DJing/Mixing

[Eddbmxdude]

Hi everyone

I have asked this on another forum I am a member on, but thought I'd ask on my favorite one
6 months ago I bought a vinyl turntable so I could buy rare B sides and listen to them but the more and more vinyl I bought, the more I got interested in learning to mix. I have just bought a set of decks and a mixer and basically have no idea how to start, haha. I have a few tunes (drum and bass mostly) and have had a little mess about, I even got 2 tunes beatmatched but I think that was pure fluke

Anyone got any tips for a beginner? GK, I know you used to spin the wheels!



Any advice would be most appreciated.
Edd

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I have decks and can mix!

I do a bit of DnB, trance, house, anything really. I've done a fair few private parties and even played at a club in Leicester once.

I think the most imporant thing is to get your basic beat matching down before you try any of the fancy stuff. It's all just about practising and getting an "ear" for it. An important thing to bear in mind is to make sure your transitions (is this the right word?) match up - dance music is very formulaic and basically will change every 4 bars, and usually drastically every 16 bars. Most dance music is 4/4 time so 4 beats = 1 bar. If you get these matched up in the two tunes you are trying to mix it will sound a lot better than "just" getting them playing at the same speed. I struggled with it for weeks.

Other than that I don't really know.. and I'm not a very good teacher so I may be talking out of my arse! The guy who taught me is now a semi-professional drum and bass DJ and well on his way to a degree in music production so I hope he knows what he's talking about!

[Eddbmxdude]

Cheers for the advice mate.
I have been buying trance tunes this morning because I think it will be easier to learn with (And I love trance). At the moment im struggling to concentrate on 2 tunes at the same time. Comes with practice I spose.

[gkmac]

SmellyGeekBoy has the right advice about the majority of dance music being in 4/4 time, 4 beats to a bar (or measure) etc... Simply listening to the tracks is enough to get the gist of this bit.

One excellent method of learning to line up the beats on both decks is to have two identical copies of the same record. Have both pitch sliders at 0%, have your crossfader in the middle (don't worry about headphones at this point), cue both records just before the first beat at the beginning, and start them at the same time. Due to mechanical limitations they are going to be out of sync giving a kind of echo effect, but they'll be at the same BPM already. Move the crossfader between the decks repeatedly, which one is ahead? Drag the ahead-playing record very slightly for a fraction of a second, and then move the crossfader between the decks again. If that record is still ahead, drag it again.

Eventually you'll reach a point where both records are playing more-or-less exactly the same point at exactly the same time, for technical reasons you'll hear a "phase-shift" effect when this happens. If you drag the ahead-playing record too much, it then goes behind the other record. You can then either drag the other record that's now ahead, or you can speed up the behind-playing record temporarily, either by giving the record's label a push or twisting the spindle in the middle. It's vital to learn both dragging to slow down the record, and pushing/twisting to speed up the record, since when you mix live you'll only be able to manipulate the "coming next" record.

GK, I know you used to spin the wheels!

Sort of. My market was weddings and birthday parties and I already had a massive CD collection of Top 40 tunes past and present, so I used a Denon 2600 pitch-controllable twin CD player with mixer (as featured in this video (not me!)). WIth the help of some extended dance 12" mixes on CD singles I learnt to beatmatch with it at home.

Instead of dragging/pushing records you either spin a knob or use "pitch bend" buttons, but otherwise the principle of beat-matching is exactly the same on CD. Often at discos I would beat-match two typical Top 40 singles and quickly mix across them, so people were already dancing to the next record by the time they realised it began.

I've never tried mixing with turntables, though I'd love to give it a go sometime...

[Eddbmxdude]

SmellyGeekBoy has the right advice about the majority of dance music being in 4/4 time, 4 beats to a bar (or measure) etc... Simply listening to the tracks is enough to get the gist of this bit.

One excellent method of learning to line up the beats on both decks is to have two identical copies of the same record. ..............SNIP!....................................since when you mix live you'll only be able to manipulate the "coming next" record.

Excellent explanation, cheers GK.

I've never tried mixing with turntables, though I'd love to give it a go sometime...

You are more than welcome to have a go at the next Voodoo Unicycles rave

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Cool, trance is very easy to learn with. I learnt with the generic cheesy dance stuff (Enocre Une Fois, Sandstorm, Time To Burn era). GK's advice about trying with 2 copies of the same record sounds good - unfortunately I never had 2 copies of the same thing so I never got to try this!

Following 2 tunes at the same time is confusing at first, I find that using one ear to listen to one and the other to listen to the other is easiest (one ear on the headphones, other listening to the speakers), but I have friends who have them both mixed in the headphones. It's down to personal preference I guess.