How you change the positions of the channel-faders, and the time you take to do so, is up to you. You can simply raise one fader while lowering the other, or wait for the Tune B’s channel-fader to be halfway up before you start lowering Tune A’s fader. Make the adjustments depending on your own personal style, the output levels and what sounds best with the two tunes you’re using.
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If you prefer, you can leave the cross-fader in the middle (or turn it off if you have that function) to bypass the cross-fader function all together. This option gives you ultimate control over the individual volumes of your tunes during the mix. The only difference to the previous method is that you start with the channel-fader at 0 for the incoming tune (Tune B), and end with the channel-fader at 0 for the outgoing tune (Tune A).
Balancing it out with EQs
As with channel-faders, EQshave multiple roles. The first role is sound con- trol; affecting how the music sounds on tape or to the dance floor. You can also use EQs to add some variation and spice to a tune. Check out the section
‘Cutting in’ later in this chapter. But their most useful role is in smoothing the sound of the mix. Good EQ control can’t do anything about a poor choice of tunes to mix together, but great EQ control can turn a passable mix into an incredible one.
Smoothing a transition with the bass EQ
The bass EQ is the one that you use most to create an even sound through the mix. When both tunes play with their bass at full, even if one tune is qui- eter than the other, the bass drums are too powerful and the bass melodies combine to sound messy.
The simplest but most effective technique is to killthe bass (reduce it to or near to, its lowest point) on the incoming tune when you start to mix it in, and when you want to make this tune the dominant one, increase the bass EQ at the same time as decreasing the bass EQ on the tune that you are mixing out of. This manoeuvre means that the amount of bass you hear through the speakers stays the same; the bass is simply coming from a different tune.
With the right tunes, taking your time over this swap can create a subtle, unnoticeable mix. Or, swapping the EQs in one beat can cause a hands in the airmoment to emphasise a change in key (see Chapter 17), a change in the power of the mix, a change in genre, or to introduce the bass line from a tune that you know the crowd will love.
Taking the edge off with the mid-range and high-end
Despite the fact that the high frequencies aren’t as loud and obvious as the bass frequencies, they’re just as important in controlling the sound of the mix. Two sets of loud hi-hats playing over each other can sound just as bad as two sets of bass drums and bass melodies. The technique is exactly the same as the bass EQ, except you don’t need to cut the high EQ nearly as much. For example, on my Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, I find that the twelve
o’clock position is normally the best place to leave the EQ for normal play- out. When I want to cut out the high EQ to help the sound of the mix, I only need to move the knob to around the ten o’clock position (rather than the seven o’clock position for the bass EQ).
As the mid EQ covers a larger range of frequencies, how much you use this technique depends on the tunes you’re playing. You may not need to swap over the mid EQs if there isn’t a noticeable clash of sounds, or you may even find that rather than cutting the mid EQ, you want to boost it. Sometimes, when the outgoing tune is playing quieter, I boost the mid-range to play just those frequencies louder than normal. If you have a melody or sound repeat- ing in the background of the tune, this emphasis can lengthen and strengthen the mix.
Always keep an eye on the meters and an ear on the sound of the mix while you’re swapping any EQs. Strive to keep an even sound as the two tunes play over each other. If one tune is too loud, or both tunes have too much bass or high frequency, you may create a cacophony of noise.
Using Mixing Tricks and Gimmicks
Tricks and gimmicks are great to use once in a while as they add surprise, and a little pizzazz to your mix. Avoid over using them, however, because the listener may think that you only use them because you can’t mix between tunes properly. They’re best used as transitions in to a new chapterof the mix, an increase in energy, a change in genre, a key change, or even just a change in tempo.
With each technique, experiment with how long you take to move the cross-fader and where the cross-fader is positioned when you start the trick. Start by setting the cross-fader so that you can’t hear the next tune until the start of the move, then find out what it sounds like if you have the cross-fader in the middle when you start the move. Give thought to volume control as well because some of these tricks really don’t like to be performed with the channel-fader at maximum – you may deafen the dance floor, and can blow a speaker!
Spinbacks and dead-stops
Try out a technique called a spinback – abbreviated SBin Figure 14-9.
Beatmatch and start a mix between two tunes with perfect placement (see
‘Perfecting Placement’ at the beginning of the chapter) so that the tune you
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want to mix out of (Tune A) ends a section as Tune B (the new tune) begins the first phrase of a section. On the very last beat before this change, place your finger on Tune A and spin the record back, sharply. As the tune spins backwards, close the cross-fader over to Tune B within one beat, as shown in Figure 14-9:
To perform a dead-stop, instead of spinning the record back in the example above, press the Start/Stop button on Tune A (the one you’re mixing out of).
