how to improve my mixing?!

benjybars · Post by **benjybars** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:55 pm

after buying records for a couple of years i recently got some decks for home use. The fact is i am RUBBISH at mixing

i mean i can keep count of a tune ok but i as soon as i hear a next tune at the same time i just lose it and end up panicking!

so are there any tips you would recommend in particular (apart from the obvious one of practice all day and night)?? i remember there was a good thread along similar lines a few months ago but i can't find it now.

any help much appreciated.

cheers.

__________ · Post by **__________** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:29 pm

nod ya motherfuckin' head til ya break yo neck, in time with the tune that is playing. then nod your head in time with the one in your headphones...get 'both' your heads nodding at the same time and the two tunes will be mixed.
or tap your foot.

there's no need to panic though, there is no pressure to mix well in your own room.

FOCUS on both tunes, keep one locked in your head, tap your foot in time, and listen to the snares / hats on the incoming tune.

its impossible to explain how to mix via the internet though, really

addict · Post by **addict** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:39 pm

£10 Bag wrote:nod ya motherfuckin' head til ya break yo neck, in time with the tune that is playing. then nod your head in time with the one in your headphones...get 'both' your heads nodding at the same time and the two tunes will be mixed.
or tap your foot.

there's no need to panic though, there is no pressure to mix well in your own room.

FOCUS on both tunes, keep one locked in your head, tap your foot in time, and listen to the snares / hats on the incoming tune.

its impossible to explain how to mix via the internet though, really

could'nt of put internet mixing advise better myself. its all about the nods and the snare's. lol and timing of course. beats and bars, try not to drop the next one in a random place in the tune.

__________ · Post by **__________** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:45 pm

yea, count bars, drop on the first beat of the bar
trust your instincts too grasshopper. if you think its gonna be a bad mix, it probably will. pick your tunes carefully, not everything mixes with everything.

getting stoned seriously helps too, i find you can get deeeep into your mixing and separate the two tunes in your head much better. not too stoned though, or you will be too lazy to put your vinyls back in the sleeve - this is not good practice.

good luck anyway!

oh also, traktor is great for learning the basics of mixing. i did mixes on traktor before i ever touched a set of decks. when i finally got some belt drives, i could mix already.
looking at waveforms helps you learn more than looking at your hand cueing a vinyl because you're confused about when to drop the next tune in.

PRACTICE!

__________ · Post by **__________** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:48 pm

AdDICT wrote:try not to drop the next one in a random place in the tune.

having said that, if you drop earth a run red into skeng after the word 'scream' it mixes perfectly. in theory its 8 or 16 bars out (not sure) but it sounds perfect.
ya want it so earth a run red kicks in when skeng gets to the 'duppityduppityduppity' bit. sounds ill!

swomp · Post by **swomp** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:21 pm

I always found having the headphone on my ear depending what deck im mixing on (ie if I've got my right deck playing and bringing in the left, I'll put the headphone on my left ear and leave it off the other) Its a small thing I know, but it sure helped me think about it logically...

Spend as much time as possible on them, get used to the feel..

Most importantly get inspiring tunes and get to know them.

Peace

drifterman_ · Post by **drifterman_** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:09 pm

not too stoned though, or you will be too lazy to put your vinyls back in the sleeve - this is not good practice.

REAL TALK!!!

FSTZ · Post by **FSTZ** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:09 pm

know your tunes (as well as the tempos) and when you drop one track...
have the next one ready to go.

drop the tracks on logical marks (bar: 65, 97, 129, 161) increments of 32 bars.

make sure your tracks are onbeat before you bring them in

and yes...

practice everyday

drifterman_ · Post by **drifterman_** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:31 pm

benjy practice practice practice

i been mixing about 3 years

practice every day more or less

still clang sometimes, not as much as i use 2 tho

luck 4 me i got mc's who will not business 2 say "RECORD JUMPED INIT.."

swomp · Post by **swomp** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:17 pm

And one more thing - take your time on a mix! When ur startin out if u get the records in start from the top n do it again, and again... 30 seconds of mixed tunes sounds better than 2 mins of sketchyness

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:32 pm

Practice is the obvious thing to say but its true. It's all about learning how to hear two tunes at once really, you have to train your ears so you know which one is going faster/slower. At first it seems impossible but eventually it becomes second nature.

Find the first kick of the record you're mixing in, and cue it on the right bar (don't know how to explain that, should be obvious really though). What I usually listen for is the snares matching. Push/pull the record to speed it up/slow it down and adjust the pitch accordingly.

You might want to learn pitch chasing from the start, certainly makes things easier later- that just means getting the records in time using the pitch control rather than touching the record. With that you want to work out by adjusting the pitch which speed is too fast which is too slow and then find the mid point at which the speed matches. Eventually with that you don't even have to do that really, you just adjust it so they match naturally.

EQing/structure etc come later, get that technical basic DOWN first and it will be a lot more fun in the long term. Once you've got beatmatching the real fun begins with working out how to get things to drop when you want them to, how to mess about with levels, how things fit together, even keymatching.

I've been mixing every day recently and I've got so much better technically and musically.

And the advice about bopping along is good too, try and hear the music as much as thinking about mixing it, if you know what i mean.

Basically when you start mixing its frustrating because its a full time trainwreck but once it clicks its endlessly enjoyable.

benjybars · Post by **benjybars** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:08 pm

your collective chest..

yea, the hearing two tunes at once is proper weird to get used to.

it's quite a weird feeling being so useless at something, u know what i mean? makes man feel humble

anyway yeah just gonna practice as much as i can in a house that i share with 5 others..

did anyone have a eureka moment when they thought about something in a certain way?

wallace · Post by **wallace** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:21 am

Get Live 7.
Had a go at decks a few times, my timing is crap...
Trainwreck!!!

