Placing mixes!?!

Zade

Right, heres an interesting subject!

The placing a mixes is everything in mixing it up as a dj, basically i used to mix dnb, i feel that this sort of genre u could mix it up all over the place, my taste then travelled to House music which i have been mixing for about 8 months, my beatmatching is perfect but its placing mixing which feels abit of a bugger... could i mention that i can blend a tune into the end of another tune (funky house style) but i dotn feel like im doing justice for myself JUST by doing this, and wen i try and wack 2 tunes over the top of eachother, they dont seem to sound right (meaning placing another mix in while another tune is in the middle peak of its play) IT CANT JUST B 'pop it in at the end' with house cannit?

i mean, my blendings perfect and i wana start djing at pubs n bars, but the factor is bugging me and i feel like im missing something with my mixing...

thanx for reading... DJ'S get back 2 me!

Executive Steve

thing about house is you need to be aware of things like key changes and stuff like that... house is structured quitre differently to a drum and bass tune, its more like techno where it starts, builds, stops for a bit, and keeps going...

drum and bass you generally have an intro, a big drop, followed by the main meat of the tune, followed by an outro... and because there's "cueing points" at each of the places where an element might come in or out in the main body of the tune, it's easy to line the tunes up for double drops and bassline switches and fast little fader movements to switch and layer the breakbeat.

house/techno/trance/anything that just goes boomboomboomboom the main thing is not to mess with the loudest musical element of the tune you're mixing in, and make sure everything is in key... it really is all about your tune selection... learn your tunes, and learn what sounds good together.... experiment with eq-ing elements out of the mix if they sound rubbish [thats about the only scope for creative mixing you get with house i'm afraid!]

moral of teh story?

house music: great vibes, crowds that have actually had a shower in the last few days, loads of girls, swanky venues - about as exciting to mix as watching the online paint drying webcam.

Zade

ahhhhahaha, nice one bro, nicely sed and nicely finished.. i see where your coming from swell which is nice, ill bare what youve sed in mind. yeahh i agree aboutt he tunes, im building them up atm, and planning on gettign cdj, surely that'll help matters? ?? ? ?

Executive Steve

well it wont if you're going to play tunes you havent paid for, cos then nobody will bother to produce or release tunes at all any more... not to mention the fact that mixing with cdj's will make mixing house even LESS fun than it already is... its like picking your nose with gloves on if you ask me [although admittedly the more recent cdj's seem to be overcoming this by being a bit more user friendly]

i suppose you COULD buy unmixed compilations, and that should keep the costs down a bit... and there's always beatport etc, although i dont know what the crack is with house labels and mp3's, i know that drum and bass has embraced them in a big way!

theone

[cm]tyranny wrote:

i know that drum and bass has embraced them in a big way!

Have a look at traxsource and tell me that house hasn't embraced mp3 as well as drum and bass
http://www.traxsource.com/

Bri

Presumably they are all DRM'd?

theone

If you mean are they watermarked then yes

Bri

Copyright restrictions embedded...might need a cert. to allow playback, restrictions on burning rights, subject to change in the future without notice.

Executive Steve

theone wrote:

Have a look at traxsource and tell me that house hasn't embraced mp3 as well as drum and bass
http://www.traxsource.com/

cool, i'll take your word for it! as i said, i don't [or rather DIDN'T] know what the craic was with house labels and whether or not they'd embraced mp3. i don't really follow house... i have maybe two or three compilations and albums etc that i bought just to see what it was like to mix, found it wasnt really for me... i like the vibes you can make with a house set, but i dont want to put myself through the boredom of having to mix house to make those vibes....

theone

Bri wrote:

Copyright restrictions embedded...might need a cert. to allow playback, restrictions on burning rights, subject to change in the future without notice.

drm is an umbrella term ,afaik traxsource don't use it, by watermark I mean like a digital footprint like a signature the person that bought it has certain responsibilities i.e not share it over a p2p network the file will always be tracked back to that person and they get sued etc.

This might explain it a little better than i have
http://forums.traxsource.com/viewtopic.php?t=18

Bri

Grand so, I've no problem with logical restrictions that don't act as a general hinderance. Yeah DRM is just the handy term to use when checking these things out.

Looks like a good site.

