro/brostep.
Ok these genres are mainly played by teenagers, ok. (i won’t even try to argue about the gear stuff, especially on DJTT. Loads of guys here playing genres that are not brostep or electro and doing the job well on cheap controllers)
Still, admit that it requires skills to mix. It’s not like techno/house or any genre that is based on subtle variations.
Brostep/moombahcore/electro are what I would call “maximal”, in opposition with minimal and more “chilled” stuff. There is so much going on that you have to make sure the various instruments of the 2(3) tracks you mix together don’t clash and walk on eachother, resulting in a crap sounding output.

I would say brostep/electro and stuff require maybe a bit more prep work, so that a quick mixing style still doesn’t sound odd.

Last point, about the “noobie crossfade”. The amount of energy and rage some tracks have require that kind of mixing, and you just can’t let 2 tracks playing together for a long time.

I’ll sum my post with an example that I mixed at a gig :

A track was :

During the 2nd build up, i mixed it with the beginning acapella/build up of track B :

If i remember well, when the first track dropped i crossfaded the acapella, brutal cut to let the A track express itself.
Then for 32 bars i brought the acapella/build up of promises again to finally cut brutally to track B with a bass switch.

Yeah, it was dubstep/brostep, yeah I used brutal crossfading, that thing you seem to classify as a “noobie kind of mixing”. Still, it sounded supergood, I surprised the whole crowd, and as quick and brutal it was, it remained smooth and natural.

So please stop hating on genres because they are not of your taste. Every creative and insipered mixing requires skills.

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Can’t tell if trolling…
your post was masturbatory bullshit, about how you’re really good at spinning techno and don’t spin like i described, so i must be an idiot for thinking all people spin like that… When i wrote the post literally asking if my general view of how people are spinning it is true everywhere, or just where i am. I don’t give a fuck how you spin it, I asked how the rest of the scene does, not a self-serving example, pre-texted by telling me i must be spinning “unimaginably”.

We’re all DJs on this forum, nobody cares how good you think you are.

I’m not shitting on brostep or electro, nor am i saying I don’t like it… I spin electro and brostep all the time. Read my post, I was saying that all the DJs around me that spin it are doing it in the way I described, not that everyone who spins it is doing it that way.

Is there anyone that read my question before posting? Seriously… I asked if people around you are spinning these genres these ways, or if it’s just people around me… That’s my entire post.

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Its just people around you.

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Oh Ohhh yeah.. mmmnnnn ohhhh like that yeah work that mouth.. yeeeahhh…

listen to webbha, pedro delgardo, Boriqua Tribez, (pre fidget)Alex calver for driving techno… Audionatica, ant brooks, (old)carl cox, (old)sven vath, anthony rother for the smaller stuff… Andy c, camo & crooked, Netsky, noisia for dnb… knife party, porter robinson, chuckie for electro… I don’t follow dubstep too closely but excision, flux pavillion, kromestar & breakage all kill it. Every artist/dj has a mix available on the net and those names cover the different sub genres when mixing and don’t just play their own tracks.

I’m not trolling your just being a douchebag, but this certainly brought a smile to my face.

These guys will teach you how it’s supposed to be done.

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@OP: Seriously, as someone who is mainly a Drum & Bass DJ your description doesn’t fit mine or many other mixing styles or do the genre justice, same can be said for most of what you said about other genres, I like my Dubstep (of the deep variety) and that stuff is more often than not played by people of the oldschool mentality of just vinyls and a mixer (hence labels like Swamp81 being vinyl only). I’ve also been getting into what you are terming as “techno” lately and again, mixing styles vary pretty broadly.

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As far as Dubstep goes, vinyl and acetate seems to rule the roost, you almost feel dirty for playing digital after seeing some of the old-school DJs go on.

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Stereotypes are bad okay?

and to answer your question, most people are on turntables in my area. Many still on vinyl rather than dvs. It’s an old scene though.

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The question by the OP has been misunderstood by mostly everyone. He’s asking if DJ in your town mix like that or it’s just a case in his town.
He’s not asking how you mix or how the big names mix. So synthet1c unless you are lucky enough to have all those big name DJ’s living in your town your replay is irellivant to the op’s question.
the answer should be yes its true or “No in my town people are more creative” or something like that or even a might be true but this is how I mix.
I’m from a small country with a population less then 50.000 people so you can imagine that being a on genre DJ is not going to work, But I see DJ turning up with a laptop and no controller and all they do it put requests into the playlist and let VDJ’s automix do it’s stuff. I hardly ever see any DJ that is actually doing any kind of mixing and it makes me sick.

So to answer the Op’s question. Yes in my country thats more then true actually most don’t even mix

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Exactly! Thank you! I was starting to think i was going crazy. I swear half this forum consistently stretches any discussion into an excuse to tell everyone about how they personally mix, and how that makes them god’s gift to DJing… IT doesn’t sound like most of them read my question before responding.

I’m sorry to hear that your scene is shitty too… What kind of music are they playing? The request DJs sound like top 40’s guys taking over EDM clubs?

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If only that was the case then I could live with it :smiley: some of them can go from Skrillex to Guetta to ABBA to Korn then to Def Leopard They are the true examples of human jukeboxes. No structure in any way what so ever. But there are a hand full of DJ that take their job very seriously and I consider myself one of them. I do take request but don’t guaranty I will play them. They need to fit into what I play

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Quite right… especially when you play a track that you’ve ripped from the vinyl lol. :expressionless: