Beginner Drum & bass DJ Mixing Lesson Using Hospital Records We Are 21

0:00 Yes, 21 years of banging D&B, also known as drum and bass

Alright guys, we've got a couple of tunes here from Hospital Records from their LP known as We Are 21. Yes, 21 years of banging D&B, also known as drum and bass. This lesson is for beginner DJs who would like to learn how to mix the genre known as drum and bass. First of all, let's have a listen to the drum pattern. It's almost like it swings. It's not sort of 1, 2, 3, 4, even though you can count it like that. It's got like a swing to it. Can you hear that? Now a good way of counting drum and bass and a good way of understanding how the structure of the beat is made is simply by learning how to count like this.

1:40 There are many more phrases that we'll be covering in just a moment

1, 2, 3, 4. Now that 2 and 4 is actually the snare. So if you were playing the drums so your hi-hat tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, or tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tapp-tapp-tap-ba-ch da-da-cha-ta-ta-cha da-da-cha-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-cha. Ok, so in this tutorial what we're doing is we're going to do a phrase mix different, in different ways. Again, this is a very beginner kind of lesson. Now there are many more phrases that we'll be covering in just a moment. ways of forming transitions with drum and bass but what you will find is drum and bass is very, very formatted. The structure of your phrasing more often than not is 16 bars. Of course a bar is the count of 4 and what I'm going to do I set a hot cue just before the beginning of a phrase so no particular

Place where I've set it I'll just set it there to give me some form of counting not even a counting really. Now let's have a listen to a change. Okay did you hear that kind of... now that is telling me and should tell you that we have a change happening, a change is taking place and the more you listen to drum and bass the more you understand it the more that you will find during the course of a track let's say you don't have a defined stop and start the drop the beginning of the drop, the end of the drop etc. If you just have a subtle kind of change something like that that potentially is the beginning of a new phrase so on my left what you're listening to now is Spy and on the right-hand side we have Bop Space Girl both tracks can be found on the 21 album

Okay so I'm going to go back to my hot cue very basic transition here crossbade over on the left hand side and start my other track what I'm going to do is just bring the crossfade to the middle two three four one two three cross fade in the middle two two three four back two three four one two three four one two three four cross fade in the middle back getting ready, cross fade in the middle two three four two three four middle cross fade in the middle and back two three four now i'm going to slowly bring the crossover there take the cross fade over now what i tried to do there i tried to almost imagine that i was in perfect time with the track so it was cross fade in the middle take it back wait cross

4:43 Hand side, loop, filter

Fade in the middle again take it back but it wasn't sort of random points oh just throw it in there or just chuck it in there and wait a bit and chuck it in there i tried to make sure i was sort of in time with the phrasing notice as well of course i will explain for the partially sighted i wasn't messing around with any bass mid or treble or eq or anything like that i was simply moving the cross fade from the left hand side to the middle back to the left to middle back to the left middle and then straight over to the right at the end of the phrase now this time what i'm going to do is maybe use some filter so i'm going to set the left hand side to the three o'clock point and then i'm going to set it to the three o'clock point and then i'm going to set it to

The three o'clock position on the filter and leave the right hand side at 12 o'clock so during my transition when the cross phase in the middle i'm going to move the filter on the right hand side to 12 and do the opposite with the filter on the left hand side move it to nine o'clock so let's go back to my hot cube it's time now filter straight out on the left hand side do you know what we could carry on doing so many different ways of forming a transition with these two points there is no there's no golden rule on how you have to form a transition if i was to give these two tracks to 100 djs tell them to form a transition at that exact point it's highly highly highly unlikely there would be two djs who would do an identical transition every single one would be slightly different

The analogy i give you as i've said possibly before it's like giving 100 artists the same paints and asking them to paint the same picture they have in front of them every single artist will have a different interpretation of that picture which is exactly what's going on here all right so for the slightly more advanced dj how would we be able to snap that tune in straight away without having to slowly bring it in or mix it in or whatever two ways one is form a loop on the track that's coming in get that loop playing of course in phrase with the other track even prior to the phrase where you want to bring the track in to come in so you have the loop playing as soon as the phrase starts you come out of the loop and the track then should be perfectly in time the other way of doing it is even

More advanced on the verge of being um up there with the gods is where you just press play as soon as the phrase starts and the volume is up bang press play the track is in straight away no need for a loop or anything slightly more difficult but doable let's try one more time here we go

Bit of echo dub okay so what i'm gonna do this time i'm gonna start taking the bass out from the left hand side but i don't need too much the space is a lot of the track the spy track go dub track leading leaving sorry now i've left the left-hand track in spied up add some echo i brought that out a bit too soon all right i'm gonna be very critical there but there you go no behind all right thank you again to hospital records for letting me use their tunes don't forget there will be a link in the description it will take directly to hospital records and also this banging album so if you're into db go check it out thank you very much practice and enjoy nice one

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