Grooveon Forums

Guys. I know i asked this before, but i stopped playing my decks because i got distracted by women (at least i’m honest), but last weekend i dusted off the decks and started playing again. Now… One of my mates little homie G brothers asked if i could play at his 18th. I was like.. “yo, all i can do is beat mix” and he said he doesn’t care if i just fade from one track to another, but frankly… I wanna sound decent.

All i want to be able to do is go from one track to another competently without sounding like a complete ass. I don’t wanna be ducking under the DJ table everytime i push the crossfader across. I’m confident in my beat mixing, but i can’t cut from one track to another for shit. Basically, if i’m playing something like booty music by deepside, and want to drop to something like chingy’s nasty girl, how do i do it without making chingy sound like a chipmunk and trying to beatmix it. I’ve hear DJs cut from one track to another and make it sound so easy, but when i do it, it’s REALLY obvious. Is there something i should be doing during the cut to make it sound more.. Clean? Someone help a brother out here.

Having a play, the best way i found was to do a baby scratch on the incoming track and fade the last two beats of the outgoing track then drop the incoming track at the end of the last two fading beats of the second track.

Eh? Eh?!?!

I also noticed on stanley’s mixes, he drops some kind of sound effect as he’s dropping the new track in. Is it just a matter of distracting the crowd with some scratching?

Help a brother out.

This is so hard to explain, but cutting from track to track isn’t hard at all, it’s all in the timing of it.

Knowing your music is also really important here as some tracks end with a fade while others end more abruptly.

In your example, deepsides booty music to chingy - booty music ends smoothly so its no big deal - wait for the last beat of booty music and play the next song - you’re not going to have conflicting beats cos the tracks ended.

Keep Generes similar for a few tracks at least for the sake of consistancy.

What i mean is don’t keep jumping around the BPM ranges - I.E. 1st track 120BPM to 2nd track 100BPM to third track 130BPM.

Another tip is to try to go from lower BPMS and build your way up during your set. 

People losing there shit to Neyo’s closer which is 120+ are going to be lost if you decide to play Dante Thomas’ - Miss California (around 100 bpm).

Once you know ur music you’ll know all the songs with similar beats that flow together easily.

I’m not a fan of cutting myslef but if your looking to change up the tempo of your set it’s a good option.

A dude i’ve played with was the king of cut lol, that’s the only way he knew how to mix but he knew his music and could pull it off & sounded good so it all depends.

Hope at least soemthing i’ve written makes sense

as long as ur bpms are pretty much similar and not like 15 to 20 bpms difference then u will be fine
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if u still find it hard then just cut the tracks in witout mixing
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if u wanna cut a track in then use the eq’s on the mixer

Okay, so i’ve taken what you guys have said into consideration and am finally cutting over to a new track without mixing, and it sounds relatively okay. I’m pretty sure if i played to a crowd and they were drunk enough, they wouldn’t give me a strange look, lol. I’ve developed two ways of cutting over:

1. Set the crossfader to the X one, then in the last 4 beats of the chorus of the outgoing track, i’ve baby scratched the first beat of the new track and moved the cross fader slowly over to fade out the old and fade in the baby scratch, then on the first downbeat, i release the new track. Sounds alright and is extremely simple. It’ll be my emergency cut when people on the dance floor are like “wtf is this song” and start walking off. lol.

2. Set the fader all the way to the other side so it’s cutting the track in as soon as the fader moves, then through the 16 beats of the chorus, cut the first beat of the new track in on every first down beat of a bar, till the last 4 beats, where i cut the new track in on the first two beats then scratch over the next two and release into the new track completely cutting out the old.

Does any of that make sense? Should i be cutting the base out of the outgoing track at any time?

I have no technical credibility whatsoever so take my advice with a hugh grain of salt.

My no.1 rule of djing is the world generally revolves around 8 beat blocks (note the word generally)

So anything you do within the contraints of each 8 beat block will work (assuming a close BPM match). Based on this principal you will generally maintain flow (ie: not jumping too far within the BPM scale) and if the laws of something happening every 8 beat block (be it instrumental, voacl change or cold stop) are sound you’ll find a place to ‘drop’ from one track to the next without things getting too distracting

If you are planning to go too far outside the BPM scale (as a rule I will only vary 6-8 BPM) either out of necessity or to add impact I suggest an ‘event’ (a scratch, a turntable break or maybe an interlude of some sort) can get you running up and down the BPM scale without any negative impact.

Remember my first point - I have no technical credibility.......

B-Love

just download a mixtape and play it

lol hasin. I’m gonna take a cd of a mixtape just incase my laptop sets on fire.

one word for u poppa funkymix hahahahahahahahahaa that will make everything so much easier hahahahaha 8 bar intro’s and 8 bar outros mixing made easy

Funkymix?! Does everything have a funkymix?!?! WHAT THE HELL’S A FUNKYMIX?!?!

Man, if i could just beatmix everything, i’d be a happy camper.

funkymix is a remix service that make tracks eaiser to beat mix just download a funkymix from anywhere they are everywhere and u will know what i mean

yeh funky mix, x-mix, wicked mix and so on
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there for djs only and make it easy for most

Awesome, i’m gonna look out for these.

There are top secret remixs and lethal weapon remixs too

yeh the lethal weapons prob have better track listings then top secret

a few months ago they had a torrent up on mininova.org with all the funkymix’s released - take a search for them, they make beat mixing a piece of piss.

do they do the popular club bangers? Or do they do the less common stuff? I need to play g-unit BS at this 18th. Ugh. You know how kids are these days with their g-unit and 50 cent. Urrrggghhhhhh.