How to Make a Great Short Track You Love a Lot Longer

0:00 You want to do a remix of a track on the fly

Right, so you want to do a remix of a track on the fly. Now there could be many reasons for that. One is that you've just realised that your dog needs to go to the vet. Number two is that you're a little bit hungry and you want some fish and chips. Or number three, the track is very short and you need to extend it. Answers in the description please. And if you choose number two, you're correct. On the other hand, if you choose number three, that could be dodgy dealings. This track here is taken from the club series from CD Paul from September 2019, Go Hard or Go Home. It's the extended mix. What I don't understand being the extended mix, it's only three minutes and 23 seconds long, which means my God, I wouldn't like to hear the edit. Anyway, let's have a listen. First of all, now also very quickly as well, I have not used rekordbox. So what I'm about to do is

Will not be quantized, but hopefully you'll get the general idea. Okay. Okay, so let's start that again. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Okay, so I've got a loop there. Now then, let's just come out of that loop.

Back a bit. I've set hot cue there.

2:15 We've got two loops and we've got a hot cue

Okay, so we've got two loops and we've got a hot cue. Let's go a bit.

Maybe the next one. Let's have a look.

Oh, that is grimy. Oh, that is sex. Here we go.

Might do this again, I will explain.

Oh, it's not too bad because I had a remnant of their vocals right at the end, but I think it might work. Listen.

Ah, perfect. That is amazing. Loving it. Okay, forward a bit more. Really good track actually, this.

4:36 For example, the phrase could be at the beginning of the chorus

Right. So, very quickly, what I haven't done is just kind of random sort of start a loop and finish it. I've always made sure that I am at the beginning of a bar, which is a count of one, and also try to make sure I'm the beginning of a phrase. Now, a phrase in music could be, I'm not saying pretty much anywhere, but it depends on the track. For example, the phrase could be at the beginning of the chorus. It could be the beginning of the verse. It could be the beginning of the melody. It could be the beginning of the bass line, of the instrumental break. It could be at the beginning of the end of the instrumental break and so on. Because whenever a track is playing, when one phrase finishes, the next one will start exactly at the same time.

Now, if I randomly selected a loop in and out in some random place and brought that in in time with the track on the other side, it would indeed sound out of time. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to make sure we are... ...at the centre position and let's just do a bit of a remix. So I'm going to put my headphones on to try and make this sound a little bit better.

Okay, headphones in and volume down.

6:06 You couldn't do this at a gig while people are dancing

Alright, so it's a bit of a dabble there. But what I'm trying to do is just have a remix on the fly. Now, you may... ...think you can't do this on the fly. You couldn't do this at a gig while people are dancing. Well, yes indeed you can because a lot of tracks today are quite short and it's a shame that they're over so quickly. Because if you think about it, let's go back to the beginning of that track again. Let's have a look. It is 3 minutes and 23 seconds long. So if you imagine that you're going to mix that track into the other song, you're going to do a 16 bar mix. And then you're going to get rid of at least 20-30 seconds and exactly the same when you mix out another 20 or 30 seconds. Which means you've only got two and a half minutes of that track left.

9:16 Town again just to clarify

And if the crowd are vibing to it, it's a bit of a shame, isn't it? Because you want to try and make it last a bit longer. So for example, if you've got a track on the right hand side that is six or seven minutes long, then let that play. It gives you plenty of time to form your hot cues, your loops, etc. Then when you bring that track in on the left hand side, you can, in a way, just let it play. Which then gives you also, which I didn't do on the right hand side, the option. I did, of course, bring the same track in on the right hand side. What I didn't do was start to form new hot cues and new loops on the right hand side. So now you can really go to town. I scratched the surface there. Imagine by adding more loops, some echo.

We've got the reverb, flanger, we've got the dub echo, the sweep, the noise, depending, of course, on what controller and software you've got. But you can really go to town again just to clarify. As I said earlier, I did not have I'm not using Rekordbox. So, of course, if you're using Rekordbox, the loops should be, of course, quantized if you're using quantize mode in that what I mean there is that the loops I was using may have been slightly out because I was manually pressing in So if I was out by one millisecond in that loop every time it goes around again, it's another millisecond. So once is one, twice as two milliseconds, three is three milliseconds and so on. So if I was adding that loop over the original track, sure enough, within time you would definitely hear it going out, which is what you don't want.

Right. Hope that's been a help. By the way, if you are interested in the BPM show, then we'd love to see you. I will be on. The CD pool stand is on the 5th and 6th of October, not in September. I do apologize. I did say that in the urban video for CD pool and look forward to seeing you there. We're going to be using the XDJ RX two whole bunch of CD pool tracks. Come along, have a little go if you want to say hello to the crew, ask questions and don't forget there is a link in the description of this video. There's also a code. DJ tutor. And if you use that code for the very first time to subscribe for CD pool downloads or CDs, and I think it's just the downloads you will have to inquire, you will get 50% off your first month's subscription.

So whether you buy one or 20, you're going to get 50% off, which is pretty damn good. Thank you very much. See you at the BPM show 6th of October. Practice and enjoy. Thanks.

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