I've also been looking at beatport.com and recordstore.co.uk.

theone

[cm]tyranny wrote:

cool, i'll take your word for it! as i said, i don't [or rather DIDN'T] know what the craic was with house labels and whether or not they'd embraced mp3. i don't really follow house... i have maybe two or three compilations and albums etc that i bought just to see what it was like to mix, found it wasnt really for me... i like the vibes you can make with a house set, but i dont want to put myself through the boredom of having to mix house to make those vibes....

fair enough, but if your used to mixing drum nd bass anything below 180 bpm will be a bit boring

Executive Steve

to be honest i think the best defence against piracy is constantly reminding anyone who might be tempted to play a stolen file out that dance music producers make feck all from releasing tunes as it is and if you can't stump up €0.99 for an mp3 of a bit of fresh tuneage you're clearly not committed enough to your music in the first place.

one thing i hate about mp3 downloads, legal or not, is that ther's going to be no such thing as a rare tune from now on in... no tunes that are hard to get, no tunes that are deleted or whatever...

drum and bass is an absolute nightmare as it is because there's a huge culture of playing the newest of the new evne if its not as good as last weeks tune... people go to insane lengths to get unreleased stuff off other producers, queueing up for hours to get acetates cut etc... cdj's and AIM have changed that a bit, but it still means that the large majority of people who buy their records in shops [not talking about the "thursday afternoon presing f5 on the chemical records site" cru of course :rolleyes:] have been hearing the records being caned by every big name for nearly a year....

does house have that culture? or is it different?

Executive Steve

theone wrote:

fair enough, but if your used to mixing drum nd bass anything below 180 bpm will be a bit boring

its not the speed! [and i'd rarely go above 168 - faster than that and complicated drums dont sound as funky imo]

its the fact that you can mix it in so many different ways! you can play some minimal steppy techy growly things and mix them like a techno tune, working the eq's twisting the basslines in and out, but you can also play something with chopped up complex breakbeats and rebuild the breaks with the cross fader, from a mixing point of view its just more fun; you're doing more things with the music you're playing.

Executive Steve

and i certainly don't want to imply that HOUSE is boring! i just find it less interesting to mix... Big difference!

theone

took you up wrong there then sorry bout that , therein lies the difference though, to me house is about the tunes and not about the mixing as long as you don't sound like your hosting the grand national in the booth that is.
The mixing can be technically perfect but if the tunes aren't up to scratch then your on a hiding to nothing imo.

Bri

theone wrote:

as long as you don't sound like your hosting the grand national in the booth that is.

whewhehwhe

Executive Steve

see to me all music is about the tunes... i think really really hard when i'm packing a bag to go and play out or to go to a house party or whatever because i want to be able to select tunes that work well together and can build up a coherent set as well as saying something about music... its nice to be able to play a set where you can go from melancholy to cheerful to sinister and back in the space of a single tune... have an element of everything from jazz to reggae to metal to samba to ambient to funk to hip hop and back, as opposed to being confined to a kickdrum and some hats with a couple of xylophone samples.... i'll post up one of my own mixes in the next week or two as soon as i can get some hosting and you'll see what i mean!

theone

I'm only going on you saying that mixing house is boring that implies that it's not about the tunes to you, fair enough if your not feeling the tracks then thats ok music is all opinion at the end of the day, but saying mixing them is boring sort of implies that ,well to me anyway .
I'll give your mixes a listen aswell as soon as you find some hosting, I'm partial to a bit of d n b from time to time, I have a bit of web space meself if your stuck.
I see what your point is though I try not to over analyse stuff meself not overly prepare stuff but i still believe in the mantra fail to prepare prepare to fail, it's nice to keep a bit of space for a bit of improv when you need it though.

Kingsize

"one thing i hate about mp3 downloads, legal or not, is that ther's going to be no such thing as a rare tune from now on in... no tunes that are hard to get, no tunes that are deleted or whatever... "

I agree' although there is a kind of upside to this & that is that djs will get into the production side of things & create their own edits/versions/bootleg remixes of tunes.

Executive Steve

Kingsize wrote:

"one thing i hate about mp3 downloads, legal or not, is that ther's going to be no such thing as a rare tune from now on in... no tunes that are hard to get, no tunes that are deleted or whatever... "

I agree' although there is a kind of upside to this & that is that djs will get into the production side of things & create their own edits/versions/bootleg remixes of tunes.

but most dj's are producing as well too anyway nowadays... they make the tunes t get exposure, and because there's no profit in dance music anymore [sales are down across the board, manufacturing costs are going up] they need the exposure so they can get dj work which is highly paid and more prestigious than slaving your arse off in a studio...

Executive Steve

theone wrote:

I'm only going on you saying that mixing house is boring that implies that it's not about the tunes to you, fair enough if your not feeling the tracks then thats ok music is all opinion at the end of the day, but saying mixing them is boring sort of implies that ,well to me anyway .

I see what your point is though I try not to over analyse stuff meself not overly prepare stuff but i still believe in the mantra fail to prepare prepare to fail, it's nice to keep a bit of space for a bit of improv when you need it though.

hmmm not "over analyse" i just like to carried as varied a bag as i can get away with while still staying "coherent" eg each of the tunes in the bag will assist me in creating the vibe i want to create with my music - i'd never ever "plan" a set as such.... most times i play out i dont even know what i'll play first, but once i start, because the bag is properly compiled, nothing should sound out of context, no matter how different or varied the set! but sure all dj's do that, its no earth shattering secret or anything, i suppose playing house you must agonise even more, since tune selection is the only real yardstick of a house dj!

i don't think dancing listening, eating drinking or making love to house music is boring, i just like mixing for mixing's sake, and like to mix stuf thats exciting and a bit more honest... i mean, lovely and tinkly and cheerful and joyous as house is, its all just about that fake "weehey hands in the air we're all such lovely people" buzz... we're not.. we're just off our heads, life is grimy. there should be a bit of room in any art to reflect that!

theone

[cm]tyranny wrote:

i suppose playing house you must agonise even more, since tune selection is the only real yardstick of a house dj!

