5:35
How to mix when you think you cannot
On YouTube this video is called Beginner DJ Lesson on How to Mix if You Cant Mix
What this lesson teaches
Aimed at somebody who cannot beatmatch reliably, and useful to everybody.
The technique
Find the break in the track that is playing - the section where the drums or the bass drop away - and bring the next record in there.
The reason it works is that the hard part of a blend is holding two full records together for sixteen bars. During a break, the playing track is not full. There is room, there is less to collide with, and the new track can establish itself before the first one comes back.
He still gets the tempos close
Worth being honest about this. His two tracks are 124.1 and 124.7 and he pulls one to match the other before doing anything.
So it is not quite "mixing without beatmatching". It is mixing with much less precision required - because the overlap is short and partly empty, a small tempo error does not have time to become audible.
That is a reasonable intermediate step for somebody still learning: the full skill is not needed, and the habit of getting the numbers close is still being built.
The worry, answered
The obvious objection, and he raises it himself: if you mix in at the break, do you not lose the best part of the track that is playing?
Not necessarily - because a break is a run-up. It exists to create tension that the drop resolves. Bring the new record in during the break so that it is established by the time the drop arrives, and the drop is still delivered; it is just delivered by a different record.
What you must not do is arrive in a way that replaces the resolution with nothing, which is the mistake from the first lesson in this stage.
Where to use it
Anywhere the full blend is not available: two records too far apart in tempo to hold, a track with no usable intro, or simply a night where you have been blending for an hour and the set needs a different shape.
Contents of the video
0:00 It's called blending in at the breaks
Alright guys, this is a beginner DJ lesson, also I suppose intermediate, showing you how to mix if you don't know how to beatmix. So, if you're not very good at matching your timing of tracks, 120, 120, making them work perfectly, 115, 115, just along the same BPM, if you can't match them, then try this technique. It's called blending in at the breaks. Let's have a listen to the two tracks. By the way, the two tracks I'm using are from the underground releases from CDPool, 2014, from the July releases. We have track 5 here from disc number 1 and track 10 here from disc number 2. Check out the link in the description to CDPool where you'll get more info. This is Nero, a track entitled Satisfies, the original mix, and this side here is Michael Dehay and Rokos.
A track entitled Juliennes. Alright, I'm only going to play a tiny bit of the Nero track just in case I have problems on the internet, but the whole idea is to show you how you can form a relatively good transition without having to beatmatch. So let's first have a listen to track number 5 here, the Michael Dehay track.
You can hear it's got a bit of a housey beat towards it.
Now, the first thing you need to do is look at the beat. This one here is 124.7, this one here is 124.1, so what I can do is I can bring that up to 124.7. Now, they should be pretty much beatmatched.
3:13 My hot cue point
Okay, we've got a break here. You can hear the break. Now you're probably thinking as well, doing this, if you start mixing in at that break, you're going to lose the entire tune. Well, you're not. Because what I'm going to do, and bearing in mind this can be done on headphones prior to even playing this track. So while this track is playing, you'll be doing exactly what I'm going to show you now. So let's have a flick to the beginning of that break. Full hot cue. There.
2:30 Let's go towards the latter part of the track now
Okay, let's go towards the latter part of the track now. Okay, we're towards the end of the track. Let's have a listen to the Nero song.
We've got an icon here, but the fa is, I'm quite sure it's the count of one. But again, it doesn't really matter that much. In fact, for argument's sake, let's just go right to the beginning of the track.
There. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to add an echo over that as well.
Three quarter echo.
Okay, so we're coming to the latter part of this track. So this is what I'm going to do. Towards, or just before this track finishes, I'm going to go to my hot cue point. As soon as I hit hot cue, I'm going to hit play on this track. And I'm going to... Almost, in a way, do a blend of the break with no beat and the beginning of this track where there isn't any beat. Alright? This particular sort of mix won't work with every single transition. But it's a good way of doing a transition if you're stuck or you've got breaks in tracks where you can do this kind of thing. So here we go.
Slowly bringing down the one on the left.
Bring out the echo.
Okay, let's have a little more of a listen to this.
Okay. Again, this is Nero Satisfaction. I'm going to try and talk over as much as I can so you get the idea of the track. But at the same time, I don't get had on YouTube because these videos are for tutorial and demonstration purposes only. If anyone can rip parts of this track then you're very sad because you'll have me talking over it as well. Don't forget, check out the link in the description and take you to CDPool where you can get more info on these tracks and other top tunes. Practice and enjoy! Thank you.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
