930 Media

As I progress to becoming a true DJ, I’ve coined a few terms to describe some of the concepts that I have encountered. In Mix 20, I reference Meat to describe tracks that are little more than a beat that can be used to transition between featured tracks in a mix. For Mix 38, I showcase another term, Harm. I use the term Harm when talking about a concern that, when mixing a track, the mix may make it worse off than if I were to never tweak it to integrate it into a mix.

As a DJ, it is a thrill to incorporate a great new track that you’ve heard into a mix that your are creating. But, my expectation is that, by blending a series of tracks together, the sum is greater than the part. I feel as if I have done Harm to a track if, my mix is good, but there is a particular track that sounds worse to make the mix sound better overall.

In creating this mix, I was excited to incorporate another Calvin Harris track into my mixes. Both he and Kaskade are ‘Easy Money’ to me. Their tracks are consistently amazing. If I add one of their tracks to my mix, it will more often than not sound amazing. The only concern is, in creating the mix, do I do justice to their work.

With Mix 38, I faced that challenge for Calvin Harris’ track Sweet Nothing. With the 3 tracks that I ended up mixing, it was a recurring challenge that I may do Harm to the tracks. So, with this mix, I ended up just doing drop cuts for the transitions. Not much DJing work, I just immediately starting the next track with a minimum of fuss. You’ll hear a scratch on the 2nd transition when I bump the tracks back in time. A DJ error, but I thought it sounded cool, so I kept it.

Enjoy!

P.S. – In the process of putting together this mix, I learned that the term Harm is used to describe people who do self-harm to themselves. I’ve made a small donation to an organization that is trying to address the issue.

At this point, I’m sure you are wondering, ‘where is mix 38?’. I’ve got this thing going on where I’ll have multiple ideas for mixes that I am playing with. And, I’ll number them sequentially. This is the first time that the latter mix got completed before the former. Don’t worry, 38 is still in the making.

This mix sounds pretty simple. It is pretty simple. 3 tracks. A little cue point work and minor use of the volume fader. Behind the scenes, I am play with how I am using cue points. I saw a tutorial online where the presented color coded them based on how many bars the transition should take. It was a pretty tedious process to do today. But, when I went to mix the tracks, it all went very quickly.

I am naming this mix mechanisms after a corporate training that I took. It encouraged us to build mechanisms with inputs, outputs, and processes to consistently, succeffully resolve recurring problems. I am working a lot on my process of mixing. I am basing it on Phil Morse’s book (from Digital DJ Tips), Rock The Dancefloor. But as such, I am building a mechanism for gathering music, training and producing mixes. The cue point exercise was one part of it.

Enjoy!

Not too much to say about this mix. Probably more to say about the equipment.

So, this has got to be the silliest problem ever. As awesome as the DDJ 1000 is, I found myself yearning for something simpler, maybe even portable. So, I finally broke down and got the DDJ 400 as well. It’s nice. I’m back to 2 channels on it. It just needs USB for power, so there one less cable. And, I can DJ from my couch!

So, I felt the urge to put together a simple mix with the new equipment. I had another set of 3 tracks sitting around, so it was a good chance to put the equipment through the paces. I used hot cues, a loop, faders, beat sync, and EQs. It’s pretty amazing how much of what you get in the 1000 you still get in the 400.

My mixing style this time around was scripted. The only thing that is kinda of novel with this mix is that I tapped in the second track, Hey Baby. But when I did I was a little off time. You can definitely hear it. So, I had to nudge it back in time. All in all, it kind of makes for a cool, authentic sound, so I kept it.

This also marks the first time I’ve made two mixes in one day. Enjoy!

With Mix 36, I am continuing down my path of live mixing. I grabbed 3 tracks that I felt would sound good together. Today, I gave them a listen to figure out which order to play them in and figured out how many bars of intro music the latter two tracks had for the transition. The last track, Mistreated had 32; which is long! I thought about sitting down and playing out what to do, but I told myself, ‘we’re live dj’ing now. So, Go!’.

As such, the transitions are simple. I bring the latter track in at abou 40% volume with the low eq down. I then fade up, swap the lows, and fade out the first track. I’m still not 100% in the zone. I definitely am using the waveforms to clue me in on how close I am to a new phrase (which, I guess I could do with memory cues and not look at the laptop). Further, I am not using beat sync, but do take advantage of the bpm displays. So, closer to live.

One take, no practice. Enjoy!

The ability to truly mix live eludes me. At some level, I don’t even know what it means. I don’t know how much prep work real DJs do vs. just feeling it. I assume they can beat match, but do they do it while mixing? Or do they look at their laptops or just beat sync? Do they set cue points and loops ahead of time? How do they figure out how to pick the next track? If it is not already defined during preparation, what steps do they take to get it to flow right with the currently playing track?

I don’t know, but I want to move in this direction. So, I’ve set a list of things I think real DJs do and am beginning to add more to my repertoire. For this mix, I turned off beat sync (but did check the tempo display) and did not create a script. It’s not my best mix. I actually thought that I’d just delete if after I was done. But it sounds pretty good. It’s my first foray into a purely House mix. I figured it’d be easier with more instrumental periods to mix. I also, intentionally, did not script the transitions. I lined up the tracks, made a few cue points for references, and felt my way through it. Hopefully they’ll get better, hey, these mixes are the Rough Drafts of My Perfect Mix.

Enjoy!

P.S. – Fun Fact: The title of the mix obviously means that I am sort of mixing live. But the motivation for the wording is a term used at work for describing the ability of some devices to support limited functionality of live video streams.

