Mix Club - The Remedial Class

Mad_Cyril

A place for the more experienced to help put the plebs (me).

Question 1: Preparation

See loads of comments about people listening to, editing tracks, adding cue points etc. whilst prepping mixes and cant get my head around how long it must take.

To do this id have to fire up the laptop and spend hours trawling through tunes. Am I being stupid or is this as time consuming as it sounds ?

Do you do it for your whole library or specific mixes - seems to me things like cue points would change depending on what your mixing together.

I’m trying g to figure if I have the time to get into all this.

Buying tunes, practicing, prepping would take a lot of time out of my week if its as onerous as I seem to perceive!

303abuser

Mad_Cyril To do this id have to fire up the laptop and spend hours trawling through tunes. Am I being stupid or is this as time consuming as it sounds ?

for me, it was that time consuming and i found it really tedious. it took all the fun out of what i used to love about playing records. it killed the spontaneity, thus i gave it up in favour of production.

Homegrove

Mad_Cyril I do it whenever I buy new tunes. Usually about 20 every Friday. Takes me about 3,5 hours. And depending how you play tunes all you have to do is listen to the tunes. No adding cue points etc. Like when I played stuff off burned CDRs. There was no other preparation.

For me doing a mix properly takes usually a few weeks, I try a lot of different combinations etc. But not done that since the lockdown started. Just been playing for fun every weekend for hours, and I always record. Every 4th session or so seems to be good enough for release.

Doubt I will do a thought out mix in awhile, this has been more fun.

bosstrabs

Mad_Cyril See loads of comments about people listening to, editing tracks, adding cue points etc. whilst prepping mixes and cant get my head around how long it must take.

To do this id have to fire up the laptop and spend hours trawling through tunes. Am I being stupid or is this as time consuming as it sounds ?

With a bit of organisation and planning it surely isn’t difficult to get through loads of music per week. Pre-COVID, I must have consumed two hours of music (of all genres) per day getting to and from work, and doing an evening walk for exercise or being on the subway or in a taxi to the pub (I never speak to taxi drivers, they are always total cunts in any country). Add in the odd time at home when I’m doing some work or fannying about on here with music in the background.

With careful planning, anyone could probably get through 14-16 hours of new music a week just going about their normal week?

vinnyt77

Homegrove and I always record

Also, this times a million. Always listen back - you’ll learn a lot more hearing the details of your mixes and your mixing style afterwards than during - phasing, blending, levels etc

Dubman

I’ve really enjoyed playing vinyl the last few weeks. No cue points or nothing. Just a cheap mixer & 1210’s..The mixing is a bit dodgy though.

Matt

I don’t bother with cue points or any kind of preparation. I’ve tried it, and no doubt you can get a better sounding mix by doing some prep. I just find it really boring.

I just play for a few hours once or twice a week. Some mixes don’t work out, some do. I link the ones that do in rekordbox and after a while, I have bunches of tunes which I know I can mix together.

Obviously there are some far better Dj’s than myself on here, they may have better processes. I’ve just settled on one where I can get the enjoyment I want from Djing and still turn out the occasional mix that’s worth listening to.

One thing is for sure, over analysing it is guaranteed to turn the whole process into a chore.

vinnyt77

Matt One thing is for sure, over analysing it is guaranteed to turn the whole process into a chore.

This ^^^^ x a million.

Homegrove

I wondered what happened (besides not being able to go out anymore) for me to get really into playing long sets EVERY weekend in our living room, and I realized it was getting the XDJs. With my Traktor set up (A&H PX:5 and a A&H Xone K2) I was required to use sync. With the XDJs I could get rid of the laptop in my home DJ booth, and not use sync, and IT IS SO MUCH MORE FUN.

vinnyt77

When I first started spinning twenty odd years ago, I needed to know my tunes inside out for my mixes to sound any good - cue points, breakdowns, drops etc.