I wouldn't say it was the only yardstick but to me it's the most important,House isn't the only genre where tune selection is paramount though is it? I would of thought that of every genre

[cm]tyranny wrote:

i don't think dancing listening, eating drinking or making love to house music is boring, i just like mixing for mixing's sake, and like to mix stuf thats exciting and a bit more honest...

afaik dance music was pretty much founded on house I don't understand how drum n bass is more honest as you say,is it because it's more underground more of a closed scene is that what your aiming at.

[cm]tyranny wrote:

i mean, lovely and tinkly and cheerful and joyous as house is, its all just about that fake "weehey hands in the air we're all such lovely people" buzz... we're not.. we're just off our heads, life is grimy. there should be a bit of room in any art to reflect that!

Theres always room for diversity life would be pretty boring if we didn't have that if everybody liked the same thing.
Theres lots of genres of house not just the soulful stuff,I admit the gospel stuff can only be listened to in small doses but saying all house is like that is pretty close minded of you tbh

Executive Steve

well... basically what i was saying is that 99.9999999% of house is created with the intention of creating the same happy party vibe [ok the likes of jori hulkonnen's stuff on warp, with all those cold glacial strings is a bit different, as is the likes of akufen and all that micro house minimal stuff] but the point is that, while you have a certain latitude in choosing a tune based on what it does, you have **** all choice in choosing what a tune says.

tune selection is important in every single genre, yeah obviously, my point wasnt that it is more iportant in house, just that beyond thinking really hard what he or she is going to play next, the average house dj doesnt really have much to do... i was astonished when i saw eric morillo... *puts on tune, smiles for eight minutes nodding his head with his arms folded puts on next tune crowd goes bananas* - thats not mixing, its playing records.

yes dance music was founded on house [or rather, it was founded on disco and house was disco produced by people who were deliberately trying to disregard the verse - chorus song structure to create more danceable mixable music... since "house" music was often made by the in house sound engineers at disco recording studio's pressed up independently for teh disco market, it came to be known as "house" music - which is why rob playford the owner of moving shadow, a pioneering hardcore and drum and bass label [who havnt done anything interesting in about six years ] still insists on calling it a house label. categories - bad!

theone

I'd have to disagree with that your saying you can't make sweeping statements about a genre that you admit yourself you haven't a clue about, you mightn't like it, that’s cool but saying what your saying about isn't really valid seen as you don't really know what your talking about house wise anyway.

I know some drum n bass but nowhere near enough to say that something like you said yourself.
You'd be able to qualify what your saying to a certain extent, by stating that’s it's your own opinion but you don't even do that ......

Using Eric morillo as an example is pretty poor as well he used to be a house dj but he borders on hh these days, subliminal was ok a few years ago but it's output in the last few years is poor to say the least imo, it’s disappointing for someone in his position to take the direction he’s taking.

Your slating house but a pioneering drum n bass/hardcore label calls itself a house label yeah that makes sense ……

Selik

[cm]tyranny wrote:

well... basically what i was saying is that 99.9999999% of house is created with the intention of creating the same happy party vibe [ok the likes of jori hulkonnen's stuff on warp, with all those cold glacial strings is a bit different, as is the likes of akufen and all that micro house minimal stuff] but the point is that, while you have a certain latitude in choosing a tune based on what it does, you have **** all choice in choosing what a tune says.

tune selection is important in every single genre, yeah obviously, my point wasnt that it is more iportant in house, just that beyond thinking really hard what he or she is going to play next, the average house dj doesnt really have much to do... i was astonished when i saw eric morillo... *puts on tune, smiles for eight minutes nodding his head with his arms folded puts on next tune crowd goes bananas* - thats not mixing, its playing records.

yes dance music was founded on house [or rather, it was founded on disco and house was disco produced by people who were deliberately trying to disregard the verse - chorus song structure to create more danceable mixable music... since "house" music was often made by the in house sound engineers at disco recording studio's pressed up independently for teh disco market, it came to be known as "house" music - which is why rob playford the owner of moving shadow, a pioneering hardcore and drum and bass label [who havnt done anything interesting in about six years ] still insists on calling it a house label. categories - bad!

Hey Steve if ya think mixing house is boring and uncomplicated go check out Calvin James play. He uses four decks, three mixers, sampler & FX machine and no headphones!!! :eek:

Think his mix from the Electric Picnic is available for download on some Irish DJ site of which the name escapes me...