This action makes the tune stop playing in about one beat (unless your decks have a function to change the ‘brake speed’ and you’ve set it to last longer).
As with the spinback, move the cross-fader over to Tune B by the time it plays the first beat of the new section (so the move only lasts one beat).
Power off
A power offis when you turn off the power to the turntable (normally located bottom left with the red strobe light underneath it). When you turn off the turntable, it gradually gets slower and slower, until it stops.
Power off is a great trick in the DJ booth if you have good lights, and some- one who knows how to use them. Ask your partner-in-mayhem to kill the lights at the same time as you do the power off. Chances are, everyone will think ‘Power Cut!!’. After a few seconds, slam in the next tune at the most powerful point, at full volume, as the lighting jock floods the dance floor with as much light as possible. This trick takes the dance floor by surprise, and – you hope – really jazzes them up. It’s very clichéd, but at the right time, works a treat.
Bar 1 Bar 2 Bar 3 Bar 4 Bar 1 Tune A: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 SB SILENT Tune B: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Figure 14-9:
The spinback is performed on the fourth beat of the fourth bar, then instantly mixes into Tune B.
A cappella
If you have an instrumental track that you think would sound better with something else over the top of it, look for an a cappella, a separate vocal track without any instruments behind it.
The problem with using vocals is that you need the vocal to be sung in the same key as the instrumental you want to play it over, otherwise it sounds out of tune. This makes speeches and other spoken words a great alternative.
I have a copy of JFK’s inaugural speech that I love to mix over long instru- mental tracks. The line ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ is an incredible introduction into the most powerful parts of a tune.
Don’t get so involved in your new creation that you forget to mix in the next track. Your blend of a ‘Learn Italian’ lesson over a great instrumental may be going down really well, but if you run out of time to beatmatch and mix in the next tune, you’ve wasted your time.
A third input device (CD/turntable/laptop) in your set-up lets you play the a cappella over the instrumental, beatmatch the next tune, and start the mix with the a cappella playing the whole time. You can also use an audio pro- gram to pre-mix the creation on computer, burning it CD to play later.
However, the spontaneous performance side of the live new mix is often what makes it special.
Cutting in
Cutting inbeats from another tune gets its roots from beatjuggling(see Chapter 16). The idea is to beat match two tunes, and move the cross-fader between them to temporarily cut inbeats from one tune over the other. In the right hands, this method can be incredibly fast and complicated. Figure 14-10 shows a basic, slow pattern (underlined numbers are the beats you can hear):
Bar 1 Bar 2 Bar 3 Bar 4 Bar 1 Tune A: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Tune B: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Figure 14-10:
Various beats from Tune B are
‘cut in’ to Tune A to add power and a new feel to the tune.
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You don’t have to move the cross-fader all the way over when cutting in beats, you can go three-quarters of the way across so that you can still hear the original tune. I find placing a finger at the three-quarter point helps this, because you can just bounce the cross-fader off your finger – it stops the cross-fader getting any further than three-quarters of the way across, no matter how fast or hard you cut in the other tune.
A variation on cutting in beats is cutting outfrequencies of the tune. Dropping the power out of the bass for the last bar of a phrase before it changes to a new element can be extremely effective, and using it when the crowd is extremely excitable and energetic can blow the roof off the club. Which is no mean feat if you’re in the basement!
Mixing Different Styles of Music
Some genres of music don’t rely on rules like beatmatching and perfect place- ment in order to get from tune to tune. The music is more important than the mix, but making the transition from one tune to another does take a special skill. You still need these techniques as a beatmatching DJ; you may need these skills to change genres, take over from someone else, or change the feel of the mix.
The wedding/party/rock/pop mix
In many ways, the transition between tunes is a lot harder for the wedding/
party/rock/pop DJ. A beatmatching DJ has the safety net of simply matching the beats, and then fading between tunes, with no fade out, no sudden start, no change in tempo, and no drastic genre change. The wedding/party DJ needs to work with all these issues.
The important part of this mix is where in the new tune you start. Tunes like
‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison (a wedding favourite) that have a power- ful, instant start are great to work with. As the outgoing tune is fading out, start the opening bass melody of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ at full volume, then quickly fade out the outgoing tune within one or two beats. You can wait for a natural fade at the end of a track, or if you don’t want to wait that long, fade the outgoing song down to about 50 per cent of its current volume, then start the new track at full volume.
If you want to mix a house tune with pounding bass beats into a track you can’t beatmatch out of, the technique is still the same. Because house tracks tend to have long, beat-only intros, start them later, when the main tune kicks in.
