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LESSON 3 - FINER MIXING

BREAKDOWN MIXING

SPINBACK

POWER OFFS AND DEAD STOPS

CUTTING THE BASS AND TREBLE

PLACEMENTS


I get the feeling I'm about to delve into some really sticky ground. I'll either leave out some styles that others do, or describe it differently than other people, or whatever. What I'm going to list is some of the stuff you can do. The way I do it.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve my descriptions, or any other techniques, take some time out and Email them to me. I might not stick it in this page, but at least I'll know it!! On that note, there's another page to this one, which has 6 or 7 ideas that have been sent to me, there's a link at the bottom of this page to it, but if you can't find it, click HERE.

Two further things you have to remember here. The first is one that anyone will tell you about anything. It is important that you practice, as much as you possibly can. don't get disheartened by your mistakes (or at least, not for too long anyway) learn by them. Work out why the mix you just attempted didn't work out, then try to resolve it. To this end, I'll say again that it's really useful to stick a blank tape into a machine and record yoruself when you're practising. Having something to listen back to will let you know if you're on the right path or not. One thing though, you might start getting dis-heartened when you keep hearing you're awful - if this happens, take the tape out, and just play around, don't be analytical or anything, just have fun.

And secondly, you have to have confidence in your abilities. If you are dropping in a bass drum from the next track over the breakdown of the first track, and you're not confident that you'll get it in time, you're gonna mess it up, and you're not going to progress very fast. Don't wimp out by fading in this bass drum, if the mix calls for a full on boom, boom, boom, then you're going to have to do it. If you're practicing at home, the only person you're cheating is yourself by taking the fade route!

One of the most useful tips I can give is to listen to as many other Dj's as you can. Provided they are good, you should learn something from every one you hear, even if it's just Eq control. Try and get your hands on the mix CD's which have become so prolific over the past couple of years. They may seem basic, but that's the point. Listen to how these guys mix, try to copy the mix yourself, and you've learnt it (DUH!!). I know that sounds odd, but it really does apply. The more you do a mix, the more it's going to stay in your head, and with a little tweak, you'll be able to apply it to another set of tunes.

I received a message from m h jemmeson asking me to refer to what I was calling BREAKS as BREAKDOWNS. He said they are two completely different things. You know what I'm on about though, the part where the guiding bass drum track goes, leaving the 'Hands in the air' less energy, stop dancing, piano (or whatever) breakdown. Anyway, sorry for the confusion(?).

1) Breakdown Mixing: This one can be funky if you pull it off. There's a few ways this is done, but I'll just mention a couple:

Firstly, deck A is about to go into a breakdown. Tune B starts with a bass drum and not much else. The breakdown of A and the intro of B are the same length. Match the two tunes so they both run at the same tempo. Cue B to the opening Bass drum. As deck A hits the first beat of the breakdown, move the x fader to the middle, and let B go. Run them at the same time, and when A's breakdown finishes, the main part of B begins, all you have to do is move the x-fader over, and the mix is done. Try to avoid a big whoosh as you start deck B . You'll get the hang of it after a while, even if it means putting the x-fader quarter of the way when you start, and almost immediately bringing it to the center. As the breakdown in A starts to finish, move the X-fader so that it now favours tunes B , you can still hear A clearly, but B now has more clarity. This stops there being a sudden change in the music.
The second is when the intro of B is quiet. It's almost a breakdown in itself. As the break in A begins, drop in the intro of B . Can take a while to get right (Even longer to find two records that match) but with skillful use of kill switches to EQ out the bass, (Explained later) it can work out nice.

2)Reverse of above. I feel a bit cheeky putting this in, but you never know, someone might not have thought of it. Record A ends with just a bass drum. Record B starts as though it's a breakdown. Drop B over A, and when A finishes, B begins. Ta da!!!

2b)With Bass Drum This is exactly the same as the above, except that the intro of B has a bass drum running through, it. Use the kills to stop any clashes, wait for A to end, put the bass back into B and you're off.

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3)Spinback. This can be great, but beware, use it too much and people will think the only reason you do it is because you can't mix! It can whip people into a frenzy though, and if things aren't going you're way in a mix, it can sometimes help you out. It goes like this, beat match two tunes, run them together so that both bars finish at the same time, then as A finishes the bar, and B is about to get into a pumping part of the tune, place your finger on the label of A, and pull the record back, reasonably sharply. I used to do it from the outer portion of the record, but soon realised why the needle kept on skipping across the record!! Anyway, as you spinback A, bring in B . With correct timing, A will stop spinning backwards as you bring the x-fader all the way across to the start of B (I didn't realise how difficult this was all going to be to describe in words) I use it most often to fix a mix between tunes that have different hi-hat sounds/clarity. If the tune you're taking out has sharper, clearer Hi-hats etc than the one you are about to bring in, it can make the incoming tune sound really dull, so by letting A run overB a little, then using a spinback to take it out, the difference isn't as immediate and noticeable.

