yeah. It was a little hard on the ears. Perhaps its a combination of a few things.
you have a midi controller, which means you shouldnt even have a lot of beatmatching issues, yet you still had some off beats which you corrected later.
I must give you some rep tho, your music selection was daring.
Dance music and hip hop follows a simple formula. It is usually 4/4 (like 99.9% of the time) meaning 4 beats per bar, 4 bars per measure. In practice it is usually 8 bars per measure....or 32 beats. So most tracks follow the 32-32-32-32-32 formula.
TRACK 1 1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4
TRACK 2 ---------------------------------1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4
You need to drop the incoming track - ON THE ONE.
If you use loops, you still need to drop ON THE ONE. If you are using short loops, this gets more difficult - but a fundamental skill of a DJ is understanding not just BPM but phrasing.
You are not doing this consistently period. Your buddy didnt know how to put it correctly, but you are not mixing on measure. You are not mixing on beat either, but that is a different problem.
When you figure this out, come back and post a new mix.
I'm at work so I can't really listen right now.
Also, to be fair I am not a guru in any way, shape, or form about hip hop mixing - so my 16 bar, 64 beat philosophy might not apply. I'm guessing probably not and that an 8 bar, 32 beat phrasing would work better.
At what time marks are the mixes you are questioning? When I get home I'll go through and give a listen to see what I can come up with.
The loop function is your best friend for keeping it on phrase.
Set up an 8 bar, 32 beat loop. Cue it up, and release on time with beat 1 of a new phrase. Just beatmatch within your loop, and as long as the track keeps it's time and phrase structure (not resetting with a little one bar or two bar breakdown at some point), you know you'll always be on phrase. Then when the time comes to start your mix, wait until your loop comes back around to "1" and throw your track in. It will be in time and in phrase with the live track.
This also saves you from having to cue and recue over and over while beatmatching, saving you even more time to get funky with your mixing style.
Also counting like mrkleen said, 1-2-3-4-2-2-3-4-3-2-3-4-4-2-3-4-1 will really help you learn and understand phrasing. Eventually it'll be natural and you really won't even be counting in your head.
I really appreciate you posting detailed responses.
I'm not sure what genres you normally spin but what about songs that have no break or place to mix out of, until the end of the song? Obviously I spin a lot of 'up-beat borderline wedding' stuff and typically the only chance to mix out would be over guitars or the chorus, etc. Another thing that is stuck in my head is to obviously not clash lyrics, so what I have been doing (since I'm not counting bars) is bring the song out at a lyrical point that makes sense, right as the first lyrics of the next song start, with no hands-on experience of bar counting.
Every chorus is still 32, so it still holds.
Another note (and this may be more personal taste)... You've got a LOT of those pre-mixed mashup tracks going on... to me, they're a bit tacky and usually make it seem like there's way too much going on. Again, just my opinion... If you want to really practice, go for some original tracks without all the other BS mixed in...
I am going to use the two songs I used in that video Jive Talking and Night Fever and mix between the 32 bar points of the songs. I'll do this as much as track one allows to see if I have it down. I *THINK* I know exactly what you guys mean, but I have lacked discipline and feedback until now.
Hopefully I am not the only person that has had this issue jeeze lol
Just the remix service I use puts in, I agree I prefer to use "non-hype" versions of the songs if at all possible. If I never heard a fatman scoop intro ever again I'd be very happy.Originally Posted by Mixxed
First thoughts - wow, look at all those flashing lights!
Second thoughts - he's scratching with his hand on the wrong side of the platter (maybe it was the way it was filmed though, but it looked weird!)
Third thoughts - the mixing isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be based on the comments.
An example of the bad phrase matching is the mix from Snoop's "What's My Name?" into the Fresh Prince thing. You start scratching around the point where you should have dropped the track in. The good in point there is the bit where Snoop says the word "name" just as the singing starts, as that's the 1 on the first bar of the chorus.
Also, don't scratch through the speakers unless you mean to. Sometimes it sounds like you're doing it just cos you're bored or something. I know you were just having a practice session, but still - you posted it up and you're asking for feedback on it. You're not good at scratching yet, so simple scratches to bring a track into the mix will work - and use them sparingly too. You seemed to fall into a very formulaic pattern of doing very similar sounding scratching, then dropping the track in (often at the wrong point), tweaking the EQ, then doing the echo thing to take it out of the mix.
There's potential there for sure. Work on nailing your phrase matching. Practice your scratching, as I think that's one of your weakest skills at the moment. Try and get a bit more variety in there in terms of technique too.
Yea the first thing I noticed was also how his hands are placed in an unconvential spot on the other other side of the platter. I also agree that the mixing wasnt as bad as I was prepared to hear (only listened to like 15 min or so though). I'm not a fan of the play selection, but thats what you do and what you spin, so I def looked past that, but I can see how that music selection in your mix could make someone, who is judging your mix, think it was not that good even if you had mixed it flawlessly (which I dnt think you did BTW). Like Sigma said, work on your scratches. I would also say to scale back the scratching in your mixes to maybe just simple baby scratches, and even some of your simple baby's were a lil off beat which made em not sound that good. So basically if you can get your baby scratches on tempo and then work on cleaning up some of your other simple scratches (didnt see you using the x-fader, maybe thats why they all sounded a little mushy), that would improve your mix quite a bit. By listening to your mix, it sounds like your not clueless about phrase matching, you just havent perfected it.
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