Looking deeper at the technique, you have to work out how much you need to fade out a tune before starting the next one, and when to start the next tune. Some tunes sound fine when you start them at the beginning of the out- going tune’s bar – some sound better on the third or fourth beat of the bar.
Practice and experience in listening to, and playing, your tunes lets you develop the skill, and an instinct for how best to mix your tunes.
Of course, not all records have a powerful point in the tune that you’d like to start from. For instance, maybe you want to play a slow track, so people can smooch and dance closer (and you can run to the bathroom or the bar). The mix out of the last track is the same as with the ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ track, but instead of an immediate, full-volume start on the new track, it may sound better if you took a full bar (four beats) to go from quiet to full volume, and create a smooth, swelling fade-up of ‘Wonderful Tonight’, for example.
Another option is to talk during the mix. Your tales of the buffet, drink promos, and comments about the mother-of-the bride’s inappropriate dancing can all be used to cover a mix.
The trick is to control the volume of the music as you speak into the micro- phone; keep the music low enough so that you can be heard, but loud enough so that it doesn’t sound like a monologue from you. Listen to how radio DJs talk over the beginning of songs that they play. They know when the tune changes from intro to the main song and time their chatter to coincide; get to know your tunes so you can do the same thing. Perform a simple cross-fade between the two tunes, speaking over the mix to hide the transition, and stop waffling just as the main tune starts. Chapter 22 has more information about talking into a microphone.
The R & B mix
R & B doesn’t tend to have the long, luxurious intros that house and trance music has, so the tunes often have a very good opening bar that you can use to mix over the last tune much like the party DJ mix. In addition, R & B often kills bass beats for the last bar of a phrase, making this point perfect for mixing in the new tune, because otherwise the complicated, bass-heavy drums fight with each other.
R & B does have scope for beatmatching if you have tunes with similar beat patterns, but R & B works best when the beatmatch mix is as short as possi- ble. Using the new tune, a short baby scratch (see Chapter 16) in time with the beats on the outgoing tune, then starting the new tune playing from a powerful point is an excellent way to mix when you can’t match beats.
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Drum and bass, and breakbeat
Drum and bass, and breakbeat are both genres that tend to follow the four beats to a bar structure that house/trance follows, so you’re normally able to follow the basic principles of placement mentioned in the earlier section
‘Perfecting Placement’. However, the beats in the bars are a lot more compli- cated, so if you’re trying to beatmatch breakbeat or drum and bass, it can help to focus on the snare sounds instead of the bass drums.
A huge phenomenon in drum and bass circles over the past few years has been the double drop, an extension of breakdown mixing. All genres can benefit from this technique. Beatmatch and start a mix so that two tunes are about to hit a breakdown (also called a drop) at the same time – the drop on either tune may be the main breakdown, or a shorter one earlier or later in the tune. The key is to mix them together so they both come outof their drops at the same time, after which you keep both tunes audible, playing through the speakers. So if you’re mixing an 8-bar drop into a 16-bar drop, be sure to start the 8-bar drop halfway through the longer one.
Tune selection is vital for creating a good sounding double-drop. Don’t perform it with just any two tunes – they need to have a complementary rhythm and key, and you need to pay special attention to volume and EQ control on both tunes to avoid a messy sound. Experiment with the tunes you use, and the drops in the tune you use for the double-drop.
Performed well, this live re-mix when playing two tunes over each other sounds really powerful.
Chapter 15
Mixing with CDs
In This Chapter
Locating the right tune and cue point using different CD deck controls Starting the CD and making pitch corrections
Trying out additional CD deck features
The great thing about mixing with CDs is that the only way the beats of two tunes can drift out of time is if you haven’t correctly set the pitch. When the pitch is right and the beats are in sync, all you have to worry about is the mix, not dodgy motors on cheap turntables.
Chapter 12 is written with the vinyl DJ in mind. This chapter discusses the controls on CD decks and how CD DJs use them to do the same thing as the vinyl DJ, then take mixing to another level of creativity.
Navigating the CD
No matter what format you use to DJ with – CD, MP3, vinyl, and so on – the basic concepts of beatmatching remain the same: find a precise starting point (the cue), set the pitch control so that the beats of your tunes play at the same speed, and start the new tune so that the beats play at the same time as the other tune. The choice you make about what format to use only affects the mechanics of howyou go about each stage.
Vinyl is an easy format to use to find the cue – simply pick the right side of the record, look at the groove, place the needle near to where you want to start, then play the record backwards and forwards to find the precise cue point. The hardest part of vinyl DJing is starting the record so the beats play in time with the beats on the other tune.
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