Opinions on mixing

mordeith

Hey all.
I recently bought a starters kit to try my hand at mixing. I'm now able to beat match pretty well and I've recorded a few pretty nice mixes (albeit with one or two dodgy moments :rolleyes: ) The question I'm asking is in a public situation, say a bar, do people reckon that basic mixing is acceptable? I'm asking this because the mixer I have has the bare minimum, i.e Low and High filters, Levels and X-Fader. Should I buy a fancier mixer before attempting a public gig? Do people want to here loads of kill switches and FX being thrown in or are they happy just hearing good mixing?
Any opinions gratefully received

Eddie Brennan

yeah u dont need effects at all. if ur solid at beat matching then that wud be fine. i have a djm 600 at the mo and its grand with the effects etc but im alos buying an allen an heath xzone 92 that has better build quality for basic mixing, it has effects too but i wouldnt use them that much. u dont need to use effects at all, most dont and some who do overuse them which is terrible to listen, at the end of the day have fun!
Eddie

StickyMcGinty

get a set off www.cave.no, one of his demo mixes. he throws somthing in every 8 bars nearly and its a crackin mix!

the effects are so easy to use they are over-used, once you can beatmatch your grand thne rest will come to ye

tman

people will want to listen so long as your tune selection, corrections and eqing are tight. (kinda rules me out )

rabbitinlights

Id defo stay away from Effects for the timebeing, beatmatching is the obvious skill, but programming, which is putting tracks together that sound good and getting the flow of a set right is the hard part. beat matching two tracks for about 10 sec's and moving the Xfader arcoss isnt that hard (only took me about 18 months!!), but layering two tracks over each other for a while and getting them to blend together is where its at. so a person who is not a DJ and doesnt know all the tracks cant really tell when a mix is being made.

What kinda stuff are you playing?

Hub

Most people wont have a clue lol. Its only fellow DJs that will really care, the nerds that they are!

I've been beat matchin for a while and would be pretty confident in playing out but as of yet, I have'nt. My mixin is pretty decent.

As long as you dont let beats slip out of time, effects are not that important tbh

fish fingers

make sure your choons are good.build a nice set together before you play out and practice it a few times. as long as your beats ain't all over the place( a herd of stampeding elephants ) you should be grand man. tis only dj's and nerds who notice alright. the fx and flangers adn all that crap can wait a while methinks

Cake Fiend

It depends completely on where you're playing. If it's just any old bar where people just want some background music, it doesn't really matter. If you want to mix in a club where people go specifically for the music, you're going to really have to know what you're doing. One way or another, you don't want to be the guy that's always doing that EQ-**** and unnecessary effects business. Nobody likes that guy.

smeggle

As long as tracks are 'In Key' you should be able to layer them with little problem. Count to 32 and if the beats stay in, then they'll most likely stay on beat, always stay within 5-10bpm of track bpm of each track and drop the bass slightly for the track your layering in.

Probably your most important thing is sort your tracks into there respective keys, just like any other music. I use a basic standard beringer, though I can kill a frequency if I want, like bass or mid, it has no effects. You can totally change the effect of one track with another and without any fancy trickery once you get to know your case really well. Heck, I have stuff like Glen Miller in mine and I use stuff like that to drop effects in. pre-set cd's in nero with your own sampled sounds and use those. You can put a cd in and extend that into an hr's mix just by cutting back between tracks.

Figure out length of mix or how long your likely to play for and arrange your
cd's/vinyl accordingly.

Best of all have fun - if you enjoy what your doing, 9 times out of ten - the audience will, you will get the odd 'Off' night but then everyone does - heh, we all know that one :rolleyes: lol

mordeith

Thanks for all the opinions guys. I like to try and mix for about 30-45 secs and bring in the new bass line over the current track. I find this only works if it's not too heavy else it sounds like a big mess . I play a mix of funky house and US prog house type stuff (Thick Dick, Who Da funk and other Subusa label tracks) . This allows for a slow build to peak time, on the floor tunes (Basment Jaxx, Chemicals Bros, Studio B, Roger Snachez etc). Glad to hear that people reckon that tight mixing is the main thing. I wouldn't mind trying a few FX later on but for now I think I'll just fine tune my set style and mixing.
Thanks again guys

spyro_2001ie

Sico wrote:

EQ-****

Finally there's a word for that

tel922001

make sure u have a mixer that has gain , some of the cheap mixers dont have it and it can make ur mixing pretty bad, not all records are the same volume , so when u mix a good quality record with crystal clear sound into one thats not so good, no matter how good ur mixing is it will sound pretty bad, so u need to get ur levels right, after that ur mixing should flow , and if ur makin a cd pickin the 12 best tunes isnt always a good thing , sometimes u have to use tunes that are different , but they are used because a certain track is hard to blend in with , and you use this lesser track to go from one good track to another, sometimes planning out ur cd is good to start with , and in time pickin randon tunes to mix comes with experience , u need to get to know ur tunes .i.e when the breaks come in when u lose a beat etc, but always try new things thats the only way to be adventerous and learn new things