Mixing

[jamie_crichton]

Alreet,

I've had my decks not that long..and seen as tho theres loads of talent on the forum could u give me advice on how to use the pitch correctly..like how to know wheter it needs speeding up to match the other song.

Thats the main thing thats blaggin my head.

Any tips on mixing please let me know.

[jamie_crichton]

sorry had to add another post my count was on 666...number of the beast

[sirius]

This will seem very boring, but when i first started i found myself two tunes in my collection which had beat-a-pellas on them (just drums all the way through) and just mixed them back to back until I got the hang of knowing which ones running out of timing.

Id mess up the sliders and just throw the other back in and sort out the mangle until I became a dab hand at it. Its much less of a headache and far less confusing than when two tunes are clashing and sledging allover the place.

If you dont have two drum tracks, and just one, then you could get a sound program like rebirth and program your own drums (?).

I dont need to tell you you need to give yourself ample time to listen in on the headphones to guestimate approximately if your puting the tune in too fast. Get it say 90% right and your laffin, cos you can get away with fine tuning after I reckon.

It just takes patience and practice, and before you know it you just 'know'....I cant explain it, but youll know what I mean when it happens to you, it sort of clicks.

Perhaps the 'proper' djs can give you more proper advice, but thats what I did and it worked for me anyway.....

Sirius.

[Dj M Jaxx]

Originally posted by jamie_crichton
Alreet,

I've had my decks not that long..and seen as tho theres loads of talent on the forum could u give me advice on how to use the pitch correctly..like how to know wheter it needs speeding up to match the other song.

Thats the main thing thats blaggin my head.

Any tips on mixing please let me know.

It's a kind of practice and learn thing m8....you gotta get the feel for this sort of thing, I is a lot more easy to show someone when your standing next to them

Ther are some realy good books out at the moment, my suggestion is to get yourself one with lots of picture figurations

Ther is one out at the moment that is really good called "how to be a DJ".....worth getting

Hope this helps m8

Jaxxy

[johns_ar]

the first decks i learnt on had no pitch control cos we was poor!

when i started using em again tho i just used to count the bars and try to get it as close as poss

that books meant to be very good mind you.....or if yer on the rock n roll or a student theres courses that yer can do to learn mixing n beatmatching etc

[jamie_crichton]

Some Top stuff there fellas...supose practice makes perfect.
Cheers sirius thats the kinda stuff i wanted to know coz im in the position that u were once in.

Nasty thing is i bought belt drives so i hear its harder to mix but when i get the cash to afford direct drives it should come naturally..well heres hoping anyways. What about this 4 bar crack ..how does that work i read something about dance music is made in a 4 bar beat or something so count four beats and let the other record go and slow the record down with ya hand till the beats match....i don't even touch the pitch fader yet..lol

[johns_ar]

if i could explain the 4 bar crack on here mate i would!

its like explaining the offside rule to a woman if yer know what i mean, yer need to be there

im sure someone will be able to explain it tho

sirius seems to be good with the words so he might!!!

[sirius]

4 Bars is piss easy.

Right, in a regular pop song you get a verse and a chorus and a fill in 'bridge' etc........

Right, in dance music, in a similar vane, you get the same type of 'breaks'. Now, within these breaks there are elements of four.

Youre starting to lose me now arent you....lol. Its Fractions times boys and girls.....

Right, there is one kick drum to every 1/4 of a 'bar' ie on a metronome clicking machine 'Thud' click,click,click - Thud, click click click etc.

You may have high hats, you fit a hell of a lot more high hats in the time space of a bar, so it may be 1 hi hat every 1/16th of a bar, which of course is a multiple of four.....

Right(?). Now to expand on that, song structure of dance music is '4/4' also. Therefore youre 'INTRO' of the track your mixing composed of all these 'fours' last a particular length of time, no arguments.....unless its an odd break which you can get in old skool like a silence and scratch then breakdown again. Anyway exclude them.

Therefore you want to count in elements of four.....whether it be eight kicks of the drum or 16 or 32 or 64 etc, then something will happen or change in the tracks structure. So if you drop your tune in on say 16 kickdrum beats, youre usaully laffin.


Cant explain it in any less detail m8 . lol

See ya

Sirius.

[jamie_crichton]

Spot on!

I sorta follow ya coz i've used fruityloops before n made drum loops n stuff.

I'll try putting these tips to good use

[jamie_crichton]

Thanx grad some good advice there only one thing would be to ask is do you mean hooking the decks upto the pc and getting a program to read the bpm of a vinyl or do ya mean getting a mp3 of a song and getting the bpm that way...only thing with a mp3 is that it depends what speed it has been ripped at so its not very accurate...if you mean get the actual bpm of a vinyl while its on the decks i didnt know this was possible.

[sirius]

I hated poeple who did this...lol. It got right on my tits, all those labels they stuck to classic tuneage - like a big fek off white label with '122' daubed over it or the vinyl / cover in marker pen.

What you can do, if you wanna do it, is either by one of those 'cheat' ( imo lol) beat counters for your mixer or play your vinyl on the absolute pefrect zero on your stroboscope (blips) on your platter and play fruityloops adjusting the tempo until it matches. That way, the absolute dead speed of the record is kept so you know its initial value.

I suppose it helps knowing the initial speed, but you should know by instinct whether a tunes well fast or not, ie dont mix Hixxy and Dougal into black box....or CeCe Rogers into DjTrix etc....lol.



sirius.

[scaz]

one you get the hang of the 4 bars you will find it a lot more enjoyable.

just stick in there and dont give up.

[jamie_crichton]

Top Man...u've just gained a space in the shouts section of me new site..lol

I'll ratch out the leads that come with the decks n get it wired up through the input on me soundcard. Do the decks have to be directly connected to the PC or can i link the decks to the hifi then the hifi to the PC will this affect any of the Software that i will be using?

[grad]

nah, through the amp/stereo is fine. I'll pm you the deets of the programme over the weekend.

[sirius]

Only pussies fanny about clocking thier vinyl anyway...... You might find it useful, but it seems very very odd to me.

I only mentioned fruityloops cos u already have it, thats all. Perhaps theres BPM detection software etc, I dont know - Ive never ever needed it in all these years - even when I first got my first ever decks!!.
I was thinking you could set up your deck at 'zero' on the slider and adjust the pattern you make in fruityloops until they mesh together.....therefore giving you its 'dead' bpm...Ok it may be stupid, but hey, Im only trying to give some ideas about something you could do with what you have.

Good luck with it all m8. Just dont deface your tunes m8, just for me......

Sirius.