Practice and experience changed that over time. Fairly quickly got to a point where I could just grab a bunch of new tunes, have a spin, and it’d come out sounding decent.

Haven’t done a ‘planned’ mix for years - one of the board festive mix swaps from a few years back I guess. Just don’t get the satisfaction from it that I once did, and honestly - I’d struggle to find the time. I’d say you’re better off just having a spin as often ss you can, and getting as comfortable as you can transitioning from one record to the next, whatever those records are…

mono-stereo

It’s more about the tunes than the mixing anyway. Just play a bunch of tunes that you like, rather than worry about the perfect mix, no one actually gives a fuck.

303abuser

mono-stereo It’s more about the tunes than the mixing anyway. Just play a bunch of tunes that you like, rather than worry about the perfect mix, no one actually gives a fuck.

when playing in front of people, this is pretty much it. once you get to a certain proficiency with beat matching and keeping the levels constant, no one notices the difference between average and great skill sets.

Mad_Cyril

nice one chaps. Felt a bit of a chore to me, thought I was being a lazy cnut, but really couldn’t see the point.

Like the idea if linking tracks @Matt sounds really useful.

Not sure Traktor will let me do that though

Along_the_Wire

I have no real idea. I prepped the arse out of my first couple of mixes recently, but like I’ve said. the mixing wasn’t great, so it probably didn’t matter. The last one was a proper open and shut case. Got the tunes together pretty quickly and to prep 14 or 15 tracks properly hardly takes anytime at all, but takes a lot of the stress out of the actual mix and got from buying, selection, order and then mix really quickly, which massively took the previous tedium of it out of the way

looping the incoming track is my new practice thing. Mixing without a computer is a game changer for me and really love it. Mixing with a computer is basically the same as creating a playlist.

vinnyt77

303abuser no one notices the difference between average and great skill sets.

When was the last time you were blown away by a DJ’s technical ability in a club? Not just being tight at getting from a to b, but their imagination in putting a stack of records together…

Dan

I’ve gotta agree with Mono on that one. I’m actually thinking that my mixing is getting worse as I get older at live gigs. Take the money and run.

303abuser

vinnyt77 i’m in the exception the rule. because of where i live, my options are seriously limited. if two decent djs stroll through here in a year, that’s a big year, so i only go see guys play who i know are good. my experience djing ruined average djs for me, i need good records and technical skill or i struggle to keep my head in it.

the last great dj i saw was mark farina. green velvet a year an a half ago was ok, nothing special. kevin saunderson was phenomenal last time i saw him, danny howells a few years back. i just don’t get out much anymore haha.

Amps

The internet has changed things on this front a bit too.

Consider back in the 90s, DJs might have a very similar sounding set for a good two or three months, having it evolve with new tunes appearing over time. Now, nobody can be seen to play the same tune twice and release schedules are mental busy. So way back when, DJs had more opportunity to get to know their records; swerve the key clashes, find the cue points, get a flow etc. Now things have to be a bit more instant, hence the leg work that goes into setting up mixes, and why some DJs have ‘human filters’ going through new music for them.

Put simply, DJs who prep sound better, but if you’re not recording it for other to listen to multiple times, don’t worry too much about it, just enjoy it.

vinnyt77

303abuser I think the last time I saw a DJ whose phasing and mixing really blew me away was Ian Ossia, about 5-6 years ago. I think it’s partly the music of today - it just doesn’t seem to lend itself to mindblowing transitions in the way that records of 15-20 years ago did. At the same time though, it’s SO easy to be an ‘adequate’ technical DJ using modern tools and trickery, that a whole generation of DJs just don’t seem to have the knack of putting records together in a spellbinding way…

Dubman

Had another great day just picking random records of a shelf and mixing them in with not a care in the world.

303abuser

Dubman that’s always the best time.

303abuser

vinnyt77 all good points. i think it’s a much different skill set than it was when everyone played records, i know it wasn’t the same for me.