7:28
What the hook in a record is
On YouTube this video is called What is the hook in music? What get's you humming a toon?
What this lesson teaches
A short lesson on a word everybody uses and few could define.
The definition
The hook is the part of a record that catches your ear. The sound, the feel, the thing that makes you want to move - and the test he offers is the right one: it is what you are still humming when you leave the club.
The correction
Most people assume the hook is the melody or the vocal, because in pop music it usually is.
It does not have to be. In the two records he plays - Johnny Corporate's Sunday Shouting and Thick Dick's Insatiable - the hook is the bassline. That is the part that catches, that is what you leave humming, and the melody is secondary.
In plenty of dance music the hook is a drum pattern, a filter sweep, or three notes of a synth. It is wherever the identity of the record lives.
Why a DJ needs to know this
Three practical consequences, and they are the reason this lesson is in a selection course rather than a theory one.
It tells you what to tease. The teasing technique only works if the fragment you show the room is recognisable - which means it has to be the hook. Eight bars of a record's drums teases nothing.
It tells you what not to EQ out. If a record's hook is its bassline and you bring it in with the bass rolled off, you have brought in a record nobody can identify. Everything you were relying on is in the band you removed. With a melodic hook you could safely have done it.
It tells you when the record has arrived. A track is not really playing until its hook has landed. That is the moment the floor responds to, and it determines how long a transition can run before you have outstayed your welcome.
Finding it
Play a record and ask which part you would hum. Then check: which EQ band does that part live in?
Two questions, thirty seconds, and the answer changes how you mix that record for as long as you own it.
Contents of the video
0:00 If you say to someone, right
Alright folks, in this video what we're going to be talking about is something called the hook. OK? Now then, what is the hook? What do I mean by the hook? Alright, first of all, what is a hook? Hook is, of course, if you think about it, the first thing if you say to someone, right, oh, what's a hook? They'd think, oh, it's like this and a fisherman would use it at the end of his rod to catch a fish. OK, but again, there we go. He's caught something. He's caught a fish. Now, in music terminology or music... When we talk about the hook, we talk about a certain factor, a certain part of the music that catches your ear. It's that certain tune, that sound, that feel, that vibe that when you're in a nightclub it makes you want to boogie, wherever it makes you want to tap your foot, it's that something, it's that, yeah I like it, I like it, yeah alright admittedly the beat makes you want to tap your foot. When you leave a place, when you leave a nightclub, a party, someone's house, when you leave the
The DJ Tutor. I think the hooks is the melodies, it is the vocals etc. Doesn't have to be that way. The hooks in these guys is the bass lines, alright? Have a listen to first Johnny Corporate Sunday Shouting followed by on this side Thick D Insatiable. Check them out. Here we go first. Now admittedly with this guy there's a bass line of hook but then also the melody is like pretty slamming as well. Here we go. I mean for me this is sort of top ten material undoubtedly.
2:52 For this video is simply
Alright, and then the next one, Thick D Insatiable. Again, a bass line to die for. Here we go. Okay, second part for this video is simply this, alright? This is totally off the cuff here now. You didn't know this was coming, did you? Alright, are you partially sighted? Are you perhaps blind? Do you think that you can't mix because you're blind? Do you think you can't mix because you're partially sighted? You won't be able to see what's going on here. Alright, well that's absolute rubbish. Because you can mix, you can do it, alright? All you need is your ears, alright? I'm going to show you, I'm going to prove to you, I'm going to do a quick mix here. It may not be in the right place, but what I'm going to do, just going to bring them in beat, alright? In other words, what I'm saying to you is simply this. If you are blind, all you need is your ears and your hands.
4:31 I'll say now, practice and enjoy
And then you can do it too. Alright, so what we'll do, I'm going to put that needle there ready, I'm going to mess around with the pitch control, we'll shove it sort of in the middle anyway, and then what we'll do, we'll put the pitch control all the way down so it's as slow as it can be. I'll prove to you so this isn't set up. Here we go, I'll just play it. That's the right speed there, that's the right speed, I'm going to put it down. Alright, so we just get that one ready. Okay, and I'm going to blindfold myself now. And the only person I would be fooling if I could actually see through the blindfold is myself. All right, so I'm going to make sure I can't see at all. OK, I'll say now, practice and enjoy. This could be off slightly, but then again, I haven't done this much. So thank you for watching. Take it easy. Look after yourselves.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