Goin with Live 7.
Trigga init.

Or have some skillz spin my plates.
When i get some.

Either is coo wit me.

thief · Post by **thief** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:27 am

£10 Bag wrote:PRACTICE!

unklefesta wrote:practice everyday

drifterman_ wrote:practice practice practice

Corpsey wrote:Practice

KEY.

lukesnarl · Post by **lukesnarl** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:07 pm

i've been mixing since 1991 (and still mess up sometimes!)

while it certainly is true about practising regularly and being familiar with your tunes i'd like to point out that some tracks just don't go together well so while you might have them in time they can still sound crap together due to key clashes or incompatible drum patterns (eg if one track has triplet hats or something)

One thing I noticed a while ago is that I don't seem to consciously listen to the track that is playing thru the PA. More sort of 'feel the rhythm' of it (sheesh that sounds wanky) and I have noticed playing at the radio station I play at that it is much harder to mix (or at least i have to THINK about it more) because the studio monitors don't have much sub to them - so i guess i'm not subconsciously feeling the rhythm of the track playing.

If i'm having trouble, one thing I like to do is 'mix on the snares' where you drop the cued up record in to your phones and listen to the snare to see if it stays in time with the snare in the track playing on the PA.
If it falls behind with each bar you know that the incoming track needs to be sped up. Get it back to the start (or whatever you are using as a cue point (first regular snare perhaps)) and speed it up a bit and try again.

Often I will pop the phones off my ear and drop them back on when I am expecting the snare and if you hear less and less of the snare (just its tail) you know its too fast - if you hear and increasing gap-then-snare you know its falling behind....

Its important to have your headphone level set so your mind doesn't pay more attention to the incoming track and not enough to the one playing in the room.

As far as adjusting the pitch it is often faster to use a binary division approach - what i mean is say you know the track needs to be faster....
Put the fader at +4...
try again...
it may now be too fast...
put it back half way - so halfway between 0 and +4 is +2.
Now it may be too slow again - so go halfway between +2 and +4 = +3
and repeat etc...
This is a mathematically proven way to get to the right pitch fastest.
And certainly faster than try +0.3 more each time....
Some people may think that idea is rubbish and you can sort of judge how much it need to be pitched. I kinda use a combination of both.

I remember years ago watching house deejays mix and they would spend about 60 seconds listening to the track in the phones AFTER they had go them in time to see how long the tracks sounded like they were still in time for. If they could keep em in time in the phones for 60 seconds they knew they could go back and start the mix and have a nice long 60 second crossfade....

Oh and another trick is to 'test the mix' in the headphones - a lot of mixers have a knob which allows you to mix the 'program' in with the 'cue' signal to sort of preview what moving the xfader will sound like - but just to you in the headphones - this can be useful if you are stuck deejaying somewhere where there is no decent monitors and they PA is not nearby so you have a DELAY between the sound coming out of the speakers and them reaching your ears which makes trying to beatmix essentially impossible!

And if you are getting nowhere then practise with 2 minimal records without too much crazy shit going on in them.

Hope some of that makes sense

Just keep at it - you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:13 pm

I think with mixing you get the knack of it and after that its impossible to forget how to do it, its just a matter of practicing in order to improve/sustain your skill level. I don't think I'll ever forget how to beatmatch now but if I don't practice for ages I'll be much less good at it and also will forget how to mix structurally.

Don't know if anyones mentioned it and its probably obvious but if you look at a record you can see the structure of it usually by looking at which bits are darker than others. Dark bits= quieter bits. So an intro for example is usually either quieter than the drop or has a quiet bit just before it. Eventually you'll be able to predict when something will drop in just by looking at it, and know how 16 bars look. One thing to remember is that the closer to the centre of the record the smaller the grooves are, so 32 bars of a breakdown is going to look smaller than 32 bars in the intro if you get what I mean.

I got to the point where I could double drop DNB everytime a while ago. Not necessarily a good idea from the listeners point of view haha but its a good way to get confident with structure.

shook1 · Post by **shook1** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 4:22 pm

Seen about double dropping D'n'B, Think that helped me along my way.

I reckon a main issue is counting bars, if it's not mixed right like that, just sounds off.

Once again though PRACTICE!!!!

At first you just fee useless though, like what your trying is pointless, when i got to grips with it felt like a fucking miracle, and it just gets easier from there. Become's more a case of selection and little things you do in the mix as aposed to the technical side of things.

Note though, It's not about 2 basslines fully having it at the same tme, thats when you need to get your E.Q on for sure!

psychonaught · Post by **psychonaught** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:57 pm

26 Basslines mixed with Spongebob

addict · Post by **addict** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:21 pm

psychonaught wrote:26 Basslines mixed with Spongebob

26 basslines mixed with anything

djelements · Post by **djelements** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:38 pm

Maybe it's the fact that I can pick out individual elements of stuff in my mind, but the mixing thing doesn't seem like it would be that hard to me. >_> I don't have decks or anything, (Ignore the term 'DJ' in my name for now) but with live, and some shite virtual dj thing I downloaded for the lulz, mixing seems very easy. Keep in mind, I never quite got one tune to go in my headphones and the other tune to come out of the speakers. So, it's probably even easier.

how to improve my mixing?!

how to improve my mixing?!

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