4) Power-offs and Dead-Stops Kind of in the same family as the spin back I guess.

I'll do the Dead-Stop one first. On most higher level decks, which have a good braking system to the deck plate, if you hit the stop/start button during play, the deck will comes to a halt within a second. This is the concept. The great thing about this technique is that people will look up at you thinking "Arse, he just cocked up!!"- but AAAAHH!! They are wrong!

The deal here is, on the final beat of a bar, hit the stop button on the deck that is playing out. Assuming the braking force on your deck is the correct length, the record will come to a complete halt in the space of one beat - meaning it's dead just in time for the next beat. Of course, the nest beat is the first beat of a new section (or phrase) so you whip the crossfader across to your other record, which of course was already running in time with the first record - sorted! You'll have to work out the best combinations yourself of when, where and what tunes to use for doing this - some times it sounds incredible and the floor go nuts, other times you just sound like an amateur.

The power off is to turn off the power to the deck, as to make it gradually run slower and slower until it comes to a halt. This is a really good one to do if you have a good lighting jock next to you. Wait until you're at the point you want to do this, and turn off the power to the deck (using the proper switch that you use to switch off the deck at the end of the night). If the light guy is cool, get him to kill the lights at the same time - chances are, everyone will think "Power Cut!!". Then slam in the next tune. And I mean SLAM it in, it'll take em all by surprise, and hopefully really jazz them up.

The rest of the stuff I tend to do utilises kill switches, knobs, so I'll explain them next. You can get around it if you don't have them, by bringing in the track at a lower level, but I recommend them, it can make mixing so much easier.
Most mixers have EQ units for each channel, and the good ones will have a section on each one saying 'cut' which effectively kills the bandwidth selected. I tend to use the Bass cut most, the treble one has its uses, and I hardly use the mid section for mixing purposes, more for adjusting the sound of the whole tune.

a) Cutting The Treble. There's not many times you HAVE to cut the treble, but sometimes, a shrill hi-hat or voice can make a mix sound really fuzzy, or the two Hi-hats will key together, either cancelling each other out, or producing some (sometimes cool) phasing effects. So even killing the treble so that it's not quite as powerful as the out record - yet still present, can alter the state of a mix (Just remember to put it back in once you fully put in record. But a good trick is to cut the treble on the incoming tune for a couple of bars, then swap it over with the treble of the outgoing tune - it can really tidy up the mix. Just be careful not to take too much out - or you'll end up losing the dynamics of the outgoing tune.

B) Cutting the Bass. This can have many uses, cutting the bass can help to introduce two tunes that are out of key. Kill the bass in tune B , then drop it in, have A and B running at the same time, then as the bar ends, crash in the Bass in tuneB , and crash out the Bass in tune A. This does work out better with tunes that are in key, in fact, if there is any melody or singing in the out of key tunes, even cutting the bass isn't going to help that much, the voice'll still sound out of tune. It can take a lot of practice, sometimes killing the bass altogether sounds horrific, but leaving a little bit of it in sounds Ok. Practice Practice!!
Killing the bass also helps when plain beat mixing. You may sometimes find that when you mix B (which has a bass drum intro) into A (which has a bass drum outro) the drums clash with each other. This happens one of two ways, they either go into phase, doubling the intensity, or out of phase, effectively killing each other. Cutting the bass on the in record solves this, then by either re-introducing the bass on B while gradually taking out A, or by crashing them in and out respectively, the mix can sound seamless. Again, it depends on the tune involved. Don't whinge if it doesn't work, some records just have to be beaten into submission.

