Advanced DJ Lesson Thinking one step ahead while in the Mix by ellaskins DJ Tutor

0:01 A bit of a demonstration, sort of a tutorial but mainly a demonstratio

Alright ladies and gentlemen, a bit of a demonstration, sort of a tutorial but mainly a demonstration. Now, doing a mix, you're halfway through your set and you've got your next track ready, you mix it in. Now, let me give you an analogy. Imagine you're driving along some freeway, some road, and you've got your eyes on the car in front and you think everything's hunky-dory. Well, it probably isn't. What you need to be doing, what you need to be watching and thinking about is two steps ahead. The car in front of the one that's in front of you, excuse me, pick my nose, it's because all of a sudden that car, sorry, three or four cars in front of the one in front of you even could slam its brakes on. Before you know it, you bash straight into it because you're not paying attention.

Now let's put that into the decks of music. Hopefully, you'll see there is some sort of similarity. If you're just mixing one track into the other and one into the other and so on then you're really not looking enough forward. You're not concentrating on what you need to be doing next. Now this is the difference between you thinking outside the box, a normal Joe Public DJ who will be just thinking I'm gonna play that tune, play the tune in the next one and then play that one and that one on that one. So what I've done here, and I have done a recent video using two tracks over here, which is

So we got Cashmere, Perculator and the Acapella of Run DMC. so We've got a track here, we're playing this and I'm going to mix in Excuse me, I'm going to mix in the Cashmere track. I'm also going to overdub the Acapella. But while I'm doing that, I'm also going to be finding another track ready for the next mix. Now again, this is where you have to be very quick. You've got to be very cunning and also you've got to have your files, your music in organised folders so you know where they are. They could be in any folder. They could be in genre, in style, in type and even better in genre and in key. So for example, it could be B major, B minor, it could be A1, A2, it could be B1, B2, certain folder, hip hop, house, drum and bass, B1, all in that one folder, that one area so you know where to flick through and if you know your tunes well enough then you'll know, yeah, that one will go with there, that will go with that.

So imagine we're playing this one here.

2:56 We can start off by the beginning, here we go

This one here is Nagwoody, the track entitled Wednesday or, hold on, just have a look, Wednesday or, or Wednesday or, or not, there you go, alright. So, now I haven't got any headphones on so there could be a few problems here but there you go. Alright, so we've got this one playing and we want to start having a bit of fun with Kashmir. So we can start off by the beginning, here we go. No, wrong one, wrong one, sorry. We've already had a cue point, hold on.

3:33 Let's go back a little bit to even before I started playing this one

Set a cue point at the beginning of the track and you just let that roll. Because you're wondering well you've just started playing this particular track and you're bringing the next one in. Now let's go back a little bit to even before I started playing this one. Think, I may have had a track on here, I may have, you know, I may be playing this particular track, alright. Now slowly this one is starting to mix out and I'm bringing this one into the mix now, so now this one is playing. So again like I said earlier on about thinking three steps or four steps ahead, I'm playing this track, I'm mixing in this one. As soon as this track has mixed in I will know to go right, Kashmir, hot cue at the beginning, hot cue halfway through, acapella run DMC, hot cue.

Now if I'm quick, and this is the key to be quick, then within 8 or 16 bars of this track I can do exactly what you saw. I can start mixing these cuts in. Now when we do a mix, when we start to then bring the Kashmir track in, and I'll show you this, I'll give a live demonstration. I can then straight away flick to another track and start to bring the next track in, but I can go back to my hot cues and start editing and messing around with the hot cues whilst bringing in the next track. It's livening up your mix, it's making it bright, more exciting, more vibrant instead of Sorry, okay so we've got this playing. Right another thing as well, again thinking continually, never stop. In fact, don't sleep much.

6:16 Getting my tune ready

Run DMC and Jam Master J, run DMC and Jam Master J But run DMC, you know, you can bring it in on the off beat, you don't have to bring it in on the count of one. So I'll give you a demonstration there. Getting my tune ready.

There you go, very quick, very quick, but what you're doing is you're not just doing a mix where people are listening to it You're doing a mix where people want to start to watch you Now that could be the difference between you and the other DJ. Practice and enjoy, thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.