In another thread on this site, someone informed me about a good site to download acapella’s from (acapellas4u.co.uk).
I just checked it out and searched their database and was impressed with the results. I’m def. going to download a bunch when I get home.
This got me thinking. Besides making sure the BPM’s match and the keys are compatable, what are some tips for using acapellas?
Like do you ususally use an entire acapella (whole song’s lyrics) and just play that over an EDM beat or do you prefer to just stab in the hook or loop it?
What effects do you usually apply to the acapella, etc?
It really depends on what you’re looking for. Personally I just sample the chorus, some importnat parts, and through them on the Traktor sampler and overplay. But you can also create your own remix by using the entire acapella track and layering it over another sound. I use a little bit of echo, and some reverb on most of my sounds, but it varies, depending on the type of voice and the length of the sample.
make room for the acapella by eqing a bit of space on the underlying track by pulling the mids or highs back a notch or two. can also be achieved by using the notch filter.
Heres maybe a newb question but it has to do with getting the correct bpm on the acapellas. i remember reading or watching a video saying the best way to do it is find bpm of the original song the accapella is from. however is there any shortcut to getting the correct bpm from the acapella alone without the original track?
I have an app on my phone on which I can tap along with a song and it measures the bpm, handy in live situations. If you do not have a smartphone, I believe the same can be achieved using Traktor’s built-in metronome.
It’s going to take some rythmical feeling to get it accurate, but hey, you’re a dj innit!
Practice is key. If you can’t figure out a certain track, check with the original (youtube if you dont wanna buy it) and try to find out why you couldnt get it straight. You’ll get better at it eventually.
some sections of an acapella will sound like they fit better in the mix than others, it can also help to split an aca’s file up into separate files ie verse 1, chorus, bridge etc to aid this.
this thread has inspired me to try dropping some acapellas myself, I think I will find the bpm from the original. Drop Cue points on verses and chorus and any other part of the track I think will be cool.
I think a cool way of dropping it will be when mixing a long outro into a long intro (maybe a minute or 2) just for something different.
Thanks for the inspiration guys
Lot’s of good 140 BPM hip hop tracks for repetitive dubstep tracks, a milli comes to mind (also no need to worry about key matching). like mentioned above me, I like starting an acapella in deck C while mixing two tracks in decks A & B, makes the transition less noticeable.
Thanks guys. To those that haven’t checked it out, acapellas4u.co.uk is great. I’ve downloaded 15 or so the last few days and the quality is pretty good. It’s free but you can donate to get the ability to read reviews. Until someone on here recommended that site to me I was trying to get them on iTunes or making mp3’s from YouTube files by using http://www.listentoyoutube.com/
Listentoyoutube is pretty cool though. I’m thinking there would be some creative things you could do like making mp3’s of famous speeches, interviews, movie quotes, etc. then mix the w/ your music.
One more question that just came to mind. Let’s say you want to play an acapella over a 128 BPM electronic song. You find out that the original track’s BPM (for the acapella) is 110 or something… basically they are very different #'s.
Do you just keylock the acapella and adjust the speed to match the dance track? Or should you not mix the two b/c they aren’t compatible?