As soon as I heard Rita Ora’s Let You Love Me, I thought of Mario’s Let Me Love You. They are mirrored in content and title and sound oddly similar. I brought them both into RekordBox and they played relatively nice together.

Since they are both pop tracks, they are tricky to mix because the artists sing over the entire track. So, I started looking for extended or club mixes, acapellas or instrumentals. The best I could come up with was a bootleg of Mario’s track on Youtube.

The mix is short, just one transition and an effect to exit. However, the one transition was challenging. I overlap Mario’s track with the instrumental. If you listen closely, you can hear the phasing effect at the beginning of the chorus. Towards the end of the chorus, I use a 3rd deck to play Ora’s track while fading out Mario. The transition successfully kills his vocals while leaving the beat going. Between the start of the instrumental to the point where Ora is going solo, I am tweaking EQs, faders, and the low pass filter to make it sound right.

Enjoy!

Ok, a pair of mini-rants before I start talking about the mix

Mini-Rant #1 – can we all admit that, with the combination of RekordBox and the Pioneer DDJ-1000, using the low/high pass filter is alway better than EQs? Seriously. The EQs never seem to cut between lows and highs such that you just cut out the baseline or that a vocal falls just into the mids. The filter consistently does a better job of cutting elements of a song out that you don’t want. And realistically, if you cut out the mid, you just wanted the bass, so cutting out highs is fine. And if you wanted the lows out, going up into the mids until the right about of low elements get filter out works great. Yeah, sure, I’d feel like a more advanced DJ if I used EQs more. But every time I try, if fiddle with it for a while, don’t get what I want, flip to the filter, and voila, it sounds perfect!

Mini-Rant #2 – The equipment you are listening to makes a big difference. When I practice, I use a pair of studio monitors. When I mix, I use a good pair of headphones. When I listen, I use earbuds or a car stereo. With the first two, it is challenging because each highlight or muddle different things, so you never know how your mix will sound in the real world. Then, for the real world, it sounds different than either. The good news is that cheap earbuds are pretty forgiving and road noise will cover a lot of mistakes.

Ok, NOW for the mix. I called this one Too Easy, because it started off as such. Last weekend, while I was arranging tracks for Mix 32, I also arranged the tracks for this one. So, when I went to mix everything together, everything sounded great together. Too Easy.

So, to make it more fun, challenging, and a better audio experience, I really spent time trying to master each transition. I’ve included most of my notes from the first transition. It included EQ play (ironically, here I did try the filter and got better results with the EQs), volume fader play, returning to the start first track, and lasted for about 48 bars. I then went back and added a sample (a first for me on RekordBox) and an effect. The second transition was easy too, so, I manually looped 4 bars of Nobody Else. The third still ended up being fairly straightforward with an uneven use of filters. The outgoing track, Up All Night, filtered low over 16 bars. The incoming track, Who We Are?, filtered from high to normal using only the first 8 bars. And, I added an echo effect to exit.

The other meaning of the title was the realization that mixing tracks is a bit easy, because it is kinda formulaic. I am mixing elements, but my approach is consistent. It will get more challenging as I push to master beatmatching and mix more adhoc moving forward.

Enjoy!

Ok first, the name. Off By One Errors are a classic computer science bug. I have been flirting with one for this entire series of mixes. I tried to be cute and do a zero based count of my mixes. The first mix I ever made was ‘Mix 0’. I have since started adding them to itunes and tagging them. Since its tracking number is zero based, I end up with mp3 files name ‘Track 1 – Mix 0.mp3’. So, it’s super annoying. With this mix, I skip ‘Mix 31’ and move both track numbering and track naming to a 1 based system.

Also of significance is that Mix 32 is the halfway point of the ‘Rough Drafts’ series. I have been tagging tracks as ‘X of 64’. So I’m officially halfway there!

On to the mix. This is pretty exciting as well. I’ve thought about doing this for a while, but finally jumped in and did it. This is my first Drum and Bass Mix! Well, I think Mix 0 had a D&B track, but this is the first one that is entirely D&B. Three tracks, 2 transitions. The transitions were fairly intricate. It’s about the most I’ve used the EQs since switching to my RekordBox based set up.

Enjoy!

I had the night off, so I figured I’d put together a new mix. In ending Mix 29 with Creep, I felt like it had a good beat for a transition, but did nothing. So, as a first for my ‘Rough Drafts‘, I reused a track to take the end of Creep and mix it into Spaceship.

Spaceship is by Galantis who, I’ve mixed twice. Love No More is by Loud Luxury. I’ve mixed their track Body, which has an eerily similar melody. It’s a fun, simple mix with a sound all its own. But it definitely has commonality with some of my previous works.

Enjoy!

Seth Godin describes the dip as the following:

” Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip. At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. The Dip is the difference between the easy “beginner” technique and the more useful “expert” approach in skiing or fashion design. “

I think professionally and in DJing, I am experiencing the dip. And on both fronts, I am making progress. For DJing, I’ve committed to practicing skills 10 minutes every day (motivating article here). It’s not much but it adds up to over an hour per week. Not bad for a minor hobby. In my first week of doing it, the improvements are notable. I’ve edited my first beat grid for Little of Your Love in this mix. I also nudged tracks in real time to get the beat syncing a little tighter.

That said, the mixing is fairly light weight in mix. I use a beat jump and an echo effect to skip over a rap verse I didn’t like in Summer Love. Feeling like I always just use the low pass filter to transition between tracks, this time I use a high pass between Summer Love and Little of Your Love.

Enjoy!