no worriesOriginally Posted by drumpusher
Sorry dude, instead of 16 I mean 8 bars. Been a long day. I'll edit my post
so 8 bars, every 32 beats theres a new phrase?
I read on the net its every 4 bars or 16 beats?!
no worriesSorry dude, instead of 16 I mean 8 bars. Been a long day. I'll edit my post
so 8 bars, every 32 beats theres a new phrase?
I read on the net its every 4 bars or 16 beats?!
counting the beat to keep track of phrases is a great way to make your mixes sound different. you'll start to use different songs, mix them with other different songs. the blending of the two tracks can make it sound like a new song entirely.It really is frustrating, I mix a few songs great then it goes pear shaped, its so frustrating!!!
counting the beats is a good trick, thanks
do u guys have any tricks to make your mixes sound different?
there are always effects, but i wouldn't worry about those for a little while.
it comes down to training your ears to recognize that the song in your headphones is in sync with your live track. You need to really listen and focus at first, it'll become second nature eventually. once you've got beat matching down, start to really focus on phrasing. that'll make your mixing very tight. baby steps first.
Technically, yes. But that's the sloppy way to do it. This is where the statement and response comes into play. It'll be a lot tighter if you have patience and wait for the response to finish and drop your first downbeat on the first beat of a statement. Plus the response usually has the big noticeable punctuation sounds at the end of it so it's easier to listen out for.no worries
so 8 bars, every 32 beats theres a new phrase?
I read on the net its every 4 bars or 16 beats?!
“When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” - Pablo Picasso
Yep. I'd rep you, but I have to wait.
Everybody is going to have an opinion.
Just do your thing to the best of your ability and have fun with it.
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The info in this thread is good, just touching up on a few things that might make it clearer.
The VAST majority of dance music is in a 4/4 time signature with 8-measure phrases.
Some explanation.
Bars and measures are the same thing. Measures are called bars as slang for how they're written in sheet music. If you don't read music, it doesn't matter, just know they're the same thing.
4/4 means 4 beats to a measure, quarter note gets the beat. In most dance music (house, techno, trance, electro, etc.) that's how kick drums are written.
"4 to the floor" actually means that kick drum pattern, not the time signature. It means each measure has 4 kick drums on quarter notes.
In a 4/4 song, you count 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 ....
That's mostly what the time signature is for, to teach you how to count the most significant/dominant part of the beat.
In that sentence dominant just means the normal English word. "dominant" has another meaning in music too, but it's not relevant for this, so don't worry about it.
Ok, a downbeat is the first beat of a measure (the 1 when you're counting 1 2 3 4 1 ...). Just one more piece of useful terminology.
"Phrase" is just a musician's way of naming the basic piece of structure for a full song. In dance music, 999 times out of a thousand, it sounds like 8-bar phrases. This gives it tht feeling of regimented structure that we all know, hear, and respond to, even of we can't describe (or articulate) it.
You'll know you're hearing them completely right when you can drop a record at any point and KNOW when the next phrase is going to start within a measure or two, even if you haven't heard a phrase change yet.
There are 2 big ways to count phrases. You can count 1 2 3 4 5 ... 31 32 1, like someone said above. The more classic way to count is to count measures and beats at the same time: 1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 ... 8 2 3 4 1. Either way, the downbeats you call 1 are always the start of a phrase. The big reason for counting the classical way is so that you know what part of a measure you're on at any given moment.
Why does that matter? You mentioned sings without a kick to start. If you know where the drums are supposed to fall, you can beat match anything that has drums. In most dance music, snares fall on the 2 and the 4 of each measure (only on the 3 in dubstep). Hi-hats usually fall on up-beats, which are half way between each number you're counting.
You count those 1&2&3&4&1.... The hats would happen on every & (pronounded "and"). But, that's a more common thing to change than the kick and the snare.
Anyway...
The big reason that phrases are important to DJs is that big changes in the track happen on a phrase change. They don't happen every phrase, but where they happen will be on a phrase.
That's the easiest place to mix.
Step 1 is beat matching...get the beats (quarter notes) to line up so the drums sound like they're playing together.
Step 2 is basic phrase matching...make the downbeats of both songs line up.
Step 3 is actual phrase matching. The first downbeat of a phrase happens at the same time in both songs. That way, when one track changes, it makes musical sense in the context of both tracks. Whether you can articulate it or not, you WILL hear if it's wrong.
That's most of it.
The last thing is to listen to what changes on which phrases in both tracks. Most dance music is insanely predictable in a few important ways. Every phrase or two during the intro, something new starts (at the start of a phrase). Every phrase or two during the outro, something stops. You kinda just have to hear throes changes, but things to listen for are when individual drum sounds start/stop, when individual synths start/stop, when vocals start/stop.
The easiest and cleanest way to mix is to line up the tracks so that the start of something in 1 track happens on the same downbeat as the end if something in the other one.
It's really formulaic, and it is by no means the end of learning to DJ or the only way to do it, but it's a DAMN good place to start.
IMHO, if you haven't mastered that, don't even think about moving on to anything more complicated. Don't touch any effects. Don't add a 3rd deck. Don't even touch your EQs. Learn that FIRST.
Then, start adding more stuff if you want, though depending on what you spin, you may not need to. Apart from scratching, that is ALL hip hop DJs do. And it sounds great for that style.
If you want an example, click on my mixcloud link and listen to the Breaks 2007 set. (or something like that)
That mix was on DJF 1.0's top breaks mixes list from about the time I posted it until the site went down this winter. And it was INSANELY simple. I did it in Ableton, but that doesn't matter. there were no effects in that mix. No EQs. No VOLUME FADERS. Every Channel was open the entire time. It is literally nothing but beat and phrase matching as I've described here. The mashup somewhere in the middle (it's the section with halcyon & on & on) was even done that way.
It's very limiting to have so few options on where to start a track, and sometimes you get into weird situations where tracks just don't want to line up or the crowd isn't feeling a track and you have to mix out early, but sometimes working within very strict constraints brings out your creative side.
As a little bonus, mixing this way is a great way to alter the energy of the floor. Want people more excited, mix a phrase or 2 early. Want to take it down a notch, mix a phrase or 2 late. It really can be that simple.
The complicated/hard part comes in learning your tracks well enough to hear changes before they happen and know when to start a track so that phrases line up correctly.
As a side note, I blame easy looping and hot cues for a lot of young DJs not knowing this stuff. Yeah, they're creative tools and can be great, but if you use then without knowing why you're doing it, you'll do more harm than good.
Questions? Comments? Lawsuits?
Mostapha nailed it as always. It doesn't hurt to take a few music theory courses, or even just looking up some very very basic music theory online. It makes learning 20x easier.
Click here for mobile viewing.
welp, mostapha explained everything you need to know in excellent detail, as well as some extra pointers. and yes i agree with him on looping. all it takes is knowing your tracks.
Also, I just saw all the typos. They were my iPhone's fault…maybe I'll correct them if it's not clear.
Also, because it came up on DJTT once…the whole "everything is 8 bar phrases" rule isn't set in stone…it's cultural. And it's not a conspiracy by the guys in black suits to make us all make the same music…it's a result of how the first sequencers worked. And it's stuck around because it works really well.
given out too much rep
when 24 hours has gone by....
how do u guys mix commercial top 40 music? there's no real place to mix because theres so much going on, any advice?
p.s thanks so much lads for all your advice, greatly appreciate it.
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