Tips on making a mix a journey.
Hey!
So lately, I’ve been trying to make a house mix, but I just haven’t been able to find the way to make the mix be a journey. I mean, I can mix no problem n’ all, but I just feel like what I mix is more like random tracks that just mix well from one to another…
If anyone’s got some helpful tips to this, that’d be great. Like what is your music selection process, should keys play a big role in this, etc. thanks!
Im actually struggling with the same issues right now. Been studying mixes for a while and still cant seem do it right. It will develop over time..i will say that my song selection has gotten better since i started. I use Key,sound type, bpms, energy levels to figure out what to play.
What exactly do you mean by sound type?
sorry i meant if it has alot of percusion, or no vocals..etc
really cool insight on Markus Schulz opening tracks. I like trance alot but it translates into any other sub genre.
Stop over thinking it and just play. Forget all the high-concept stuff like making it a ‘journey’ or telling a ‘story’ and just play.
By just playing, by jamming various tunes together and seeing where they lead you will develop an understanding of how the whole thing hangs together. Yeah, you’re going to make mistakes that sound terrible, but we all do that, and you will learn from it better than trying to deliberately choose tunes based on a check list. It’s music, not physics. Your choice of music will come from knowing your records inside out and how they might fit with everything else.
Just play, and see what happens.
I agree with you, trial and error plays a role in learning, but don’t you have some guidelines you use during mixing? Like how you select your music? (Not for live DJing, but for podcasts)
Listen to a lot of long mixes and see what types of songs they use.
Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Generally when I want to “take people on a journey” with a set, i’ll first go with a certain mood, choose out tracks accordingly, and then sort them out by bpm and energy level (key) in Traktor.
If you have “open key” on in the analyze options tab of the settings, your tracks will all have an assigned musical key or “energy level.” The higher the number, the higher energy the track, and thus the better for peaking or climaxes. 12m/12d are generally but not always good peaking keys. Conversely, 1d/1m would logically make good intro tracks, but just bear in mind this is merely a starting point for exploration and you should never let keys totally dictate what you mix together or where you start your mix if it still sounds good otherwise. Anyway, you can learn more about harmonic mixing at your own will if you don’t know already but that’s one big thing I find helps.
Another trick that helps with making your mix more story like is to add a bit of an intro and perhaps a cool-down ending track. As I mix predominantly techno, I like to scour beatport for weird, trippy electronica to rip apart with cues and use as openings, breaks, and sometimes endings but this is just a for instance, main point being get creative! Otherwise a cool** vocal sample mixed over the opening to your first track can sometimes make for a good introduction to preface your mix but be careful with this as it can very easily become cheesy as fuck if you pick a cliché or lame sample. Very hit or miss. Last tip - Save tracks with really nice outros for your mix out track as if this wasn’t already obvious enough. Unless your doing a very time restricted podcast or b2b gig or something, it’s always better to play out a sexy outro than to cut off your mix abruptly mid track.
That is it. That is all my advice.
Oh yeah one thing I totally forgot to mention was that the most important part of any mix is definitely just exploring your options. I’ll come up with a name for a playlist, and then spend days or weeks playing around and switching out the tracks in it until I feel I have the best possible combos before I actually press record and play it all out. This is how you really get to learning the inctricacies of mixing your chosen genre(s), and truly making some dope sounding combinations.
I think the best advice is to just know your music, learn it inside out and you’ll find picking the right tracks a lot easier.
Try not to over think it, it will only kill the flow.
I think people over think it too much these days, I play vinyl, I know my records, I don’t know the bpm, the key and I don’t worry about not kowning that info. I just know my tracks and play them.
Your decisions on what to pick next will come from your understanding of the music, the knowledge of the tracks you own, knowing the bpm, or key is not a major factor.
Just have a mix, and most importantly enjoy it.
