DJ Mixing Lesson on a Smooth Transition

0:01 Binary finery, brain, nightmare binary

Alright guys, sometimes there's a track out there that seems as though it's in time but it's actually off time. Now the two tracks I'm going to be using for this demonstration is Brain Bug, track entitled Nightmare. This one over here is Binary Finery, it's a 1998 version Paul Van Dyke and when these tracks were originally out mostly on vinyl and we didn't have or then, there weren't that many mixes that had effects so you couldn't really do that much. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to incorporate a little bit of the beginning of Brain Bug, Nightmare, into Binary Finery and then I'm going to mix in Brain Bug about a third of the way through. Now first of all, have a listen to the point where I'll start to mix it in.

Sorry, take off the echo. I'll just do that again because you had a bit of echo there so I want to make sure you know exactly what it sounds like. Have a listen, just pause it and... Now you can hear that, bam, bam, bam. Now this is where you have to be very careful with tracks like this when there is no beat behind the melody or behind the vocals because even though you may feel or think that that first sound is the count of one, you might be mistaken, it might not be and for this example, it isn't actually the count of one so I'll give you a demonstration. So what we'll do, we'll play the Binary Finery. So we go to the end of the track and we'll put it in at the right point.

The Brain Bug tune in, exactly the same point as where I brought it in the first time but at the... Start again. I'll bring it in on what you think should be the count of one at the time where I brought it in the second time where...

4:33 What the fuck is wrong?

What the fuck is wrong? Look, just shut up and watch. Oh god, sitting here by myself laughing on another... Yeah, okay. I'm going to do this all sometimes. Right, I'm going to bring it in at the count of one. One, two, three, four. Two, three, four. Two... I'm going to bring it in there. That was terrible. Do you see what I was going to try and explain what I was doing? You can hear it's all over the place so again, first time was wrong, second time was right, third time was wrong but I brought it in at the same time as I brought this track in to that one, the second time. I did it! I got it! Right. Also with this style of music. It's very rarely that you want to chop it up and mix tracks in halfway through and the beginning and the end, not the beginning and the end but more like the beginning and the end should I say.

Because tracks like this have got their own natural journey inside them anyway. This style is a journey in itself. The tunes are a journey. The tune itself takes you on a journey so again by constructing a very good mix with this style and keeping that pumping vibe going, keeping the key, the natural flow will make... It can make a good mix into a fantastic mix. What I'm going to do now, again because we have modern day technology and most people have the likes of effects, I'm going to add a tiny bit at the beginning which sounds like this. And I'm going to incorporate that maybe towards... Again you see if I was playing a track here now so I'm just finishing this track. This one's finishing. This one's coming in.

So imagine this one's coming in. Okay so finished. That track's finished. What I could be doing now is we've got some echo. Turn the echo on.

Just a tiny little amount of the track that's going to be coming in to give people a little sneak preview as to what to expect. A bit of a random video here but hopefully it's showing you that sometimes when you do hear a track and there's no beat, there's no melody, there's no bass... Well no melody. There's a melody here. But when you hear a track with no beat should I say, you need to make sure that when you do bring it in you bring it on exactly on the count of one. Because it may sound as though it's in time. Perfect time. But when the beat actually comes in it will be off time. It's really important. It could be the difference between having a perfect mix and something that just sounds like a complete train crash.

Names of the tracks will be in the description. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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