Making a DJ Mix Work out of Harmonic Key

0:00 First of all, sort of disclaimer

Alright, first of all, sort of disclaimer. Now, I get that people don't like their music copied, copyright issues and so on, but what I do for demonstration purposes only, and it does piss me off when I spend a great deal of time trying to format some kind of video only to find that once I've made it, I've planned it, I've made it, I've taken time to upload it and then all that crap, only to find that it's blocked just because I've used second hand software. It's just the fragments of someone's bloody music. It's annoying. Alright, you know, these videos really are for demonstration and tutorial purposes only. They are not for people to like, oh let's download the audio because as you know, 90% of the time I use the microphone from the camera so if anyone is willing to use my audio snippets of it and have me waffle over the top of it, then good luck sunshine.

So, I'm going to show you how to do that. I'm going to do another video on the CD Pool Club series for August 2020 because the last one I did was blocked. I have tried to trim it so I'm not sure yet if it will be made public. If it is, I won't know yet. You probably will already know because by the time this video is online it would have been trimmed and it may look a bit awkward because it's cut up. That's because there were certain tracks that were blocked worldwide. I have no idea why, but there you go. One thing it does. One thing it does prove though is that CD Pool are good at choosing tracks that maybe the companies know will do really well. So, thumbs up for that. Anyway, in this video what I'm going to do, again I'm going to use Club August 2020 from CD Pool. There is a link in the description. I'm going to show you how to do a beginning and end mix where you don't really have to worry about key matching. You can just do some kind of a blend and sort of get away with it. So, I'm also going to have to find the track that I want to use.

I'm going to have to find the tracks as well. So, I'm not going to go to track 1, 3, 7 and 5 and here it is. I'm going to have to find them as well. So, the first thing to do is to find a track with a good outro that is just a beat. So, that's what I'm going to do right now. And while I'm doing that we'll have a listen to some of the tunes as well at the same time. So, we're going to kill five birds with one orange or kill two stones with one bird, isn't it? Right, here we go. This one here, O to Ib. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to skip right the way to the end. This one isn't going to be a good one to use.

2:45 There's a beat and a kind of a bass liney melody

Why? Because there's a kind of a melody or a bass line in the background. So, as the track finishes it's not just a beat. There's a beat and a kind of a bass liney melody. I'm looking for something with just a beat at the end. Now, I'm also looking for an extended version. Because if I see a radio version, more often than not with the radio version, three and a half minutes, you've got very little long outro. It's just a finish and the next track. So, I don't want that. I've used that already so let's try and find something I haven't used yet. Oh, hold on. Okay, praise.

Right again, four and a half minutes. So, that's probably not going to work. Bright lights, bright lights. I used to be cool. Four minutes. Forty-three. Let's have a look. Let's try All Mine, the Nick Hook and Martin Sharpe mix.

This actually probably would have gone with the O2i beta. It's got the same kind of feel to it.

Go towards the end.

Alright, so listen. I can still hear sort of a melody in the background there but you could maybe just about get away with it. So, I'll demonstrate that now. So, that's the beginning of the new phrase. Let's go back a little bit.

Alright, so let me just pause it there. Let's find something else now on the other side perhaps. If ever you hear anything like this, the one is highly likely it's not here. So, one, oh sorry. One, two, three, you see? Quite often what you have is you have this kind of introduction. So, one, two, three, four. That's where the one will be.

5:22 Just making sure it's in beat

Now, again with practically every single modern day dance track even if you just have the introduction as in a beat. The beat itself will be in key with the track but you're more likely to get away with just mixing beats over beats even if they're out of key than mixing melodies over melodies that are out of key because that would just sound horrendous. So, let's try this now. So, on the right hand side I have Set Me Free, the Eric Cupper full length mix. So, just making sure it's in beat.

Yeah, that's good. So, go back again. Here we go. If you mix like that, you can sort of just about get away with it. Alright, and let's try it with the Set Me Free, the end of this. Let's have a little listen to this.

Okay, what I'm going to do, I'm going to skip it forward to sort of practically the end.

7:11 Again, the melody is the key

Alright, now that isn't the sort of tune I would do with beginning and end mix if I wasn't sure about the keys because we've got a defined melody at the end. Have a listen.

Again, the melody is the key. If you're mixing melodies they must be in key otherwise it's going to sound horrendous. So, let's just try one more. I don't really want to drag this video on too long.

Okay, this is Talk To Me, the extended mix and again we can hear we've got a nice melodic intro.

Okay, let's try Change The World. Again, three minute track so which we could hear there it comes straight in with a melody. So, again being a radio version. You know, if you listen to any radio track three and a half minutes you will very, very, very probably never listen to a three and a half minute radio track that just starts with 16 bars of a beat. It just wouldn't happen. Right, here we go. This is the sort of thing we can mix in out of key and sort of get away with it. This is Heal Me, The Born Dirty Remix. So, let's take that as the beginning track. And then let's try something else for the outro. So, Bodywork, Todd Edwards Vocal.

Okay, so we can't use the end of that because that's got quite a bit of melody. Maybe we can use the end of Heal Me with the beginning of Bodywork because Bodywork starts with a beat. So, let's listen to the end of Heal Me.

Listen to a little bit of it first. This is Heal Me, Born Dirty Remix. What a tune! Liking it.

9:24 It's got a bass line

Pounder. Right, let's go towards the end of this now and see what it sounds like at the end. Yeah, we can sort of get away with it. It's got a bass line. Ah, there we go. Listen to that outro.

It's just the beat. Okay, so let's pause it there. So I'm just going to wait for the phrasing. Not too bad actually. I wanted to, and I don't want to go too much in depth. If I wanted to tidy that up, what I could do, and again, I'm not using the Rekordbox software, but if I wanted to do what I'm about to explain, I would indeed use the Rekordbox software at the moment. These are just the MP3s. I would loop the end of that track and then maybe just slowly use the sweep to just tidy that loop up and slowly bring it out. So if we listen to the loop. Hold on. Put the bass back in. If I make a loop. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

One, two. Okay, so this is what it would sound like using the sweep.

So there you go. I've got the sweep on now. So it's just taking away a lot of the mid and I take away the bass itself. So you're now left with some of the mid and the top. Boom, and out. All right, so there are many ways of making this sort of transition. Hope this is a help. Right, so again, if you're interested in these styles of tracks, check out CDPool. There is a link in the description. Practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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