Along_the_Wire definitely more advanced, but should be way easier on a controller than it was on vinyl. that shit is scary the first time you do it in front of people. 
Mix Club - The Remedial Class
Amps I would never fade basslines
What do you mean by that, Amps?
Along_the_Wire was about to ask.
Sat here with notebook and best crayons 
think he means slowly fading one out and one in vs a clean swap. bass takes up a lot of headroom and unless the two bass lines compliment each other really well, swapping is a better strategy.
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I would never have two bass lines playing at the same time. They are no different from other melodies in a track. If you have two of them playing at the same time you can argue that you don’t have your phrasing right. You wouldn’t have your two main melodies playing at the same time would you? You might have second / sporting melodies or synth lines interacting where they work together, but not your bass lines, they are too distinctive to the track, and rarely work together. Just think of them as elements that shouldn’t me mixed. This is all personal opinion.
So er, frequencies, yeah… I’m not a producer and my knowledge of some of this is sketchy at best, so I might be talking out of my hoop here… Bass lines in prog and other electronic music all occupy a similar place on the frequency spectrum, and more importantly all sound fairly similar, have similar ‘voices’ and qualities (in my opinion obvs), so if you play them at the same time, they just sound very muddy and a bit of a mess, you can’t differentiate one from the other very well, so, erm, why bother? If you play two main melodies at the same time, one a classic piano sound / voice and the other a very electronic synth wave sound / voice, they might also occupy a similar place on the frequency spectrum, but you could differentiate one from the other due to the very different qualities of the sound, and they probably wouldn’t sound too bad.
Next, volume, and again, I might be chatting baubles here… This bit is about kick drums and bass lines, we shall just refer to both of them as the collective ‘bass’… Because the bass on track A and track B occupy similar frequencies, if you play them at the same time, your doubling the amount off bass output. You’ve just listened to nine and a half minutes of beautifully balanced bass, mid and treble on some obscure epic house track, and then, whamo! Double the bass! In a club you would notice it as being fucking loud and or a clunky as fuck mix, and on a recording it would just fuck with your overall levels. So… why doesn’t the same happen with the mids and the highs? Well, it can, but in my opinion it’s less noticeable. Probably something to do with the human ear and ‘perceivable sound’ vs ‘actual volume’. Also, if you play two similar kick drums at the same time, you will encounter all manner of volume issues and you may get the dreaded ‘phasing’ where the bass lines cancel each other out, and disappear into a flat nothing sound with a shitty clipping sound to boot!
*I don’t produce, I haven’t played out in a long time, still do mixes online though, could be talking broken biscuits, just starting my 4th beer.
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Oh and if you do play out, and play kick drums of two tracks at the same time whilst your riding the red lines, you will meet the wrath of your sound engineer, who will call you a cunt and then moan about you to the promoter. You don’t want that.
Amps haha detail is good too and you’re pretty accurate with everything. honestly, i spend way too much time thinking about things like low end compression, side chaining, note placement, octaves, saturation and everything else that goes along with getting kick and bass to play well together. being a nerd is a great time.
I think the biggest tip is recording it and playing it back - to me, live it always sounds either shit or amazing and it’s never, ever amazing when I listen back to it.
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Along_the_Wire Playing live and recording mixes, are, believe it or not, wildly different imo. For the most part, you have to master one before you master the other, not many people get gigs without being able to put a recorded mix together. Putting together mixes for repeated listens if then different again. They all take different approaches. All you can do is keep practicing, keep listening back, and get to know your records as much as you can.
On that last bit, maybe only go record shopping every three months or so. Back when I learnt on vinyl, a good choon would have a shelf life of up to a year, possibly more. So that gave you a year to work out what other tracks it worked well with, and those other tracks you might have had for a year too. So you would know those tracks inside out. The worst part of digital is having too many tracks and not knowing them. So, three months of working out a 90 - 120 min set should see you get familiar with it all.
Along_the_Wire that’s ear training. right now, you probably think a beat-matched mix sounds good. the more you do it, the less active attention is required to keep the tracks running together, then you can focus on making it sound good because you’ll here more detail. then the first time you play out, you have to do that all over again as you get used to the volume of a club system where the details aren’t always apparent.
303abuser the more you do it, the less active attention is required to keep the tracks running together, then you can focus on making it sound good because you’ll here more detail
Great point, very much agree.
And yeah, if you play on a good bar system you will just about cope, but your first time on a proper club or festival system, you won’t be able to hear a fuckin thing and will probably shit yourself. Clubs more so than festivals / stages / tents due to the space.
a bit dated with regards to the technology now, but i remember reading this a long time ago and finding it helpful …
303abuser that would be my advice too - if you watch a lot of DJs its the final twiddle with the bass which adds the punch and they sometimes knock off the bass a bit on the outgoing track 2 bars early so as to provide the contrast for the bass injection of the new track. the other thing is that some tracks output volume is quite variable and just sound quieter when the flashing lights suggest otherwise …
Is there a better setting for jog adjust for starting out and do you guys use vinyl mode most of the time?
Along_the_Wire Its worth checking your channel fader set up too (If you are using rekordbox, as I presume) You have 3 choices as to the fader curve. I generally have mine on expo as it doesn’t cut too quick or bring in to fast, unless I want it too obvs, but there are 2 other choices, see what works best for you.
that’s a good point too. if available, i preferred the flattest curve possible so you don’t have to get the fader 80% of the way up to hear the incoming track. gives you more room for nuanced volume control.
Along_the_Wire Again, its preference. If you learned on vinyl its easier. I find I don’t need to concentrate as much when I’m NOT in Vinyl mode as I have an extra hand with which to fiddle with the pads or buttons and look like I know what I’m doing lol. I also find it easier using the sides of the platters to jog, rather than the top, however, thats probably because I haven’t used vinyl for a looooong time.
5 days later
I’ve been putting all this shit into practise and been on the XZ for 6 hours. Absolutely fucking magic. Thanks fellas.