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Stage 5 Musical Craft Course 4 of 4

Choosing the Next Track

Intermediate 7 lessons · 1 h 4 min

Track selection is most of the job and the least teachable part of it, so this is mostly Ellaskins thinking aloud while he digs - what makes a hook, what makes two records belong together, and how long it is worth spending to find the exact one.

By the end of this course you will be able to

  • Judge whether two tracks genuinely belong next to each other
  • Identify the hook that makes a record stick
  • Select across genres for a mixed-age crowd
  • Decide when a track is close enough and move on

Lessons

  1. Finding the exact track for a flowing mix

    26:48

  2. What the hook in a record is

    7:28

  3. Playing records older than the people dancing to them

    7:43

    His argument against chasing new releases: to a crowd born in the late nineties, a 1993 record is new.

  4. Selecting across genres for a mobile crowd

    4:25

  5. A look at eighties electro

    Optional 6:05

  6. A look at breakbeat

    Optional 4:27

  7. Records chosen purely because they make you smile

    Optional 6:47

    One of his Lounge sessions - selection by feel, with no technique in it.

The stages are the way through

Below this line is the back catalogue, newest first. Useful for browsing, but it is not a course - the videos are in the order they were filmed, not the order to learn them in. Work the stages instead: each one assumes the one before it.

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