^ hate to be that guy arguing on the internet but depending on certain genres, key & bpm absolutely matter. Not everything has to come from years of experience like vinyl old-timers act like. Having the bpm and key displayed is arguably pretty handy when you’ve got a digital collection of genres with bpms that range from 75-200, and you want to be able to sort out and record diverse mixes regularly and on the fly. You can also immediately sort out your new music this way.
That said, the most important part is still that you’re enjoying what you’re doing as he said. Regardless of how methodical your approach…
It’s fine having different opinions, just giving my point of view, But
A) Im not that old, I’m 26
B) I play various genres, from disco, house to techno
C) I can play diverse mixes without knowing BPM/Key
I just think people spend way too much time worrying about factors that at the end of the day if you knew your tracks, wouldn’t matter.
If you know your tracks well, this will happen naturally without the aid of having key/bpm info displayed to you. And…I’m guilty of this as well, perhaps the worst offender out there, but I find the more I work on songs in mixes (no, not years of experience) I know what songs it goes with, I know the song and wouldn’t necessarily need to have that information displayed to me.
As for the OP, there are a number of ways one could take the listener on a journey. Do you want the journey to be energy-based or mood based? The way I typically do it is starting slow or easy, and having several climaxes of whatever journey I’m trying to take them on with the primary climax coming in the middle or near the end, prior to a 2 song cool down. You can slowly ratchet up the energy level or the moodiness (say, start with a major key, slowly migrating to minor if you want to do more of an emotional journey, or vice versa if you want it happy) of the music then take it down, then back up, etc - play with the listener’s emotions. If you’re doing this for online settings/podcasts, make sure you grab the listeners attention by the third song. If you’re too slow to get to your buildup/climax, you’ll lose the listener.
And when you’re not taking the listener on a journey, just grab a bunch of songs you love and play them. You’ll get a feel for new song combos as you do this.
Agreed…
disagree man…they do not “absolutely matter”
I am one of the old timers that you speak of. Beat matching taught you how to listen to your music. If you had any musical ear you could tell immediately when keys clash. You didn’t know it was keys clashing but you knew something didn’t sound right. Pushing sync (I use it…alot) inhibits the need for new DJs to know their music.
If the OP is having problems with his “flow” he probably shouldn’t be sorting through thousands of tracks ranging from 75-200 bpm…
Absolutely bang on. I’ve always maintained that one of the important things about learning to beat match is not necessarily learning how to get two kick drums to play at the same time, but that it forces you to understand how important it is to know how music is constructed and how it goes together. And I’m speaking as an old timer who uses sync far too often as well.
I think one of the reasons I have trouble answering the Ops question is that it’s kind of the essence of DJing - How do you choose what you play. How do you distil what might be decades of listening, tricks, technical ability and - most importantly in my opinion - instinct into a few bullet points?
Lol, sorry Sogyal. I know you probably didn’t expect a bunch of philosophical critiques of the ‘art’ as answers. So, the only advice I can give at this point is:
Wax on, wax off, wax on, wax off…
Thanks guys, these are all really good points and tips. I hear those words a lot though, “Know your music,” but I’m not sure if I understand what people mean by it… I mean, I think I know what it means to me, but I’m curious to hear it from someone else.
Haha, what? The key has nothing to do with the “energy level” of the track, it’s just that - the key.
know where the breaks are…know where the bass comes in…know where the vocals come in…know where the bass goes out…know when the vocals stop…
you should know that when you drop a track into another one…you know exactly where they are going to break…either seperately or together…and adjust your mix accordingly…you can create your own breaks with EQ ing filters…but you should already know that…
To create a journey is to have a wide and diverse range of music, knowing how to create a mood, and being able to change from one mood to the next. You should be able to look beyond a tracks “genre” and and look into the mood/atmosphere it creates and be able to use that to build a seamless journey start to finish. You should be able to take unknown tracks and fit them in seamlessly because of the mood they are giving at that given moment in the journey. DJ’s who understand this concept don’t rely on “chart toppers” to make their set as the whole should be greater that the sums of its parts.
Right, yes, that’s what I figured.