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Thread: Beginner help with phrase mixing

  1. #11
    New Member
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    Record all you mixes at home and just listen while your doing other things throughout the day or in the car is one find very useful. Also know your tracks better than anyone else. If you can play the recording on big speakers to hear what you will hear during a performance, that will be a great help. Mixing in key aswell will help the phrases work better together.

  2. #12
    Member steveryan's Avatar
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    Aug 2012
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    Las Vegas, NV
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    This subject comes up a lot. People are counting in bars of 4 beats, but there's a better way.

    Dare I introduce the concept of the number 8?

    House music and electronic music in general is extremely repetitive. It needs to be this way so that dancers can anticipate what direction the music will take. It makes it easier for the dancer to plan his moves.

    Because it's so repetitive, a far better way to count the music is with 4 bars of 8 rather than 8 bars of 4. Look at it this way....

    Which is easier for you to visualize?

    1234
    1234
    1234
    1234
    1234
    1234
    1234
    1234

    or

    12345678
    12345678
    12345678
    12345678

    Consoli****** the two bars of four into one bar of 8 is much better. Some people will say that both are the same thing....but their not. Look at it. It's much simpler to wrap your mind around the four bars of 8. Also, the changes that take place within the song are nearly never taking place after 4 beats. It's always happening after 8, 16 and 32 beats......not 4.

    The music is nearly always constructed in 32 beat "Chunks" of music with changes taking place after 16 and 32. Therefore, the number 8 is simply more convenient than the number 4. If you're counting it in fours, you're actually doing twice the work, and it's harder to visualize.

    So, the idea when phrasing is to layer one "ChunK" of 32 beats over the top of another "Chunk" of 32 beats. When you start counting using 8 beat bars, these chunks become much, much easier to visualize and also anticipate when they are beginning and ending.

    It wont take you much time to just start feeling it so you wont really have to actually count it anymore. You'll just know exactly where you're at.

    32 beats is a fairly reliable number. Some songs will actually stray away from it a little bit (Acid House is notorious for this), but most songs will stay dedicated to the number from beginning to end. This is especially helpful when going freestyle where you don't have time to plan anything out. You can just rely on the 32 beats and more often than not it's all gonna work out.

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