DJ Mixing Lesson CD Pool Club April 2018 Preview

0:00 Some tunes here from CDPool Dance Releases April 2018

Alright guys, some tunes here from CDPool Dance Releases April 2018. Also in this video I'm going to give you a few tips on some very basic mixing skills. In other words, let's imagine you've all of a sudden got your controller, it's right in front of you, you've opened the box, you've downloaded the correct software firmware. You've got a couple of tunes and you want to have a practice. So what I'm going to do is put the pitch control on the right hand side dead center, pitch control on the left hand side dead center. I have a mirror image on the right hand side which is a carbon copy of the left hand side. So any controller you've got whether it be vinyl, CDs, turntables or anything like that, every side is the same. Both sides exactly the same. I did say vinyl turntables as well. For this demonstration you will need...

The same track on both sides. Okay, this track here is I Never Felt So Right. It's the club mix. If you want any info on any of these tracks, check out the link in the description. It will take you to cdpool.com. Okay, all I'm going to do now is start the other side. Okay, very simple mix, beatmix. No problem about trying to match it in beat because the pitch is at the same position. So being at the same position, that should mean that the track on both sides is at exactly the same BPM, beats per minute. Okay, what I'm going to do now with the right-hand side, I'm going to have a look at my wave format and I'm going to go to a break. Let's bring that one down so you can hear what I'm getting to.

2:26 I'm back on the right hand side

I started the right hand side now at exactly the same time as the left hand side. Now if I've got these two perfectly mixed, what should happen is I bring the crossfade over, we get that phasing sound. That's one track completely overlapping the other one. Now I'm back on the right hand side. Let's start the other side again from the beginning. There, we're back on the left hand side. Okay. I'm going to choose another track now, so we'll randomly choose another song. Karen Harding. We're going to put that on the right-hand side, a track entitled Runaway. Okay, I'm going to put the same track on the left-hand side. Now, slight difference here. What I'm going to do is bring the pitch up towards me. I'm also going to... Let's have a look. In fact, if I use that...

I'll cover the entire screen. I'm now going to cover the screen because I do not want to see the BPM. Try and stay away from being a screen watcher. It's not a good idea. Remember, the whole idea of DJing is to understand and feel the music, not gawp at a screen and let the screen tell you what's going on. Because the screen doesn't really know. You should know. Okay, same track. Alright, what I'm going to do now, I'm going to bring the pitch... On the right hand side towards me, I don't know, about a centimetre. On the left hand side towards me, about a centimetre. Now even though visually they're around about the same position, they more than likely will not be the same BPM and we can test that by starting them both at the same time, crossfade in the middle, here we go. They're very close. Can you hear that phasing sound? It's changing frequency. It's changing frequency slowly so that tells me a couple of things. One...

5:35 Just bring that a little bit more towards me on the right hand side

It's very close to being the same BPM, but two, they are not the same BPM because the phasing sound is changing. Now what we need to do, what I need to do, is make sure that the phasing sound stays on point. Start it again. Yeah, right hand side needs to just be a tiny bit faster. That's pretty close. Now imagine if that was even further apart. So, in other words, we still got a phasing sound, but the phasing sound didn't last for very long at all. This is what it would sound like. Here we go. Just bring that a little bit more towards me on the right hand side. Okay, we can start to hear an echo. Alright, that tells me it's definitely offbeat. Okay, from that position, what I'm going to do now, and this is the way to find out if the right hand side, you can do this with the right or the left.

But we'll do this for this demonstration with the right hand side. I'm going to bring the camera down slightly so you can see everything. What I'm going to do when I start the track, I'm going to turn the jog wheel in a clockwise motion and I'm going to listen to hear if the echo that I get gets worse. When I move it clockwise or better. If it gets worse, I'm moving the jog wheel in the wrong direction. By my action of moving it clockwise means I'm nudging it forward. So if it gets worse, I'm actually moving that in the wrong direction and that needs to be moved anti-clockwise. So in other words, the track is already too fast. I need to move it anti-clockwise to make it slower. Here we go. There's that phasing sound. Clockwise. Listen. Worse.

This track's already too fast, anti-clockwise. There you go, we've got that facing sound again. Okay, now I could carry on doing that all day to keep it in time, but I would have to carry on doing that. The only way of not having to move the jog wheel all the time, bring the pitch down, slow movements, tiny movements. Okay, okay, 122.2, 122.8, still a bit too fast, but a lot better. Alright, let's spin this one forward a little bit. This is Runaway. Okay, again with the dance tracks from CDPool. They're very happy, cheerful sort of tunes. There's always loads of vocals in there. Some people would class them sometimes as big room because you've got lots of like breaks and drops where you just get a boom straight in. Okay, this one here is Bad Vibe. And this one here is This Is Me, believe it or not. Yeah, certainly is me.

8:34 Finish off here with a track entitled Saint-Tropez, the Dasco remix

Nice kind of chuggity vibe here, but still it's got that uplifting sort of clubby feel. Finish off here with a track entitled Saint-Tropez, the Dasco remix. Nothing to do with disco and it could be from, I think Saint-Tropez is south of France. This is what I mean about that sort of big room feel. Loads of piano, good kind of hands in the air tune. So if you are the sort of DJ... That is in, let's say a fun bar or for example you're in a big city and loads of people seem to come in and out all the time and they just want a bit of fun, you know, before going to some club that's open until 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. Tunes like this keep people around because they're big, they're full, they're exciting. They're the sort of tracks that you maybe hear on the radio daytime.

Thank you very much.

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