ATrain vs TIMMBO - Noob Battle

[JonAvalon]

Mix 1

Mix 2


Rules:
- You must have been in no more than 3 battles on this forum
- Any DJ equipment
- 30min live mix
- ANY dance genre except dubstep (sorry bro's)
- No Hip Hop (only because that's been done)
- No post production

[diceallion]

Here we goooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[niarta]

Good luck to TIMMBO and all the other noobies that are competing this week

[TIMMBO]

Just seen this lol

Good luck to all

Bring on the choooooooooons lol

And of course we don't vote

[diceallion]

Gents, congrats to the both of you. Regardless of the outcome, you should both be proud of yourselves and I can say, I'm glad to not have to go up against either 1 of you, lol.

I'll be grading the battle as I have done with others, since I'm not in position to give constructive critique.


Point system:

Intro = 1 point
Track selection equals graded 1 to 10
AHA (WOW) moments , 1 point for each time
Technique/style 1 to 7
Outro = 1 point


Mix 1

1

5

4

4

1

Total 15

Mix 2

1

7

5

6

Total 19

[niarta]

^^ Thanks for your input!

[djnicke]

Oh wow! u both got ur mixes in already!!?? Awesome can't wait to hear both of these so excited.......

edit:

These are both great mixes well done! respect to you both! More respect for having the balls to do it. I really can't decide yet, this is going to take more listens. Thanks for another couple of cool mixes to add to my collection, some of my mates will dig these! I'll vote later it's a draw at the moment lol

[Sigma]

1 - The music made this a very long half an hour for me, haha. At the start, you played a couple of tunes in their entirety without mixing at all, which was a odd, but overall this was pretty well executed for a mix in a "n00b battle". The levels are a bit low in places. The phrase matching was passable, but the transitions were very short and sometimes you'd just slowly fade the outgoing song out. As the beatmatching was basically perfect, I'm assuming you used auto-sync for this - either that or you've put way more practice into beatmatching than you have everything else, haha. You didn't make any glaring mistakes, so you just need to keep doing what you're doing so you can get to the point where you're doing longer, better phrased transitions.

2 - You tagged your mix with your name man. The battles are supposed to be anonymous. Strangely, my music player decided that this mix was "The Original Soundtrack from the film Lone Star" as it downloaded that cover art automatically, lol. The sound quality in this mix sounded a bit iffy to me. Even though the recording wasn't clipping, in places the songs sounded a touch badly EQed and slightly distorted. Maybe it's because mix 1 is 320 Kbps and this is only 128 and I listened to them back to back. Something doesn't sound quite right anyway. The mixing was OK, but it had some of the same issues as mix 1. I'm assuming the bit at 14:40 is you switching from one song to another and if so, I don't think doing a transition in spots like that sounds very good - at least that one didn't. But again, you're not making any fundamental errors so you just need to keep doing what you're doing.

Every single song in these mixes was basically identical. Pounding beat that starts to double up into a drop (sometimes with a vocal sample), then bleepy bloopy car alarm sounds and a sweeping melodic bit. It's the most formulaic music I've ever heard in my life. If you like one song, I guess that's a good thing because you'll like all of them. That wasn't the case for me unfortunately, haha.

I'm gonna vote for mix 1, but only just.

[TIMMBO]

Appreciate the feedback sigma
And I totally understand how hard it must be to listen to something u don't particularly like lol


And cheers irrational fear for the input as well

All feedback taken on board

[Irrational_Fear]

Firstly, well done to both for entering a battle this early on- I would have been bricking it! Hopefully all the feedback will be useful to both of you, and please take it as exactly that- constructive feedback

I was going to go into more detail but I think I would largely be repeating what Sigma has written, so some points after listening to both;

-There are no obvious galloping horses or even minor 'off's during the transitions, nor are there any audible nudges/corrections that I noticed, so I would also surmise that both mixes were done using sync- no issue with that whatsoever it's just an area to ignore as far as critiquing the mixes goes. I'll be honest I was half expecting one of the mixes to sound a bit more 'live' as I was under the impression Timmbo used CDJ350s so I figured I'd be able to tell the mixes apart like that- alas not!

-There were a few issues with some of the transitions but I feel these were common to both mixes. Mix 1 did have those early couple of songs where it was basically track A finish >>> track B start, but I didn't feel there were any glaringly long silences (it sounded more like a quiet bit of a breakdown). Mix 2 had the transition that Sigma highlighted at around 14-15mins where it seemed like the incoming track was either started to early or the outgoing track went into an unexpected breakdown- I'm not sure but it didn't really work. That being said those kind of transitions 'can' work, they just need the sections of the two songs to complement each other which didn't really happen there, but if that was the intention then props for trying something a bit different.

-The transitions that did work were often very short, which I would say normally suits this kind of music (not that I listen to a lot of it!), however they work better when there is more impact to the swap-overs (whether this is via the bass-kick or a vocal coming in, whatever). Simply fading the volume out of one track whilst the other is in the intro tends to lose the energy that characterizes this kind of music- I think the transitions would work better if more emphasis was placed on the EQs rather than the volume faders for these transitions, but then I don't really play this kind of stuff so I could be wrong.

-Lastly, as Sigma pointed out there was also a noticeable drop in sound quality in the second mix. I listened via drop-box so wasn't able to check the mp3 quality but if Sigma says it was 128kps that does make sense- I'd always export mix files to 320kps mp3, there is a huge difference in sound quality!

Overall though both mixes demonstrated a pretty decent understanding of the principles of phrase-matching etc, certainly a lot more so than quite a few beginner mixes I've heard, and by entering the mixes into a battle it shows the commitment and effort is definitely there from both parties to refine these skills as you practice more- so respect to both of you for taking part.

Choosing one to vote for was tough- I am also not a huge fan of this musical style (the bleepy-bloopy car alarm stuff as Sigma so eloquently put it), but I do feel that mix 2 had a bit more variety in it which made it a bit more listenable to me. It was just a shame the sound quality spoiled it a touch.

I've voted mix 2 purely for having a tiny bit more variety in the mix (if I was choosing one of them to listen to again it would be this one so I figured that's a fair basis for voting) but on a technical level I don't think there is much to choose between the two so it was very close.

Fair play to both for entering a battle this early on, and it's clear you're both heading in the right direction!

Edited to add: After saying I wouldn't go into too much detail and repeat what Sigma said I've kind of gone and done exactly that!