DJ Mixing Lesson on Finding the Right Track to Bring in to the Mix

0:00 Exactly what's going

Right ladies and gentlemen, this video is all about finding the right tune to go into the next track. Now, these tracks you're listening to have been set through rekordbox, so what I'm trying to do now is try to find another tune on the left hand side. So enough of me talking, let's have a listen and then I'll explain exactly what's going on. So, I'm not going to say anything else, let's just do this. Right, okay, so what I'm doing now, you'd be doing this on your headphones.

Possibly, but it's a bit too hard really. A bit of a dip there.

Too minimalistic. Too acapella-ish.

Again, slightly too minimalistic.

Better.

Let's have a listen to that again.

Okay, so let's do some kind of transition. Give me coffee. Okay, we'll make that better again. So, I'm going to go back to my hot cue there. Go back a little bit.

3:27 Oh, I missed my cue point there

5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. Cue that up.

Volume down. Oh, I missed my cue point there.

Okay, let's do it again, but even better hopefully. So, there, go back.

7:50 Of the tutorial or first part

So, that's my cue point for the second one I did. 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 8. 1, 2. 3. I'll carry on bringing those closer and closer together till it was a bit like a rather nice squished cheese or jam sandwich that you used to have when you were younger. You know, you'd have it in your back pocket and you'd end up having this thing that just looked like a thin piece of paper both sides with a red in the middle. Anyway, right. Okay, so first part of the tutorial or first part of the demonstration, sorry. I was trying to find a track that worked well with the one that was playing. Now, it's all well and good. Finding tracks, mixing in key, great. But if you can't keep that vibe, the energy, the flow, the feel of the mix,

Then even though the tracks may be in key, you may find that your mix seems to sort of go on a tangent just different directions all the time without having some sort of steady sort of flow. So, the objective of the first part of the demonstration was to show you by skipping through your tracks and finding something with the right feel or, I'll start again, sorry, with the same feel as the one that's playing will make your mix flow more smoothly instead of going, yeah, they're both in the same key. Just chuck the damn things in because they're going to be key match anyway. Well, they may key match, but if they don't have that same vibe, the same feel, then the mix won't be as good as if you choose a track that does have the same vibe

And the same feel. So, that's what I did. That's why you saw me skipping through tracks. The next part of the tutorial was pretty much trying to find the correct point to bring the track in. And again, I have used Lego in the past. I've shown you demonstrations on how to construct a mix using Lego. I will do that again in the near future. But it is and it isn't simple. It's about the timing. Now, a phrase, in a track, can be anything from two bars, which is very rarely four bars, which is, you know, on the odd occasion. Eight bars, that does happen. Sixteen, most of the time, thirty-two and so on. Sometimes you do get twenty-fours. But what you will find is that tracks have phrasing. Now, let's have a listen to... Now, the one on the right-hand side

Is the track entitled All I Want, the original mix. It's quite... It's slightly different because where you think the phrase starts, it doesn't. So I'll just show you where.

There, right. Let me listen here. Now, some people may think the phrase starts here.

10:22 The phrase starts here

But you're actually wrong. You're slightly out. The phrase starts here. Now, how do I know that? Let's have a listen to the track prior to getting to that point. Now, what we're doing, we're not counting bars or phrases. We're listening to how the track is constructed. So, go back. So, that's vocals.

Here's the bass here. Two, three, four. Two, three, four. Bang! You see, the vocals finished. Then we had that tiny sort of break. And then the beat carried on. So, if we counted back, we'd find that the phrasing finished where the vocals finished. So, this is where you have to be slightly more careful with certain tracks because it could be very misleading. So, from that point then, we had the beginning and or end of a phrase, whichever way you want to put it. All we need to do then is, as I've done with this track over here, we tried it once right at the beginning. We did have some form of decent mix. But then the track on the right-hand side faded out too soon before the track on the left, which is Never Can Say Goodbye,

The Tommy MC remix, spelt T-O-M-M-Y MC remix, didn't really come in so by just gelling them closer together means that you can have a much smoother and closer transition. So, the second time I did it, I was still sort of, I wasn't happy. It's slightly better, but we still had a bit of a gap. So, I went from starting at the beginning to starting then eight bars in to then starting 16 bars in. And when I started at 16 bars in, we actually started at the break, which is here. There. Okay, and that started here. Sorry, there. Cut the volume down and slowly started to pull it in a little bit. All right, let's try a bit of an experiment. I'm going to now count in... Let's try another eight bars in from that break. So one, one, two, three,

Two, one, two, three, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, five, one, two, three, six, one, two, three, seven, one, two, three, eight, one, two, three, one, two, three, there. Now again, this is another very important part of mixing to remember. This is vital when you're queuing up a phrase. You do not, as I've done that, you do not queue in on the eight. So you count sort of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, queue up on the eight. No, you queue up on the next one because if you queue up on the eight, you'll actually be one bar out all the time. So let's just try that transition again.

14:05 Your club or venue anywhere around

Turn this down actually for a minute. I'm going to let that vibe play nice melody in the background. I've got this on my headphones now. One-to-one Skype lessons by myself, Jonathan. Also if you're interested in booking me to go to your club or venue anywhere around the world, then email me on practisingjoyatdjchooser.com and I'll finish off with practice and enjoy. Also, I do some wicked stealing lessons so if you're interested in that, I'll let you know. Thank you very much. DJ Lesson Tony, practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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