DJ Mix Track One in to Track Three with Only Two Tunes How Is This Done???

0:00 You're actually making a new song in the middle

Right, I've said a few times that when you're forming some form of transition, you're not really mixing track one into track two. You're actually making a new song in the middle. So, in a way, I'm playing track one now, the transition will be track two, and then the next song will be track three. So, without that sort of gel in the middle that's holding the two together, the two tracks, either side, won't sound very good together, if that makes sense. So, really, it's track one that we can hear now into our, which is the second song. We're making something new in the middle to track three. Alright, so I've got some tunes here from CDPool from the global releases for June. June 2020, this one here, Life is Beautiful.

Now these are very sort of uplifting, vibrant kind of tunes, the global releases is your sort of deep housey soulful kind of ilk, great tunes. Okay so, alright, you've got an idea of that track and now I'm going to put on the right hand side, just have a little listen to a track entitled He Loves You, it's the original mix. Alright, I'm going to put quantize on as well, there's a reason for that.

Alright so what I'm going to do, I'm going to form a one bar loop, two bar loop. I don't want to delve into the reasons why one or two at the moment, I just want, I'm just going to do it. But the reason I'm doing a loop is so I can have that playing in the background even before I bring the transition in.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three. So there's my loop, I'm going to put that on a hot cue ready. Alright so really the next thing to do then is whereabouts am I going to form this transition? So at the moment, there's a lot going on here, a lot going on. And if I add something else it could be a bit too overpowering. Remember the headroom analogy, you know you always need that headroom. There's no point having a mix that's filling 100% of the room. You've got to make sure that you've got maybe 40% on one side and another 30% on the other. Which gives you a bit of headroom so that the mix isn't excessively overpowering. It's breaking down here now, it's just got that nice little bass line in the background.

And I'm just going to put some hot cues, give me some points, cue points.

3:24 There it finishes and now we're just left with a beat

Okay so there it finishes and now we're just left with a beat. So what I'm actually thinking...

Now what I'm thinking here is if I brought this track in there, would it work? I don't know, let's try it. I'm just going to try it.

Alright, I'm going to come out of that loop for now. Let me just try that. That's not too bad.

But I know I can make it sound better.

Okay so let's go back into Life is Beautiful.

So we've still got the melody.

Still got that melody in the background.

4:24 One fades out, this one fades in

Melody's still there.

Okay but you notice that melody didn't just stop, it gradually faded away. So what I'm thinking here is possibly to gradually bring in the melody of the other track while... One fades out, this one fades in. Now this is about your EQ, also your volumes, your up faders, how to use them. Now there's no defined rule on you must do this or that. It's the tracks that will tell you what needs to be done by the sound of the tracks. So... The hot cue there because that's sort of the beginning of the next phrase. That melody's in the background. Now this is where the melody starts to disappear. Did you hear that tiny change? Not so much in the drum pattern but there was just a little bit more of a push with one of the drum sounds there.

So have a listen.

There. Now, a tutorial in a tutorial. These are small areas in music that are great for finding out where you are inside a phrase. Because what producers very often will do is they may add something to the drum pattern, change it very slightly halfway through a phrase like a bit of a skip beat. Just to say hello I'm in the middle of a phrase and if you didn't know where to count from start counting from there because you're pretty much guaranteed to get a 4, 8, 16 or 32 bars. Okay, so let's go back to there again. Alright this is where my loop's going to come in because what I'm going to do when I get... I'm not going to use the headphones as well. So if it does go slightly off beat it's because I haven't got my headphones on.

Right, so when you get to the beginning of that phrase that's when I'm going to start my loop and I'm going to have the melody of the right hand track just in the background. You know, just so I can hear it very slightly over Life is Beautiful but I don't want it to overpower. So He Loves You will be from a scale of like 1-10 say 2 or 3 whereas Life is Beautiful is going to be 10. Right, so...

Now I'm going to do that again because I don't think I could even hear He Loves You at all. I think possibly because I had too much volume on Life is Beautiful and I did want to have He Loves You a little bit more into that mix. So I'm going to do that again. We're going to go back a bit.

8:01 Is the middle bit

Much better. I'm trying to design something in the middle, alright? I know what this track's going to do now and I know what the other track was doing. What I needed to concentrate on is the middle bit. What was going to happen in the middle, alright? A design to make sure it matches leaving the other one coming in. Alright, this is He Loves You.

Okay, let's choose a random track here now. And again these videos are about sort of tutorials but also a little bit of an insight into the new releases. Loving this sort of vibe.

I think we've got to have a bit of filter here. Hold on. A nice sort of jazzy, skip, soulful house vibe to this.

Okay, bring that one down. This one here, try this. This is Playtime, the original mix.

Straight away we've got that P-Funk sort of vibe.

Yeah, liking it. Skip it forward a bit.

10:36 Let's try, we played that one

Let's try, we played that one. Try Turn Me On.

Forget as well ladies and gentlemen I'm still giving the online lessons and these are private lessons, one to one. It's in between me and you. If you are interested in getting some personal tuition from myself then there is an email in the description of this video. Send me a message, you know who you are, what you like, what you dislike. All lessons are completely and utterly confidential. It's just between me and you. I don't care who you are, where you live, who you're from, whatever. Any style of music, we can go on controllers, we can go on CDJs, we can go on vinyl turntables. Just give me a shout, tell me what you like, what you dislike and you never know within a few days we could be hooking up having lessons

And just really it's about understanding everything to do with DJing so whether you're a complete beginner or you just want a little bit more advice give me a shout alright. Don't forget there is information in the description for CDPool, their releases etc. and I'll finish off with practice and enjoy. This by the way is Turn Me On, the original mix. Loving it.

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