grrillatactics
9:39 PM - 23 June, 2006
I am by no means an expert on teaching others how to mix, but the advice I have given to one or two people has seemed to help them, so here goes:
1> Rather than start with house or trance, start with breaks, something simple like Florida-style breaks. I recommend this because house and trance have a heavy dependancy on the kick drum for their sound, and when learning to mix, it is easy to confuse which track is which kick. Also, depending on the producer or subgenre, some kicks seem to not stand so prominently in the track, which again makes it not the best drum to use for mixing in my opinion. Breaks tend to build around the snare, which I feel is a clearer, stronger drum sound.
2> Don't use your headphones when learning to beatmatch. It isn't like you are at a club with 500 people dependant on your mixing skills. You are at home. By not using your headphones, you can hear when you start a record how close you are releasing the track to the beat you are trying to mix into, and it is immediately obvious if the track you are playing is too slow or too fast. Adjust the pitch, pick up the needle on the tune you want to bring in, go back to the beginning, and try again. When you have the beat really, really close to the beat playing, then let it run and fine tune with the pitch slider. Again, since you are at home, don't worry about this being a quick process, and if the one tune runs out, just start it over and keep trying. Learning to mix takes a little time.
3> Watch other DJ's spin. Everybody does things differently, and so you can assimilate other people's tricks into your own reportoire. I have learned many a trick by watching DJ's of different genres than the ones I tend to play, as well as watching DJ's in my own preferred genres. D:raf from this board is a good example. He and I both play a lot of drum and bass, and I have spent a lot of time when I was early in that scene watching how he and other in the area build mixes. I took the things in his method that worked for me and incorporated that into my style.
4> Use tunes with simple drum intros. This is the best thing while learning to mix because the tune you are bringing in isn't full of clutter and extra noise.
I do think that the visual assist in the form of SSL waveforms will be bonus and a strong assist, but you can notice a difference in beats with your ears far faster than your eyes can notice the difference and connection of two moving waveforms on a small screen. Use the waveform as an assistant coach. It will help you learn, but is not the teacher that shows you how to play the game, just a teacher that helps you with a small part of the game.
Once you get to a point where you want to actually play, begin using the headphones, and try to put several songs together, kind of in a mini-set, and work on just being able to go from one song to the next before the playing song runs out, and from there, build into having timing, so that 1 beats land together, and so on and so forth. Each step builds on the previous one. Once you get a vibe for the beat patterns, {i.e., most EDM genres are built into 4 measure (4 bar) or multiple of 4 measur structures [in other words, every 4 measures, a new sound is incorporated into the track, or a sound comes out at the 4 bar point]}, then you can delve into mixing with a focus on the song structures, so as one section ends in one song, something builds in the other, etc. Hip hop is similar as well, but is built around the verse, which is often 16 or 32 bars (again, a multiple of 4) and a chorus that is usually 4 or 8 bars, so in this case, you have to pay attention to what the lyrics are doing.
Once you feel confident enough to put some songs together and feel that they have some kind of flow, start recording yourself and listening for what you do that you feel could be improved upon. No matter who you are, there are new things that you can learn to make your sound even better. A DJ that thinks he/she knows all that there is to know is a DJ that is about one step away from being overrun.I've been at this for almost a decade, and there are others on this forum that have been at it 15, 20, and some almost 30 years, and while I can't speak for everyone, I am fairly confidant that most of us are still trying to get better. One of the fastest ways to get better is to know what you are doing from an outside perspective. Record every time you fire up your turnatbles, and give it a listen whenever you have some spare time.
Most importantly, have fun, love the music, love learning, and enjoy the process. There are a lot of good people that are learning with you, just on different parts of the journey.