You can create some smashing effects by using all three Eq's to their potential, I'm not going to list them, coz I don't know all of them, but experiment and you'll get it.
The phasing that I mentioned above doesn't always appear as a problem. Get the two records that you learnt how to mix with out of the rubbish bin, and slap them back on the decks for old time sake. Match them both up, up start them both up at the same time, so that they are identical. (It doesn't have to be identical, but it helps.)Move the x-fader to the middle, so that both tunes are blaring out at the same time. You may have to lower the level of one of them to get this effect or to stop any unwanted miss-match of noise. Gently place you finger on one of the decks, through time you'll know which one of the two works best and how much pressure to put on it , but for now, try the one that you've just brought in to the mix and put on very light pressure. What you are aiming for is the record to slow down a tiny amount, making it go out of phase with the original tune. I can't stress enough how tiny an amount is needed. The effect you'll hopefully achieve is one like a phaser effect pedal.
How fast you crash in the x-fader can have a lot to do with the sound of your mixes. You'll be able to tell how you're gonna use the fader by really listening to your tunes before you slam them into mix. Some tunes have a great crescendo (gradual uplift of power in the music) beginning, meaning that you can mix them low over the outgoing tune, with the crescendo happening in the background. As the crescendo comes to its pinnacle point, the x-fader gets moved to the middle position (or favouring the incoming channel just a little), all eq's and faders for that tune are set to their optimum position (making the tune more powerful than the outgoing), and as the final POW of the intro happens, the x - fader gets moved full to the incoming tune. Kinda hard to describe. I know what I mean, but if you are having any trouble comprehending, send me a note, and I'll adjust - Ok?

If the tune you are bringing in has, for example, a very simple bass and hi-hat intro, the best way to bring it into the mix is on the hi-hats. Again, it comes down to the tune you're mixing out of, how complicated it is, but it is less obvious when brought in on the hi-hat beats, increasing the amount you can hear on each strike. It goes the same for taking out a tune, once the incoming has become dominant. You don't have to go with each hi-hat strike, doing that may make the mix happen too fast, but using them as a guide really does help.
Well there it is, I hope you get what Im talking about, which is just moving the fader over and back on the beat(bar?) of choice.

You should end up with a comprehensive list of tunes that you know you can mix together perfectly. It's great for a while, but try not to limit yourself into thinking that only those tunes go together. I've fallen into that trap before. Here's a mix that I can't escape from (Please excuse the track selection)

Blue Adonis - Disco Cop.
Vengaboys - Up and Down.
Nailin and Kane - Beachball (Tall Paul mix)
Mori Kante - Yeke Yeke
Da Hool - Meet her at the Love Parade
Kadoc - Nightrain
BBG - Snappiness.

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I've now recorded this selection, and uploaded it as a kind of tutorial.

(The actual wording when I describe the mix isn't really that good (or accurate, as I changed a lot of the in/out lengths) But I'll try and make it a bit easier to get through soon. Click HERE to go to the tutorial page.)

As I said, don't think less of me for the track selection, there is some cheese in there, but that's what you get for playing in a bar! Placed correctly, each one of these tunes goes seamlessly, perfectly into the next.
What I'm saying though, is that everytime I picked up Beachball, I'd automatically reach for Mori Kante afterwards, because it's the mix I knew worked, and didn't really differ from - because it worked so well. Just watch out, people can get very bored of the same mix, over and over!!

PLACEMENTS

The other big thing though (and the most important of all) is your placement of the mix. It may help you to read the page preceding this one ( Beat Structures ) if you have not already done so. I know that a lot of you know all about this already, but it may help you out if you don't know what I'm on about with some of the terms.

(I'll point out now that this is only a very small scratch on the surface of things you can do, and is limited more by the very linear approach to beat structures that I am referring. DO NOT think that this is the only kind of structure, or the only kind of placements you can use, your mixing should be as individual as you are, this is only a beginning, for those who haven't got a clue.)

If you look at the virtual tune that I've mentioned in the Beat Structures page (see, this is why you should go look) then there are a couple of places that would make it nice to mix. Let's assume that the tune you're about to mix in has the same structure as the one going out. For those who can't be arsed looking at that page, here it is again:-

1)

Tune one ends with (say) a cymbal, just as tune two goes into it's build up into the main tune. Kazzam, take out tune one, let tune two keep going at it's perfect level, and you're sorted.

2)

Start the outgoing tune 16 bars before the end of the first tune (with 16 bars being the length of its intro). Kill the bass on it, and the hit-hats a little. Bring the fader up to full and at the end of the eighth bar, swap the hi-hat frequencies.

Tune one will build out of its last bar, ready to go into its outro. At the point, when it's about to hit the outro, whip the bass in tune two to its optimum position, with the fader at its optimum position, and either crash out tune one, or kill the bass on it and bring it out in time with the hi-hats for the next 4 bars measures. A great way to change the key of the mix.

3)

4)

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Article written by: DJ Recess www.recess.co.uk