DJ Help with Mixing Radio Edits

0:00 Inch, single, cheap

Alright guys, now there is nothing worse as you know than trying to mix tracks that are the 7 inch version, the 3 and a half minute radio version. If we go back years ago to when people only used vinyl, you had two choices, well you had lots, alright you did have quite a few choices though with LPs but generally it was the 7 inch single or the 12 inch. The 7 inch single was the sort of single, the sort of length of track you would hear on the radio whereas the 12 inch was more the sort of version you hear in a nightclub or maybe nighttime radio. But of course mobile DJs find it very difficult to formulate some kind of good mix with 7 inch versions which is normally, it's about 3 and a half minutes long simply because the phrasing is very short. In a 12 inch version of a track the phrasing could be anything from 8, 16, maybe even 32 bars. With 7 inch, with radio versions you're lucky if you get 4 bars. So I've got a couple of tracks here from

The Karmic Power Records label. Duplex, You Got Me Thinking and on the other side here Gina Love a track entitled Lonely World. So now let's imagine first of all we have a track playing on the left. What I'm about to show you on the right hand side is what you would be doing through your headphones. Let's have a listen. I'm going to turn this up a little bit. Okay so I'm going to go into loop mode straight away and I am going to loop the beginning of the track. There you go. Set that into a hot cue. Everything I show you now can be done as shown on CDJs, also can be done on pretty much any controller out there. So you're very lucky. If you go back years ago to the first controller you couldn't do this kind of thing. Now you can pretty much do this on the cheapest of cheap controllers, the cheap cheapy cheap ones.

2:13 Chirp a cheep, chirp a chirp a cheep cheep yeah

Chirp a cheep, chirp a chirp a cheep cheep yeah. Na na na na na na na na na. Oh God let me show you. Right so let's press play here and let's skip through towards the end of the track. We have the track ready, getting the beat matched. A duplex. And before we get to the end I'm going to hit my hot cue. Start the other track. Right now bearing in mind this is a demonstration. So what's the whole procedure? Why am I doing this? Sometimes I don't really know myself. Now the idea is to find a part in the track where you can form a loop. Once you have found a reasonable place, form a loop there. Ideally you don't want loads of vocals because you don't want vocals clashing over vocals. You want some part of the track where you've just got a bit of an instrumental break really.

And I found the best place with a duplex that got me thinking was right at the beginning. Now again once you've formed that loop and you set that in. In a hot cue. You can pretty much bring that into the track at any point you want to. Now I just brought it in at the end. So long as you bring it in at the correct time, you can just press that hot cue. The loop starts and while that loops playing bring the next one in. Now this may not have been the best demonstration but it does give you an idea on how. You can start to form some decent transitions with 7 inch versions. Because if we listen to. You got me thinking. This is the introduction. There. Now what you find as well with a lot of radio versions, dance radio versions.

Is the producer will let's say for example take a phrase in the 12 inch version. The extended version which is 16 bars. And they may reduce it down to 4. And they'll do that all the way along the track. So a track that let's say the extended version was 6 minutes. Guess what? They can reduce it to 3 and a half minutes. Simply by cutting some of the phrasing into half or maybe even quarters. Right I hope that's been a help. Check out the info in the description to Karmic Power Records. Happy Birthday Ella Sue. You're going to be 16. Dad loves you millions. And I'd love to see you again. So come and see me and have some fun. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.